Verdun. For a past
generation, this one simple word evoked all the horror of war. Displacement, destruction, devastation,
death. Hyperbole is not even possible
when describing the events of the Battle of Verdun.
Verdun is a town that found itself on the eastern frontier
of France in 1914 – right on the border with Germany. A natural gateway to Paris, it was heavily
fortified as a defensive measure against a German invasion. However, when the Germans did strike in 1916,
most of the French troops had been moved to other fronts. A huge convoy of men and munitions began –
the French command wanted Verdun kept at all costs. “On ne passe pas!” (They shall not pass) was
the oft quoted battle cry, coined by French General Robert Neville.
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| French military poster with the words "On ne passe pas!" (They shall not pass) |
From the 21st of February to
the 18th of December, 1916, unrelenting warfare was carried out
across the forested hills and farms outside of the evacuated, destroyed town of
Verdun. The numbers alone are shocking :
- 9 months, 3 weeks and 6
days of continuous fighting
- Over 377,000 casualties on the French
side
- Over 337,000 on the German side
- Over 70 000 casualties per month - just
on this one battlefield
- Over 40 million artillery shells fired
The battle for Verdun turned the
beautiful French countryside into an alien landscape – the forests were
obliterated, the farms were pockmarked with huge shell craters, and the 9 rural
villages that surrounded Verdun were erased – nothing was left. Imagine these villages, home to generations
of farmers and craftspeople, bakers and priests, going back to medieval
times. Gone. Their former happy streets became places of
unimaginable horror. The ground, churned
up, a muddy, murky mess of clay, shells, and human remains.
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| French troops in the muck and mire |
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| German machine gunners wearing gas masks in case of chemical attack |
This was Verdun. A new type of warfare was being waged
here. Each side dug in, building
trenches several hundred metres away from the other side. A constant barrage of artillery rained down
on the soldiers on either side. Each day
the men would leave the trenches to fight in “no mans’ land”, almost certain
death. Reinforcements would be brought
in, and this cycle would play out over and over again. Territory was gained and lost in metres. By the end of the battle, both sides were
essentially in the same place they were at the beginning. This was a war of attrition. German Chief of General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn,
famously stated that he wanted to “bleed France white”. In other words, rather than gain territory as
was the traditional goal of a battle, he wanted to eliminate so many of
France’s infantry that they would have to surrender. His strategy nearly worked, but as the
numbers show, it was just as devastating to the German forces as it was to the
French. To call Verdun a victory for
either side would be incorrect – Verdun was a victory for death alone.
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| A wounded French soldier lives to fight another day |
Today the town of Verdun has been
rebuilt. But none of the 9 rural
villages have been. They were the site
of too great a tragedy for people to return and rebuild. The church of the village Fleury was rebuilt
after the war, but the people did not return.
Visiting Fleury is a haunting reminder of the past – the former streets
are marked by small concrete pillars – indicating where this family or that
family lived, where the baker practiced his craft, where the blacksmith forged
the farmers’ tools. The ground is still
cratered, but trees and grass grow once again on this former moonscape.
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| A cafe and grocery store once stood on this spot. |
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| The cratered landscape sprouts life once again. There are still off-limits areas around the battlefield because of live shells in the ground. |
Up the road from Fleury is the Verdun
Memorial Museum. This is an excellent
museum that does not glorify war in any way.
Nor does it stand as a monument to any sort of French nationalism. The French flag flies beside the German flag
here, with the European Union flag in between.
The equipment and uniforms will sate the most dedicated military history
buff, while the personal stories and the excellent film shown in the theatre
will make those human connections that are so important in a memorial like this.
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| The Verdun Memorial Museum |
Down the road from Fleury, at the head
of a French military cemetery is the huge Douaumont Ossuary – filled with the
remains of more than 130 000 unidentified dead.
The decision was made at the conclusion of the war to inter all the
remains together – identification by nationality was all but impossible for
many of the bodies, but more importantly, irrelevant. Each one was a son, possibly a brother,
possibly a husband, possibly a father.
Each one came to Verdun to do “his duty” for his nation, and in so
doing, lost his life.
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| The Douaumont Ossuary at the head of the French military cemetery. The bottom of the ossuary is filled with the remains of the unidentified bodies on the battlefield. One of the bodies was transported to Paris and lies under the Arc de Triomphe at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. |
One of those men, a French lieutenant,,
wrote in his journal, “Humanity is mad.
It must be mad to do what it is doing.
What a massacre! What scenes of
horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible.” He was later killed in an artillery attack.
The battlefields of Verdun are tranquil
now. Very peaceful. And the survivors of this battle are all
gone. Soon, anyone who was alive during
WW I will be gone. But the Douaumont Ossuary, the church at Fleury, and the
Verdun Memorial museum remain to remind us:
never forget, and never repeat.
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| Verdun, once a site of savage warfare, now a symbol of reconciliation and peace for the nations of France and Germany. |
