Day 9: July 8th, 2016, Friday
Morning Ride
My morning started at 6:45 at the Paris office of tourism with me making it to the tour van just in time. I thought I had plenty of time getting to the site with my Uber, but I hadn’t accounted for my penchant for waiting till the last minute to depart some place and that the map app my driver was using would send him in a weird direction. There were six of us total, the French tour guide and five Americans.
We spent the first couple of hours on the A4 ridding east towards Verdun. I sat in the back of the van catching up on my podcasts, writing down notes, and browsing reddit while the others continued with their sleep. The tour guide gave us some information during this stretch telling us about the Parisian taxis using this road to bring troops to the front line during the battle of the Marne when Germany’s von Schlieffen plan was gaining ground to the city.
We made a pit stop at a gas station/cafe in Valmy where we had a bathroom break, breakfast, and a briefing on what to expect from today’s events. Our tour guide laid out a map describing the places we will visit on our trip. The tour would include Verdun and focus on the American battle sites thereafter. Not gonna lie, I was a little disappointed we would spend a majority of our time with the American battles. Not that I don’t want to recognize the honor and sacrifice of the American soldiers who sacrificed themselves, but there tends to be a skewing of history in these situations that tend to cater to the visiting country. One of my fellow tourists verbalized this to the guide saying “its a shame Americans don't get exposed to the French or British battles.” I agree with this sentiment, after teaching this to my student I realized that the American contribution, though a sacrifice, paled in comparison to France and Britain. I would later find out that he was a retired world history teacher, figures. In fact, everyone in the group barring one college student were current or retired teachers. Not surprising considering this would be more a niche tour for most. We got back into the van and continued on the road towards the town of Verdun.
As we entered the city, our guide gave us a brief history of the town prior to the war and its reconstruction thereafter. He pointed out a common theme that we would see on this trip and that was how many things face east. Notice in the above panoramic picture how that medieval turret is facing east as well as the monument of angel victory is looking towards the east. These are all symbolic of their distrust of their German neighbor. Verdun is located near the Lorraine region which had been hotly contested by Germany and France for centuries. Verdun had been planned around an planned invasion by their German neighbors to the east. Verdun held a strategic and symbolic purpose. If the Germans could advance and take the city, then they would secure the western front. It would also deliver a blow to the morale of the French as it had been viewed as the defending city to the rest of France. The war would leave 85% of the city destroyed from shelling.
We got back into the car and continued with our journey to the Verdun battlefields outside of the city proper.
Village detruit (a village destroyed)
We drove a narrow road that wound us up a hill that overlooked the city. The tour guide pointed out that this road known as the Voie Sacree (Sacred Road) was the main communication artery into the the Verdun battle that would send a constant convoy of troops and supplies to the front. As we road up the switchback road I could oversee the city and see how vulnerable this city could being in the low land. The hilly farmland turned to forest past some trenches which were slowly being reclaimed by nature. There was a clearing up ahead and as we were turning left there was a statue of a slain lain. This was the marker of how close the Germans got to Verdun. Petain vowed that “they shall not pass” and French stopped the Germans just 5km (3 miles) outside of the city.
We drove by a museum dedicated to the battle of Verdun and pulled off at a nearby parking lot with a few winding paths through the woods. As we walked and marveled at the surreal landscape of shelled terrain slowly returning to normal, our tour guide told us that we were walking through the former village of Fleury that was destroyed from the battle. Reuters did an great write up with interactive transitioning photos to show the before and after shots of Fleury and many other villages that were destroyed by the war. We also learned that due to the 60 million shells fired throughout the battle, the French government established “Red Zones” to prevent people from inhabiting them in the future. These areas were covered in fast growing trees to further instill the fact that nobody should be living here. In a way, it is eerie to think that any forest patches i see were more than likely the sites where many people lost their lives.
Douaumont Memorial
The Douaumont Memorial sits atop a hill and is the French memorial cemetery for those who had fallen at Verdun and faces east *cough* overlooking the battlefield. The graves outside of the building are of French soldiers. There is another memorial site nearby dedicated to the North African colonist who sacrificed their lives for France which has Islamic architectural design choices. The Douaumont memorial itself, however, houses the remains of 130,00 unidentified French and German soldiers from the nearby battlefield. Whenever the remains of a soldier are unearthed they are usually checked for DNA to see if there is a way of identifying them. More often than not they are interred here. Each window represents a section of the battlefield for loved ones to come view. Inside the memorial is considered a sacred site so there were no photos allowed, but it was a quiet, dark and somber. A common theme here and amongst the memorials we would see had heavy contributions from Americans.
Fort Douaumont
Fort Douaumont was the largest and highest fort of all the defenses protecting the city of Verdun. The original fort was constructed in 1885 as a means of protecting themselves from a newly unified Germany. The fort was considered the most advanced technology leading up to the start of the war. However, after equally advanced forts in Belgium were obliterated by German artillery, these forts were stripped of most of their supplies and troops. When the Germans took control of the fort during their first assault, they entered virtually unscathed. The shocking news of the forts quick fall made this the location for a lot of fighting and became a symbol for both sides to defend and conquer. This plan ended up costing the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides.
The group was left largerly to our own with a roughly 1 hour time limit to tour the inside of the fort. We entered through the gift shop and were given handy audio/video tour guide on ipod touches. This was a clever way to show photos, videos, and interactive maps while you toured an empty fort devoid of much signage. The interior of the fort itself was cold and wet. I can only image the conditions for hundreds of troops crammed in here months at a time amidst shelling and attempted raids. One German soldiers inside the fort describe the sensation of being inside the fort during a shelling was akin to hearing a fire, dead air, and a roaring train hurtling down on your location. The fort would become the resting place for many soldiers for just from shelling, but from other tragic events such as a fire which ignited a munitions depot and burry German troops under rubble and dirt.
An interesting aspect to the fort were the additions each side made when the occupied to structure. Germans added tunnels and a well for fresh water. They converted water storage rooms into medical centers and workshops. French troops would eventually expand the tunnels made by the Germans and make the well even deeper. Walking through the fort had an eerie feeling to it, especially with the formation of many stalactites and stalagmites forming in rooms seldomly visited by visitors.
After leaving the fort we stopped by a trench off the side of the road. The guide pointed it that this trench was probably added later in the war as a communications trench since it was narrow and reinforced with concrete. Originally, trenches were thought to be temporary, so there wasn’t much effort reinforcing them. Communication trenches tended to be more narrow and meant for the movement troops and provisions. Time and erosion has slowly been reclaiming the surrounding trenches, this one had been purposely kept in tact. 
Montfaucon American Memorial
The Montfaucon Memorial sits on what was an old village prior to the war. The monument was built to honor the victory at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that would eventually cause the Germans to retreat. The memorial itself is a tall tower with a statue sitting atop symbolizing liberty. The memorial has a tall winding spiral staircase that I wasn’t too excited about climbing, so I explored the remnants of the village behind the memorial.
Behind the memorial are the remains of the villages’ church. Germans took remnants of the church and turned it into a watch tower (left in the picture). There were a few other German built defenses like this constructed from the stone of shelled buildings in the area. The guide told us the the American government manages and operates this site.
Lunch with Artifacts
Our lunch was at Romagne 14-18 an informal museum curated by a Dutch WWI enthusiasts who has spent most of his life living in the region collecting artifacts and displaying them for the public. At first, I thought the place was to disorganized and busy with random rusted weapons. But the place started to grow on me and I started to understand these pieces of history were arranged in such a way to tell a story of the war. The museum recreates trenches, triage areas, and bunkers. Attached to the museum is a sandwich shop where we ate lunch. The food was fresh and in generous proportions. I enjoyed eating lunch and getting to know the other teachers in the tour group talking shop and exchanging travel stories. The museum also had a gift shop with artifacts for sale varying in price. I was super tempted to bring back a rusted bayonet for 30 euros, but my judgment got the best of me realizing that I would have to carry the hunk of metal with me throughout my trip. I may hit up Ebay when I get home.
Cimetiere Americain Meuse-Argonne
Our last major stop was the American cemetery at Meuse-Argonne. This vast cemetery is the final resting place for over 14 thousands American servicemen. The entire site is considered to be American territory and operated by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Our guide walked us through the chapel and explained the lists of names written on the walls flanking the entrance of the chapel. The lists contain the names of those missing in action with no known grave. The list is updated and a dot next to the name means that they had identified the soldier. After looking inside the chapel our guide allowed us to walk down the incline to the bottom of the hill and walk through the graves of the fallen soldiers. The grounds were immaculate and beautifully decorated with flowers. The walk down was eerie and I made sure to stop every once in awhile to look at the names on the headstones. On our drive home we briefly stopped by a German cemetery not too far out. Unlike the American cemetery, the land was not given to the Germans and the soldiers were given basic wood crosses as grave markers.
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