In his Television series on the First World War and the Western Front, Professor Richard Holmes declared that the ossuary at Douaumont, in the very epicentre of the Verdun battlefield, is the saddest place he knows. He believes passionately that it is impossible to understand France in the 20th Century without visiting Verdun, and those bare uplands astride the Meuse where the French stopped the Germans in 1916, albeit at a price and under circumstances that left a livid mark on French history.
This Verdun tour traces the progress of the WW1 battle, from Lieutenant Colonel Emile Driant’s command post in the Bois des Caures to the mighty Fort Douaumont. By cruel irony the fort was almost empty, both when it was taken and when it was subsequently recaptured. On the right bank of the Meuse, travellers will have the opportunity to walk from Thiaumont, to the abri des Quatre Cheminées, named for its four ventilation shafts, and on to the ossuary at Douaumont. On the left bank, we will visit Hill 304 and the aptly-named Mort Homme feature, now thickly forested but described, at the time, as looking like an erupting volcano because of the sheer weight of shellfire hitting it.
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| France’s Unknown Soldier was chosen from unidentified bodies which (for such is the place’s symbolism) had been taken to the citadel Verdun. The selected coffin lies beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris: the cemetery in the Faubourg Pavé, the last place we shall visit at Verdun, contains those others, who came so close to immortality. On our way back home we will drive down the Voie Sacré, now just a minor road but, during the Verdun battle, the logistic lifeline which enabled the French to sustain this terrible first world war battle. |
