Our Sunday spent at Verdun was an especially moving for me. So much had been said about the history of France from the time we arrived in Nancy, but it felt like our time in Verdun was a more first hand experience.
In our calendars, we were expected to be ready for the busses for 9am but, as usual in France, we didn't end up leaving until 10am. Us North Americans were very frustrated because we are so used to punctuality in situations like that, but it still made for a great day.
We went into the Bois de Caures to the Poste de Commande de Driant. We had a tour guide explaining to us how Driant would command his soldiers from this station. It was quite interesting. Next we headed to the Fort Douaumont, which Wikipedia states to be the highest and largest of 19 defensive forts protecting Verdun in WWI. We explored and got to experience the barracks and places where canons were shot from. Our guide showed us the area where most of the firing was aimed towards, which is now covered in trees. From there we headed to the Abris à 4 Cheminées. Originally, this was created as a shelter for soldiers. Dark and dug 12m into a hill, soon after the war began it was a place of refuge for injured soldiers as well as a self proclaimed (almost) hospital wing. Here, volunteers from the Red Cross came to nurse wounded soldiers in almost pure darkness. The whole time we were in Bois des Caures, we were reminded of the mass amount of lives lost during the war and that the ground beneath of was made up of earth and dead bodies. Apparently people have been caught and banned from using metal detectors to find artifacts but still every year more and more pieces of soldier equipment or parts of skeletons are found and donated to museums.
From the Bois des Caures, we headed to the Nécropole Nationale and Ossuaire Douaumont. This was an exceptionally moving experience for me. I've never been one to care or be changed by learning about the history of war, but this definitely changed my perspective. As I mentioned, thousands of soldiers were killed during the war and their bodies were buried in a number of cemeteries. This Nécropole Nationale in Douaumont is notably the largest, from what we were told. In front of the Ossuaire, there is a cemetery with almost 20,000 graves, Catholics separate from Muslims. Crosses are placed above the graves of the Catholics, and more appropriate stones for the Muslims (I don't remember exactly what they were). What's interesting about the cemetery, to me at least, is the way it's set up. There is a temple on the premises in honour of Muslim soldiers, and all the stones above their graves are angled parallel to this temple whereas the crosses are parallel to the ossuary. I thought that was interesting. Anyway, the most haunting/moving part of the experience was the ossuary. Below the structure lies approx. 130,000 unidentified remains. From the outside, there are window allowing visitors to look into the catacombs. In one of the windows sat a skull, fully intact. Crazy. Inside the monument there were statues with quotes remembering those who were unidentified and laid in these catacombs, all the soldiers honoured. Along the hall laid partial-tombs, and along the walls the names of missing soldiers were etched in stone. I spent a lot of time reading the names and looking at their ages. Some of the stones had brothers' names side by side, some as young as 16. I still get chills when I think about that experience and the way it made me really think of the effects of war. I wanted to go into the catacombs to get the full experience, but unfortunately no one would come with me.
When we left the Ossuaire, we headed to a Ferme Auberge for dinner, it was basically a family owned farm restaurant where we were promised authentic French farm cuisine. We dined in the farm house, where different rooms were set up with sets of tables and a main room held the food. This night was an especially courageous night for most of us, as we decided to try a duck pie. Yes, that's right, duck meat.
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