Douaumont and the Lost Villages

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The Memorial Ossuary and Cemetery at Douaumont is dedicated to the soldiers who died on the battlefield during the Battle of Verdun in World War I. During the 300 days of the Battle of Verdun (21 February 1916–19 December 1916) approximately 230,000 men died out of a total of 700,000 casualties (dead, wounded and missing). The battle became known in German as Die Hölle von Verdun (English: Verdun’s hell), or in French as L’Enfer de Verdun, and was conducted on a battlefield covering less than twenty square kilometers.

The ossuary is a memorial containing the remains of both French and German soldiers who died on the Verdun battlefield. Through small outside windows, the skeletal remains of at least 130,000 unidentified combattants of both nations can be seen filling up alcoves at the lower edge of the building. On the inside of the ossuary building, the ceiling and walls are partly covered by plaques bearing names of French soldiers who fell during the battle of Verdun. A few of the names are from fighting that took place in the area during World War II. The families of the soldiers that are recognized here by name contributed for those individual plaques. In front of the monument and sloping downhill, lies the largest single French military cemetery of WW1 with 16,142 graves. Furthermore it was initiated in 1923 by Verdun veteran André Maginot of future Maginot Line fame. (Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License from Wikipedia.org)

My wife’s family are from this area of northern France and she grew up with the tales of horror told by her parents and grandparents and other of those generations in her village of the two World Wars that were fought close to their village, especially the First World War. There is part of me that feels privileged to share in those tales passed down by those that endured the hardship. When I visit the cemeteries of the fallen of all nations, and I make no difference to the nationalities of the men and women who died in the War to end all Wars, I have a feeling of sadness, peace and serenity. At times in makes no sense to me to experience peace and serenity. Perhaps it is the knowledge that those who were killed in the horror of war did not die in vain and that humanity has learned something, however small, from the futility of War. I support Peace One Day.*

Lost Villages

All around the Battle field of Verdun are the lost villages of WW1, including Douaumont the site of the Memorial, Ossuary and cemetery, villages that were completely destroyed by the shelling that went on for nearly a year. Most of these villages were never rebuilt and also stand as a memorial to the devastation that took place during the Battle for Verdun.

Period photographs and current visitors to the Verdun battlefield testify to the huge numbers of shell craters that overlap each other endlessly over several hundred square miles. Forests planted in the 1930s have grown up and thus hide most of the hideous fields of the “Zone Rouge” (the “Red Zone”) where so many men lost their lives or limbs. The battlefield is actually a vast graveyard since the mortal remains of over 100,000 missing combatants are still dispersed underground wherever they fell. To this day they are still being discovered by the French Forestry Service which turns them over to the Douaumont ossuary where they find a final resting place. (Battle of Verdun)

The village if Fleury-Devant-Douaumont has been laid out with signs showing where various streets, farm houses and the Boulangerie were before the battle. What can still be seen are the shell craters left after months of shelling.

Fleury-Devant-Douaumont and the shell craters that can still be seen.

For anyone who is visiting this part of northern France I would urge them to include a visit the Battle Field of Verdun and any of the hundreds of cemeteries that are now a part of the landscape of this part of France.

*With all due respect to those that gave their lives and continue to give their lives in conflicts around the world I support Peace One Day for more information click on the logo below.

 

Tags: Douaumont France lost villages Memorial Ossuary Cemetery Douaumont war dead WW1 WW1 Cemetery