Verdun

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Growing up I read alot as a kid about the British in WWI and the battles at Ypres/Passchendaele, the Somme and so on. The French I knew were doing their thing somewhere, and were taking appalling casualties, but I didn't really know much of the detail.

Well, a lot of them were at Verdun. Now it is an enormous national monument - something like 9 or 12 villages were destroyed, and there was so much unexploded ordinance about they didn't bother to try to rebuild the area for miles around. They built an enormous, sombre ossuary at the top of the hill to hold the remains of 130,000 unidentified French "polius" (it means "unshaved") and mourned their losses. (All through France - every village and town - you will see sad little monuments to WWI losses. It hit the French nation very hard.)

The Germans knew they didn't have enough manpower for a breakthrough, so their plan was to attack Verdun on the theory that the French would be sure to defend it at all costs, which they did, and that in doing so the French army would be bled dry. The large fort at Douaumont built just outside Verdun after the Franco-Prussian war of the 1870s was stripped of its guns and men for use elsewhere on the front, and the Germans took it without a fight in Feb 1915. The French spent eight months fighting to get it back.

The day we went it was about 2 degrees with a slight wind. Pretty unpleasant to be outdoors.

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Comments

[Jeanette]

Memories
I am the wife of SP6 Charles Spaw that was stationed in Verdun in 1995 to late 1996. Would like information of Verdun and Etain France. Want a map of Verdun.

[pjg07]

Does anyone have a map of Verdun for Mrs Spaw?