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An English view of Verdun
Visit to Verdun Battlefield,
June 2000.
By Alan Stout of Newcastle, England.
My first ever visit to Verdun started on the overnight ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge in Belgium.
From there it was an easy drive through Belgium and then into France, arriving in Verdun about 1.30 pm.
After checking in to my hotel at the village of Marre on the Northern outskirts of Verdun I made for the area of Mort Homme and Butte de Vauqois, knowing that I still had two full days in the area to visit the main battle zone.
I have previously visited the British WW1 areas in the Somme and at Ypres but the first thing I noticed about Verdun is the marked lack of land regeneration and farming in the battle zone.
This is in contrast to most other WW1 battle areas, which if it were not for numerous cemeteries and a few preserved trenches, one would be forgiven for thinking that a war had taken place there at all.
Mort Homme roughly translates to "Dead Man's Hill" and is a very apt description for this area , which saw bitter hand-to-hand fighting of extreme ferocity and even now has an uneasy chill and spookiness about it.
This feeling of unease is made worse by the Skeleton Monument on the summit of the Hill, which bears the inscription "Ils nont pas passé" - "They did not Pass".
The Butte de Vauquois is not strictly in the 1916 battle zone being a little West of where the main actions took place but nevertheless it has an importance of it's own.
The site is where the village of Vauquois once stood until it was blasted from the face of the earth in 1915 by a series of explosions from mines laid directly underneath it.
The village stood on top of a hill that lay directly between the opposing French and German lines.
Both sides desperately wanted possession of the village because of its good vantage point and they each took it in turn to blow each other off the hill with high explosive shells and underground mines.
The village was completely destroyed and the only traces of its existence are huge craters where the school, church etc. once stood.
The site also has sections of barbed wire and the remnants of tunnels and dugouts on both the French and German sides.
No attempt was ever made to rebuild the village but a Monument has been erected on the former site of the Town Hall.
Whilst I was at Vauquois a coach party of elderly French tourists arrived and one of them managed to inform me in very basic English that his late father was a Verdun veteran and had in fact been made a Prisoner of War by the Germans.
It is these little snippets of reality that make visits to places like this much more interesting than merely reading about them back home in England. It is a known fact that many hundreds of French and German veterans returned to Verdun after the War looking perhaps for the spot where their closest friends were killed or where they themselves had found courage and comradeship in the face of fear and adversity.
After a long day it was time to make my way back to Verdun itself in order to find something to eat and then on to the hotel for the first of my three night's stay.
The town of Verdun itself is quite pleasant. It has a very attractive quay on the west bank with riverside bars and cafes to tempt locals and tourists alike.
Next day I made straight for the Tourist Office in Verdun and bought a Guide to the Battle area as well as a fold up map.
The Guide is available in various languages including English and proved to be a good buy.
From the Tourist Office I made for the Cimitiere de Faubourg Pave situated on the town outskirts to the east. This is a large WW1 French Military Cemetery and contains the graves of the remaining seven unknown soldiers who were not chosen from the original eight that were used to select the Unknown Warrior buried beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
From there it was into the battlefield area itself and my first port of call was Fort Vaux.
This site is legendary for the pigeon which carried the last message from the besieged Fort's Commander before it's surrender.
The pigeon died later due to the effects of gas and a plaque was erected at the Fort in its honour after the war.
A tour can be made of the Fort's interior, which tends to be cool and damp even on a hot day, but it is a very worthwhile tour and a written fact sheet is provided in various languages.
There is a well-stocked souvenir and bookshop. Another little snippet of reality here was a photo in the fort entrance depicting German infantry attacking the fort exterior, the photographer's position from that time being in exactly the same spot as the present day car-park.
It can be a strange feeling when one is standing in the exact location where so much history was made and so many men lost their lives.
From Fort Vaux it was on to the other ruined Fort at Douamont. This was meant to be impregnable but it was in fact captured in the first few days of the battle by a German patrol, virtually unopposed.
Like Fort Vaux, this area saw much bitter fighting and Fort Douamont was held by the Germans for a further eight months.
Again a tour of the fort's interior can be made and one can get a good view of the surrounding area from it's top.
Inside there is a chapel and walled gallery dedicated to 679 German troops buried alive in the Fort when a grenade store exploded and whose remains were never recovered.
From Fort Douamont I double backed to the Fleury Memorial Museum.
This was built on the site of the former Fleury village Railway Station.
The village of Fleury was one of nine villages in the battle zone that were totally destroyed and have never been rebuilt.
The Fleury Memorial Museum is excellent and it is where the history of the battle is explained in displays of photographs, battlefield relics and documents.
There is a compelling film show in the small cinema and a realistic construction of a section of battlefield complete with debris etc.
There is also a book and souvenir shop as well as toilets.
From the Fleury Museum it was a short drive to what is perhaps the most visited site on the battlefield, the Ossuary of Douamont.
This striking and imposing building contains the remains of over 130,000 men, both French and German.
Their remains were recovered from the battlefield but could not be identified.
It was decided therefore to place all the remains inside sections or chapels in the
Ossuary.
Around at the rear of the Ossuary some of these remains, nothing more than heaped bones, can be viewed through windows set at ground level.
This is not as gruesome as imagined but nevertheless can come as a surprise to the casual tourist.
There is a chapel and tower both of which can be visited.
The view from the top of the tower takes in all of the battlefield as well as the town of Verdun to the immediate south.
There is a bookshop and a small cinema which gives regular screenings of yet another compelling and tragic video about the battle.
Directly in front of the Ossuary is The French National Cemetery in which are buried 15,000 identified French and Colonial soldiers.
The huge loss of life in this tragic battle is well illustrated here as the white crosses are laid in endless line after line.
Other sites worth visiting in this area are ruined forts at Froideterre, Thiaumont, and Quatre Cheminees. These sites are not as well known or as big as the Forts at Vaux and Douamont but can be interesting if time permits.
The next site I visited was the Trenchee des Baionettes (Bayonet Trench).
Legend has it that some French soldiers were buried alive in this trench and all that remained were some of their bayonets protruding from the ground still fixed to the
rifles.
After the war a concrete canopy was built over the trench in order to preserve it and to this day some of the bayonets are to be seen sticking out from the ground.
Whether the legend is true or not this is still a revered site and one of the most visited in the area.
From Bayonet Trench I headed into town for a meal and quick look around one or two shops before going back to my hotel in Marre for the night.
The next day was to be my last full day in Verdun so I decided to spend the morning in the town followed by a final visit to the battlefield area in the afternoon.
My first port of call was to The Citadel and it's fascinating underground museum with slide and filmed presentations.
It was in the Citadel that the French Unknown Soldier was chosen at random and this scene has been re-created using wax figures in the same room where the event took place.
Also in the town centre and well worth a visit are the Victory Monument, Port Chausee on the river, and time permitting, the Cathedral and Bishop's Palace.
In the afternoon I had another more leisurely short tour round the battle area.
This time I left the car and took a little time to walk around some of the more inaccessible areas.
I had read that many wartime relics were still to be found in the forest but my efforts were in vain.
Nevertheless this is still an uninhabitable wilderness, which is still not cultivated and is covered in shell-holes.
Whilst I was paying a second visit to Fort Duaumont I met up with some Americans who were visiting Verdun on a whistle-stop tour of Battlefield sites in Northern France. They had already visited the Normandy D-Day beaches and were planning to visit the Somme on the way back to Paris before flying home. They had come to France well informed with guides, maps etc. and they had obtained a lot of information concerning Verdun from the Internet.
Conclusion
My overall view is that Verdun is an essential visit for any one who has more than just a passing interest in Military History, particularly World War One. It is not difficult to reach from the Channel ports and accommodation etc. is not a problem. The battlefield area is not as well visited by UK residents as it should be, no doubt because no British or Commonwealth units were stationed there.
For anyone who has already visited Ypres and the Somme a visit to Verdun will open up a new chapter of discovery with regard to WW1 and is highly recommended.
A
lot of historians are of the opinion that Germany lost the War on the Western Front because of their failure to capture Verdun in 1916. I do not necessarily go along with that view, although it is true that the capture of Verdun could well have brought about the collapse of the French Army.
I tend to take the view that Germany lost the War in the West as early 1914 by failing to capture the Channel ports.
This failure on their part meant that Britain was able to maintain an Army on the Western Front for four years, which would not have been possible without free access to France from Britain across the English Channel.
There is no doubt that Germany was quite capable of defeating either of the British or French armies individually but it was asking too much to take both of them on together and even by the time of Verdun in 1916 the odds of Germany winning the War in the West were negligible.
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