It was October of 2024, me and my mother went for a day in Verdun, the renowned french city that witnessed one of the bloodiest battles in modern warfare. I made the suggestion of this visit due to my raging fixation on the history of the first world war at the time, I knew that even though I’ve tried educate myself about the Great War for throughly as possible, but no data or description could be as vivid as to actually see its ruins with one’s own eyes. Since the city just happened to be an hour away, we were off the day my holidays started with a sort of enthusiastic yet solemn sentiment.
Located in the Northeast of France along what used to be the western front of the First World War, Verdun is a seemingly simple town with great historical and militaristic value. On the surface it is just like any town in the countryside, surrounded by waves of hills and farmlands that spreads until the horizon, and since we went in October, everything was in the gold colour of wheat and barley. While traversing fields and waters by car you’d often find large white panels signifying a close by historical or other sites of significance. On previous journeys we’d often find the panels with illustration of worn down castles or bridges, once on a trip to Paris, I’ve even seen one of the Cinderella Castle. Back to Verdun, we’ve seen one with a rare illustration of people: three soldiers in a line, and so we knew we were in the right place.
At the time when we arrived, I was plunged into thought. The battle of Verdun lasted ten months during 1916, total casualties exceeding seven hundred thousand that also divides almost evenly between France and Germany. According to a video I’ve watched in prior, the reason of the battle to Germany was a strategic choice to bleed out France, and to France it was due to national pride. The french army’s defended the twenty forts with determination that scattered around the city, that makes Verdun practically a giant fortress itself, should it be lost to the enemy and not only the path to Paris is open, so would the army’s morale plummet. Therefore Verdun’s symbolic value to France is immense. We could figure with just a map of the western front between 1914 and 1918: it winds along the border between Belgium, Germany, and France, advancing and recoiling during the four years of war, even approaching Paris in the farthest German advances, but never did it push pass Verdun.
To traverse round the area we’d require to drive, and often times we find places being fenced up with a sign on top that says « battlefield ». Those are areas containing undetonated bombs from the war, dangerous to approach even a hundred years later, now have become fenced up bushes of weeds. As we came across more and more of those during our journey, we slowly understood the coverage of the battlefield.
At the edge of Verdun’s city centre or where used to be part of the Verdun battlefield, the french government built the Douaumont Ossuary where the skeletal remains of fallen soldiers, both french and german are contained in memory of them. Upon arriving, the most eye catching perhaps was the rows and columns of neatly aligned cross-shaped tombstones in white and those scarlet roses blooming in front of each. The sun was quite bright, on tidily mown grass each of those crosses shined sparkingly and casted each a faint yet clean shadow into the green meadow. In a distance, the ossuary, also marble coloured, stands in a firm and solemn manner, it was a building compromising a centural tower in between two horizontally extending wings.
Heading into the ossuary white was still the dominant colour except for the orange tinted windows. We could only find more emphasis onto solemnity, a sort of nobility, and the graveness of loss, it also included another more human emotion lingering stagnantly in the air. The walls were built with bricks etched with names of fallen soldiers, and heavy books of at least 10 centimeters thick that records more of which whose names aren’t carved onto walls. Still more remained unidentified, and they were stored away collectively in a chamber. I thought about this shocking amount of casualties, seven hundred thousand people were killed or wounded, young people whose lives were cut short, young people with hopes and dreams like me, in a war without reason. Orange tint was casted into the hall, looming onto the white marble in rectangular stripes. I figured that in the air, that stagnant emotion might as well be anger. On this once war-torn field, today blooms flowers. Below every flower lies a young soldier, as if dyed red by their blood.
We continued forward, behind an an unsignificant neighbourhood sits the the trench of Chattancourt, it was both a museum and an experience. Inside, it was nailed together by wooden planks, only wide enough for two people to walk side by side along the tunnel-like path, and a faint smell of dampness and dust surrounded us. All sorts of rooms were built along the walls: office, infimary, kitchen, a leatherworker’s workshop, and even a pigeon loft. We walked slowly along the path, life-sized rubber sculptures of different roles filled the rooms, and sometimes on the walls we saw posters depicting real people’s experience. The medical practices were grotesque, amputated limbs, stitched facial wounds, and the worst is their efficiency, making them a common practice. We saw signs to telling us to duck as to avoid being shot, unconsciously I avoided sticking my head above the trench and lightenend my steps. As if taken off the veil of unfamiliarity induced by our distance in time, they became less of a trace of history but individual people.
I was excited back then and was almost convinced that this was a partially rebuilt segment of the real trench, unfortunately, well, I wasn’t completely wrong, but this trench was completely built from scratch on proximity to the original site’s location with reference to maps, pictures, and singular preserved items in personal collections. I’ve guessed it’d be heavily modified to appeal to visitors, but it really hit me with dissapointment when I found out the old structure was long gone, but it’d only be reasonable not to keep remnants of the a terrible war around after it has ended. Still, built on top of a land that witnessed so much cruelty, an unnerving chill were clinging to those walls.
Leaving the trench we found ourselves near a hill, I suspected it to the the infamous Le Mort Hommes or the Dead Man’s Hill, then the map confirmed me. At the same time I understood why the trench was located there specifically. Le Mort Hommes was the cruelest and most brutal battlefield during the battle of Verdun, originally consisting of two ridges of similar heights but after having endured hundreds of thousands of high intensity and relentless shelling for nine months, up to fifteen meters of height were completely blown off. The artillery fire was so intense that in the most struck areas about 150 shells landed per square meter. According to stories of survivors, shells blow the field into craters, and corpses would rapidly fill up those holes, and then get blown into shreds again, then filled up again, over and over. Standing on the dark soil was a strange feeling, this was where the air used to be mingled with poison, and the soil used to be mixed with blood, gore, and bone. The ground that surrounds the path we walked upon was covered with fallen leaves and rain, and fir were the only kind of tree that can survive this soil which has the form of undulating waves. Knowing that this wave’s peculiar beauty was what used to be craters of shells made here seem cold, as if all those the souls of the fallen are weighing down the air. Back then, I wondered how was ten months of endurance under such circumstances was possible, and this question reminded me of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet On the Western Front, where the protagonist said: « I soon found out this much:–terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks; –but it kills, if a man thinks about it. » (136)
As coming here wasn’t a part of our plan, we didn’t know we’d find a memorial deep into the forest, it was for the 69th division’s heroic accomplishment of holding and defending this hill top observation post from the german troops. On a small plain stood a captivating statue, a soldier of only muscle and bones was covered by a shroud; he held a flag in one arm and in the other a torch of victory up into the sky. His eyes ware filled with determination and his feet were firmly holding his ground on the pedestal, on the pedestal etched a sentence:
« Ils n’ont pas passé. «
They have not passed.
With an unyielding determination, the soldiers of the 69th division responded to General Robert Nivelle’s slogan: They shall not pass.
When I first saw the memorial I had a complicated feeling of this depiction of the soldiers’ noble spirit, now that I am looking back, I find that this depiction has taken away something central. Sacrifice is noble, but did they all know what was coming for them? No, they did not choose this. Perhaps they were promised honor, perhaps in their deaths even, also considering the trauma and the brutality of modern warfare, would any medal, any praise bring honor to them? Just like rations and bullets, soldiers too were expendibles.
In later afternoon, we knew the sun won’t stay up for much longer, and so we drove to our last stop: Fort Douaumont. Most of the fort is submerged under the soil, it took the shape of a dome on the outside, and is also marked by the undulating shape of craters on the surface, now covered by a lush green meadow. This fort was lost to the germans three days into the battle, as it wasn’t able to withstand the german weapons. The area was disputed for over three hundred days until the lost forts were finally recaptured by french troops which marked the end of the battle of Verdun. At the end we were wandering in the field of craters. They were a lot deeper than I thought they’d be, being surrounded by green crests with grass put into a glow by glistening sunshine, the scenery was flowing with whimsy. How powerful time is, to transform a place where people have described to be comparable to hell, into whimsical beauty? In the end, no matter if it was poison, bone, or shell, they all rot away back into the earth, because nature doesn’t care.
One person’s death spiked war on a whole continent, plunging the fate of a whole generation of people onto the battlefield and the few more that came after by its aftermath. Having unleashed horrors with warfare that crushed people like ants, the Great War was called the war to end all wars, looking back from 110 years later, we could all see the irony.
When the sun has fallen and the the moon hung in the sky, me and my mother gazed at the Meuse out the window in our hotel room, golden lights from the city center shined warmly. The shadow of a young couple casted on the river, out of the lively city center they strolled along the handrail, chatting with laughter while the water flowed gently. What a serene and beautiful night.