I have always been a student of military history and had the opportunity to visit Verdun in April of 1998. I went by myself having really studied Verdun on the web and in print. The whole experience filled with me a senseof reverance. I arrived first in town and went for a walk in the late afternoon. I walked to the St. Paul gate and the up to the monument in themiddle of town. The next morning I drove in the fog out to the north and turned on the road up into the hills. Heading to Fort Draumont and FortVaux. On the way the fog cleared as I neared the monument to Andre' Maginot. Then I turned off the road to Fort Souville. I walked thru the woods and into all the dark tunnels then I realized that if anything happened to me no one would ever know. As I walked thru the woods I would see pieces ofbarbed wire and twisted metal town and scorched. Then it was on to all theother sites. It was really eerie to see the Ossiary at Daumont and the grave upon grave. I stopped to walk into the woods to take a leak. At the veryspot that I turned to relieve myself away from prying eyes there was across, one of those French ceramic floral crosses and a tablet marking thefinal resting place of a French officer. Then there were the Germancemeteries. In one there were something like 237 graves. With teutonicprecision there were the crosses with the names of the men entombed. Then aplot for the mass of unknowns. Then one lone stone tablet near the back.Honoring a German Lt. Weiss who gave his life for the fatherland in WW1. I wonder what his parents and family thought when they were taken to the concentration camps. He surely gave enough for his homeland. Only after along day in the battlefield and a trip to several of the outlying destroyedvillages. Then into town, only then did I see the damage to Verdun itself .In the area around the Maisson de Ville and the Cathedral on the hill. I walked around the Citadel of Verdun but did not tour it. Later I found outthat in WW2 Eisenhower held his historic meeting there about what to doabout the German breakthrough at the Battle of the Bulge. Into that colddark room Patton stormed with his brilliant plan to reorient his army andrescue the Americans at Bastogne.