France 149 - The ossuary of Douaumont / so many graves / so many unknown soldiers / at the heart of the battlefields of the First World War

---

If there is ever a place you should visit if you are interested in World War I then Douaumont is that place . We planned to visit the ossuary first and then head into Verdun, find the aire , stop for the night and visit the casemates tomorrow . We had been to Verdun before but never managed to visit everything so we had a plan . The best laid plans of course go wrong.

First thoughts about this holiday . It feels different . We are not racing to get from A to B. We can amble along and not use motorways . We are seeing more of rural France in a more leisurely way. The ever changing speed limits are a nightmare . One minute we are free to travel at 80km an hour and then it drops to 50km as we enter a village . If we escape this holiday without a speeding ticket it will be a miracle . The fields are flooded . The Meuse has broken its banks . The Meuse canal is higher than it should be . Last night we had tried to stop at Stenay on the canal . The official aire was waterlogged . The grass pitches were under water . The barrier was down and the ticket machine covered with a black plastic bag . Sad because it was such a lovely spot with electricity, services and even showers. The battery is still doing what they said it would do on the tin. It runs down at night by a little over 10% last night as we used our TV for the first time and by an hours driving this morning was back up to where it started . Wild camping has suddenly become easier .

After leaving Sedan we passed through village after village with flooded fields. France was obviously having wet weather as we were having it back home . Some of the villages were decorated for Christmas . Father Christmas climbing the walls and climbing ladders . Christmas trees some covered with baubles and tinsel . Others had large bows made of shiny paper .

Co-ordinates were putting in for Verdon and off we drove . Surely Verdon would be good to go. A route barree prevented us accessing the road we wanted . Have you tried to argue with Silly Sat Nag when she cannot see the Route Baree and just wants to go round and round and end up in the same place ? Frustratingly we ignored her and tried to work out how to get to the aire we had highlighted for the night . We almost gave up and then saw what was once the aire and is now a building plot . The aire was there no more and no alternative had been provided by the great and the good of Verdun. Plan C - had to be the Ossuary .

All along the route were memorials to the dead. A recumbent lion, a soldier , an Indian pavilion and a Jewish memorial . Everywhere poignant reminders of the carnage of WW! If you are a WWI history buff you could spend a week here stopping to look at each and every one of the memorials. Graveyards everywhere full of white crosses . The numbers of dead are just hard to credit or imagine . If you ever need a lesson in the waste of human life and the tragedy of war come here . Stop awhile and take it all in. You never will take it all in .

We parked up on an almost empty car park and paid our 6 euros to climb the tower of the ossuary . We were told to head first to the chapel . It is hard to describe the place .L'Ossuaire de Douaumont is a memorial containing the skeletal remains of soldiers who died on the battlefield during the Battle of Verdon . It was built on the initiative of the Bishop of Verdon and designed to be the Necropole national . It is hard to believe that in just 300 days of the Battle of Verdun approximately 230,000 died out of a total of 700,000 casualties . The battle was known to the Germans as Die Holle von Verdun - the hell of Verdun and to the French as L'attle became known in German as Die Hölle von Verdun (English: The Hell of Verdun), or in French as L'Enfer de Verdun . The battlefield covered less than 20 square kilometres . The ossuary is 137 metres long and makes up the central part of the monument . Inside the orange stained glass gave an eerie light to the space. 22 alcoves line the walls and house the tombs that represent the 46 sectors of the Battle of Verdun. In the tombs are the bones of the unidentified soldiers who are gathered from the battlefield after the Armistice. Around 4000 inscriptions covered the walls and the arches of the cloister. At each end was perpetual flame burning. In the middle a Christmas tree. We could not take photographs and even if we could it would have felt totally wrong and insensitive.

Just off the cloister was the chapel . Another peaceful place which we had to ourselves . The chapel designed in a Roman Byzantine style was one of the first parts of the ossuary to be built. It was a gift from the French, Belgian, Swiss , Canadian and American Catholics. It is the resting place of the priest who wished for the soldiers to be honoured in an ossuary and Canon Noel who also strived to give the dead a peaceful and perfect resting place .

Our next stop was the climb to the top of the tower. A tower you can see from miles away. It stands above the trees and can be seen from the road to Verdun. Pure white stone it rises up and up . Inside it felt brutal. No ornamentation just concrete rough rather than smooth. As we looked up we could see the steps winding their way from the bottom where we stood to the top. It was a long way up . I counted 200 steps and that was from part way up. At the first stop there was a small museum which housed items from the battle. Some personal - rings , tags , bottles and granades . Bits of wire all tangled . We climbed up and up until we reached the top . The Tower was also known as the Lantern of the Dead and is 46 metres high . Through the four windows at the top there are 360 degree views of the battleground. Orientation tables are built into each window showing the main features of the landscape . The tower a gift from the Americans was one of the first parts of the monument to be completed . We stood at each window in turn . Down below ew could see rows and rows of white headstones. The graves for soldiers who had been identified despite the carnage of battle . We just stood there . It is hard to imagine such a scene. You cannot count the graves . The just stand there cheek by jowl on each side of a French flag. There is a bell in the tower known as the Bourdon de la Victoire , cast in Orleans it was donated by the American Mrs Thorburn Van Buren . It is rung three times at 12 and 6 every day. There is a beacon. The red and white light can be seen at night lighting up the sky . It reminded me of Crich Stand in Derbyshire with its beacon and tower.

The whole visit was a moving experience . The whole holiday may well take on this theme as we move across France from the First World War battleground to the Battles of Normandy in the Second World War .

---