Thirty-one years ago on my first trip overseas I visited Verdun in France. Specifically to see the battlefield of Verdun, where von Falkenhayn sought to bleed the French white. From 21 February 1916 to 18 December 1916, 9 months, 3 weeks and 6 days the Boche–the term the French used for the Germans–did exactly that. I’d written my senior’s honor thesis in history on Verdun and felt it was right to visit.
Fallen Lion of France at the Verdun Battlefield
I’m not going to go into too much detail. You can read about it in its fullness here. I only want to add a few things. First, this was the first time any general attempted a strategy of attrition. Some of what Grant did during the Wilderness and the siege of Fredricksburg is semi-attritional, but it wasn’t Grant’s spoken intent as it was the explicit aim of the Cheif of the German General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn’s. He knew he could not break through the ring of forts surrounding the Meuse Heights and the medieval city of Verdun. His aim was to take the heights and dig in and then take the strategic defensive, forcing France to regain her honor at any cost. 50 German divisions squared off against 75 French. von Falkenhayn succeeded in forcing France’s hand, certainly. In the end his strategy was a failure and he was dismissed by the Kaiser and replaced by Ludendorff and Hindenburg, who quickly established a military dictatorship over the Second Reich for the remainder of the war. Needless to say that over a million men–French and German–died fighting in the trenches along and up the heights and into the forts Douamont and Vaux trading them back several times.
Fort Douamont on the Meuse Heights
If the Miracle on the Marne was the most important battle of the 20th century–and it was we ought paraphrase Churchill and call it France’s finest hour. That being so makes the Battle of Verdun one the finest last stands in the annals of human endeavor. To a man the good, stolid French poilus stood and died in the mud, the filth, the lice, the decaying bodies and the artillery shells shattering overhead all day long, every day for almost a year.
When I visited in 1994 I walked from the city of Verdun all the way up the heights along the single supply route the French called the “voie sacrée” – the sacred way. It was ten miles there and ten miles back. A long day. I walked through trenches, both forts Douamont and Vaux and at the end of the day I walked, rather solemnly through the hallowed arches of the Ossuary, which holds the bones of over 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers. There was no entrance fee for anything and I was free to roam just about anywhere I wished, except when I saw signs that declared, “Non! Munitions non explosées!” Unexploded ordnance, still active almost a hundred years after being fired.
Ossuary of Verdun
So this morning I watched a video made by a young French woman of the battlefield and its environs. A lot has changed. There is a new, modern museum, and to walk the grounds and see the museum cost about $20. The young woman does an admirable job of guiding the viewer through the most important parts of what I now guess is a monument park of sorts called Mémorial de Verdun Champ de bataille. She’s tactful, sincere, respectful and cognizant of the sacrifice the men made for her. She honors them in her own way. I was pleased to see their sacrifice is still remembered and revered. (As some of you may recall, I had the good fortune to befriend an American WWI veteran in the 1990s before he passed away. So, WWI is important to me, I carry the memory of one of the last American soldiers to fight in the war and I cherish that memory.) She also pays her respects to the Germans who fell during the battle (part of the site was re-dedicated in the 50’s after the Franco-German rapproachment after WWII). She even visited the graves of our doughboys who fought in the area in 1918.
In all honesty, I can’t say I would have enjoyed walking through the museum. Of course seeing the uniforms and the kit of the poilus was fascinating, but there was a rich, chilling awe of gravitas to my imagination that day as I walked through the empty echoing halls of forts Douamont and Vaux. There were no wax figures as there are now. Only a haunting silence. If I listened closely enough I could almost hear the distant echoes of incoming artillery. The shots of mausers. The cracks of the countering French Berthiers. And the loud pops and booms of French and German grenades.
Sometimes less is more.
Regardless, it was an unforgetable experience.
BlizzardOfOzzz
Everything in our society is continually coarsening. This process shows no signs of slowing down, and in fact can only accelerate with as “AI” spreads out through society. Those of us with children in school can see that they are scarcely asked to engage their imagination or memory; instead they will “learn” via some sensory-overloaded video and then demonstrate their knowledge by choosing from three possibly answers, one of which is an obvious joke. This trend is greatly exacerbated by integrating women and your precious low-quality immigrants into our society, and the requirement to make them feel included. Can you imagine a woman going through the experience that Ian describes, walking through the ghosts of an old battlefield and re-living the history that those relics reveal? It could never happen; thus the whole site has to be converted into a silly television show so that women can feel like they understand.
Sean Paul Kelley
@BlizzardofOzz: I vehemently disagree with your characterization of the young woman who made the video. She did a very good job. And you could see the real pyschic pain the Ossuary caused her. There are no photographs allowed there, which is right and proper for such a hallowed place. I encourage you to watch the full video before you judge her. She was very sincere and affected.
Purple Library Guy
The fuck is this BlizzardOfOzzz’s problem? So, first, women can and do fight in wars. Second, as Eowyn said in the Lord of the Rings, “those who have not swords can still die upon them.” Third, you’re clearly a sexist racist bigot with zero idea of how the world really works or what the real sources of our problems are.
responseTwo
Wars are the most disgusting thing humans can do, next to making money from war. I don’t find fascination in old battles fought in the past and the last thing I want to do is go visit where they happen. Better to spend time in trying to stop them.
Sean Paul Kelley
@responseTwo: sadly, war is a part of the human condition. War stretches back as far as our last common ancestor with the chimpanzees–not bonobos–who war against each other. It’s horrible but it’s in our genes.
Joan
I grew up with a WW2 vet, dust bowl grandpa. He loved IHOP so we’d go there for family brunches, but inevitably when someone dropped a plate he’d about jump out of his chair. I ended up the bugler at scout camps and always thought of him when I played taps at the end of the day. He couldn’t hear taps without struggling.
He never spoke of the war, until he was interviewed for Band of Brothers, since he was D company in the 101st Airborne. Then he finally told his grandkids some of his stories, since they were going to be on TV anyway. He lived to be 93, despite running away from home and literally joining a circus at age nine and surviving the entirety of the war. He was at Pearl Harbor, then Normandy, all the way until Berlin.
Stories like his are priceless. Walking through like Sean did, and the reverence of the woman in the video is very appropriate. These things are important to understand, honor and remember.
bruce wilder
I happened to be at the National Museum of World War II yesterday in New Orleans. Its origin was a D-Day collection built around the Higgins boats designed and built nearby. It has grown into quite a large complex. I did have mixed feelings about the audio-visual narrative aspects, but I couldn’t really articulate those feelings as a critique. They had many interesting artifacts. One clear intention in the design was an insistence that the war was the experience and sacrifice of particular, ordinary individuals. I thought of my father, who very rarely talked about the war, a thirty-something tramping through North Africa and Italy. He caught malaria, which recurred when I was a child. He abhorred killing and never hunted with his friends who did hunt.
Bill H.
I don’t know what Valley Forge is like now, but when I visited it many years ago it was a simple place. A couple of the huts had been recreated and Washington’s headquarters, but there were no signs or decorations. The huts and buildings were pretty much empty. Like you, I’m glad I went when I did. It was quiet and felt like being in a holy place.
Mary Bennet
BlizzardOfOzzz,
Everything in our society is continually coarsening. That process was set in motion when Pres. Cleveland famously said “The business of America is business.? Not liberty and justice for all. Not peace and prosperity for all. Business. Buying and selling.
Now, a hundred years later, the wheels have come off the gravy train, Easy Street is closed, and all you wannabe grifters, glad handers and players of angles are blaming women for your own foolishness.
Soredemos
@Sean Paul Kelley
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be a dick. But you’re not the first military writer that I’ve seen who first professes how tragic and horrible war is, but then waxes poetic about ‘the flower of French youth nobly died in one of histories finest defensive actions’ or whatever.
There’s nothing finest here. Just a bunch of people murdering each other for something as abstract as a nation state. There are precious few wars in history that were even arguably worth fighting (stopping Germany from enacting Generalplan Ost was one of them).
Military writers actually love war. They love it for its high, abstract technical aspects (supply trains, and concentration of force, and ‘bold flanking maneuvers’, and armor angles of deflection, and CEP calculations, and so and so on). And then at a lower level they somehow think there can be honor in warfare, and that bravery at successfully murdering people is exciting and
virtuous.
And then after waxing about all this at some length, they get sad eyed and go ‘of course, it’s all just so unfortunate that it happens. A tragic part of the human condition’. Is it also part of the human condition that you have a clear love of it all?
The most insane example of his genre I ever encountered was a piece claiming Gettysburg was the greatest pure battle in history because almost no civilians died there and it was just a bunch of committed, brave military professionals fighting in a field for noble causes they truly believed in. Of course, I recall this was a John Dolan/War Nerd pieces so the levels of likely sarcasm are almost impenetrable.
I can’t help but think of the claim that you can’t have a true anti-war movie, because any depiction of combat becomes pornography for professional soldiers, or Paddy Chayefsky’s monologue about how he can’t stand generals who profess a horror of war.
Thermobarbaric
Joan:
Re your comment – “He was at Pearl Harbor, then Normandy, all the way until Berlin.”
Let us all be clear. If your grandfather entered Berlin it was no earlier than July 1945 when the first US units (2nd Armoured Division) entered the city. That was long after the city had been captured by the Red Army and the Nazi regime had surrendered.
Perhaps it was an innocent oversight on your part but I see way too much revisionism re WW2 with many commenters trying to belittle the Soviet role in WW2. Your current President is one such distorter of history.
shagggz
Soredemos and Thermobarbaric, thank you for your much-needed and -appreciated (by me, at least) pushback. I very much agree with Joan that “these things are important to understand, honor and remember” but I don’t think we can do that without placing them in relation to the current moment, where the degenerate West can fairly be described as the Fourth Reich.
Joan
Thermobarbaric: Thanks for the comment, and you’re right I’m not well-versed on the details. My grandpa was hospitalized in Berlin after getting shrapnel in his back while fighting in a forest. I don’t know if that was when the Red Army took Berlin, but he explained that he was there for the end of the European part of the war and then was put on-call for Japan after that.