Day 5: Verdun!!! Was Done!!
The Boys awoke to a traditional French breakfast of a croissant, baguette, and coffee, they turned down the obligatory cigarettes (everyone in France smokes.) Sorta fed, they Boys beelined in to one of the most brutal battles of any war .... Verdun!
What was Verdun?!
Verdun (from the Latin Verodunum, meaning “Strong Fort”) has been a strategic crossroad of France if not Europe Verdun was founded as a Gallic fortress before Roman times. Attila the Hun failed to seize the town in the fifth century and when the empire of Charlemagne was divided it was done in Town and called the Treaty of Verdun in 843, where the town became part of the Holy Roman Empire.
It was then conquered by German invaders in the 10th century, and later linked with Metz and Toul to form the Trois-Évêchés (Three Bishoprics) territory. In 1552 the French king Henry II took over the three bishoprics, and France’s ownership was confirmed in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia. In 1792 Verdun was besieged by the Prussians and yielded only a few weeks before the French victory at Valmy. The Prussians captured it again in 1870 and held it until 1873. With the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire in 1871, the German frontier was fixed barely 30 miles away.
So France knew the importance of Verdun and heavily fortified the surrounding hills counterbalance the German stronghold of Metz during the years between the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the Great War. In 1916 the Germans knew that Verdun was a sore spot for the French, conquering it might break French morale.
Verdun early in World War I was this “great advanced citadel of France” per the great Winston Churchill and, “the anvil upon which French manhood was to be hammered to death.” The ring of fortresses around Verdun, forming one of the main barriers on the road to Paris from the east, was the primary objective of the great German offensive of 1916.
At the heart of the city was a citadel built by Vauban in the 17th century. A double ring of 28 forts and smaller works (ouvrages) had been built around Verdun on commanding ground, at least 490 ft above the river valley, 1.6–5.0 miles from the citadel. A program had been devised by Séré de Rivières in the 1870s to build two lines of fortresses from Belfort to Épinal and from Verdun to Toul as defensive screens and to enclose towns intended to be the bases for counter-attacks. Many of the Verdun forts had been modernized and made more resistant to artillery, with a reconstruction program begun at Douaumont in the 1880s. A sand cushion and thick, steel-reinforced concrete tops up to 8.2 feet thick, buried under of earth, were added. The forts and ouvrages were sited to overlook each other for mutual support and the outer ring had a circumference of 28 miles. The outer forts had 79 guns in shell-proof turrets and more than 200 light guns and machine-guns to protect the ditches around the forts. Six forts had 155 mm guns in retractable turrets and fourteen had retractable twin 75 mm turrets. Fort Douaumont was really ground zero for the Battle of Verdun, but first the Boys were gonna check out a town, that was, but is no more....
During the war, the town was completely destroyed and the land was made uninhabitable to such an extent that a decision was made not to rebuild it. The area around the municipality was contaminated by corpses, explosives and poisonous gas, so no farmers could take up their work. The site of the commune is maintained as a testimony to war and is officially designated as a "village that died for France." It is managed by a municipal council of three members appointed by the prefect of the Meuse department. Before the war Fleury was a village of 422 that produced agriculture and woodworking.
Fleury-devant-Douaumont, a town that was and is no more!
The first stop on the Boys Tour was Fleury-devant-Douaumont, which was a village of 422 that produced agriculture and woodworking. Walking through the now mostly wooded path the Boys immediately noticed how the hills are actually divots from the incredible amount bombing that occurred.
One of the things most do not realize about the Battle of Verdun is that it is considered the greatest and lengthiest in world history, involving so many men, situated on such a tiny piece of land. The battle, which lasted from 21 February 1916 until 19 December 1916 caused over an estimated 700,000 casualties (dead, wounded and missing) and here is the stunner,,,,,,,, The battlefield was not even 8 square miles, so it was no surprise that the landscape (and sadly the participants) were pounded to jelly!
During the war, the town was completely destroyed and the land was made uninhabitable to such an extent that a decision was made not to rebuild it.
Ron, Bone and Mike, on the Town (Litterally!!)
A German Shell Bomb Crater in what had been a Home!
The reason is that the area around the Town contaminated by corpses, explosives and poisonous gas, so the Government could not allow the farmers and villagers to return. The site of the Town has been maintained as a testimony to war and is officially designated as a "village that died for France." One of the French clients of Bone grew up near Verdun and would find live bullets and ordinance in the woods, and explosions still rock the surrounding areas as old, rusted bombs finally blow, it is truly still a no-mans land.
Mulling the Mauling at the Verdun Memorial!
Next for some context the Boys needed a musuem which fortunately they had one strategically placed right next to Fleury-devant-Douaumont was the The Verdun Memorial was built during the 1960s, financed by Maurice Genevoix and has been open to the public since September 17, 1967. It remembers both French and German combatants as well as the civilian populations lost during the Battle of Verdun. Furthermore, it is a military museum which displays French and German armaments (including rifles, machine guns and field artillery), military vehicles, uniforms and equipment of both French and German troops during the battle. Mike, Bone, and Ron checked out the stunning audio-visual effects they had to try to give one the feeling of what was like on the battlefield and read about the background of the Battle!
What in the Heck were the Germans Thinking!? Verdun was a result of the German High Command under Von Falkenhayn to break the Western Front stalemate loose by "bleeding the French White !" at Verdun. After the German invasion of France had been halted at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914, the war of movement ended at the First Battle of Ypres. The Germans built field fortifications to hold the ground captured in 1914 and the French began siege warfare to break through the German defenses and recover the lost territory. In late 1914 and in 1915, offensives on the Western Front had failed to gain much ground and been extremely costly in casualties. According to his memoirs written after the war, the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, believed that although victory might no longer be achieved by a decisive battle, the French army could still be defeated if it suffered a sufficient number of casualties. Falkenhayn offered five corps from the strategic reserve for an offensive at Verdun at the beginning of February 1916 but only for an attack on the east bank of the Meuse. Falkenhayn considered it unlikely the French would be complacent about Verdun; he thought that they might send all their reserves there and begin a counter-offensive elsewhere or fight to hold Verdun while the British launched a relief offensive. After the war, the Kaiser and Colonel Tappen, the Operations Officer at Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, General Headquarters), wrote that Falkenhayn believed the last possibility was most likely.
By seizing or threatening to capture Verdun, the Germans anticipated that the French would send all their reserves, which would then have to attack secure German defensive positions supported by a powerful artillery reserve. In the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive (1 May – 19 September 1915), the German and Austro-Hungarian Armies attacked Russian defenses frontally, after pulverizing them with large amounts of heavy artillery. During the Second Battle of Champagne (Herbstschlacht autumn battle) of 25 September – 6 November 1915, the French suffered "extraordinary casualties" from the German heavy artillery, which Falkenhayn considered offered a way out of the dilemma of material inferiority and the growing strength of the Allies. In the north, a British relief offensive would wear down British reserves, to no decisive effect but create the conditions for a German counter-offensive near Arras.
Hints about Falkenhayn's thinking were picked up by Dutch military intelligence and passed on to the British in December. The German strategy was to create a favorable operational situation without a mass attack, which had been costly and ineffective when it had been tried by the Franco-British, by relying on the power of heavy artillery to inflict mass losses. A limited offensive at Verdun would lead to the destruction of the French strategic reserve in fruitless counter-attacks and the defeat of British reserves in a futile relief offensive, leading to the French accepting a separate peace. If the French refused to negotiate, the second phase of the strategy would begin in which the German armies would attack terminally weakened Franco-British armies, mop up the remains of the French armies and expel the British from Europe. To fulfill this strategy, Falkenhayn needed to hold back enough of the strategic reserve for the Anglo-French relief offensives and then conduct a counter-offensive, which limited the number of divisions which could be sent to the 5th Army at Verdun, for Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgment).
The Fortified Region of Verdun (RFV) lay in a salient formed during the German invasion of 1914. The Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, General Joseph Joffre, had concluded from the swift capture of the Belgian fortresses at the Battle of Liège and at the Siege of Namur in 1914 that fixed defenses had been made obsolete by German siege guns. In a directive of the General Staff of 5 August 1915, the RFV was to be stripped of 54 artillery batteries and 128,000 rounds of ammunition. Plans to demolish forts Douaumont and Vaux to deny them to the Germans were made and 11,000 lb of explosives had been laid by the time of the German offensive on 21 February. The 18 large forts and other batteries around Verdun were left with fewer than 300 guns and a small reserve of ammunition while their garrisons had been reduced to small maintenance crews, in other words ripe for attack and the bullseye was Fort Douaumont!
After an hour the Boys had the context, now needed content so it was on to the epicenter of the Battle, the very desolate Fort Douaumont!
Ground Zero!! Fort Douaumont with Bone, Mike, and Ron!!!
An Eerie, Dreary Entrance to Fort Douaumont with Bone, Mike, and Ron!!!
The Boys grew up thinking Forts like Fort Mackinaw, Fort Ticonderoga, and Fort Niagara, not the dour, foreboding, massively scarred mess that was Douaumont! However in 1916 Fort Douaumont was ready for it!
In 1903, Fort Douaumont was equipped with a new concrete bunker (Casemate de Bourges), containing two 75 mm field guns to cover the south-western approach and the defensive works along the ridge to Ouvrage de Froidterre. More guns were added from 1903–1913, in four retractable steel turrets. The guns could rotate for all-round defense and two smaller versions, at the north-eastern and north-western corners of the fort, housed twin Hotchkiss machine-guns. On the east side of the fort, an armored turret with a 155 mm short-barreled gun faced north and north-east and another housed twin 75 mm guns at the north end, to cover the intervals between forts. The fort at Douaumont formed part of a complex of the village, fort, six ouvrages, five shelters, six concrete batteries, an underground infantry shelter, two ammunition depots and several concrete infantry trenches. The Verdun forts had a network of concrete infantry shelters, armored observation posts, batteries, concrete trenches, command posts and underground shelters between the forts. The artillery comprised 1,000 guns, with 250 in reserve and the forts and ouvrages were linked by telephone and telegraph, a narrow-gauge railway system and a road network; on mobilization, the RFV had a garrison of 66,000 men and rations for six months, in other words it was ready!
Well sort of!!
Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgment) was due to begin on 12 February but fog, heavy rain and high winds delayed the offensive until 7:15 a.m. on 21 February, when a 10-hour artillery bombardment by 808 guns began. The German artillery fired c. 1,000,000 shells along a front about 19 miles long by 3.1 miles wide. The main concentration of fire was on the right (east) bank of the Meuse river. Twenty-six super-heavy, long-range guns, up to 420 mm, fired on the forts and the city of Verdun; a rumble could be heard 100 miles away! The bombardment was paused at midday, as a ruse to prompt French survivors to reveal themselves and German artillery-observation aircraft were able to fly over the battlefield unmolested by French aircraft. The 3rd, 7th and 18th corps attacked at 4:00 p.m.; the Germans used flamethrowers for the first time and storm troops followed closely with rifles slung, to use hand grenades to kill the remaining defenders. This tactic had been developed by Captain Willy Rohr and Sturm-Battalion Nr. 5 (Rohr), which battalion conducted the attack. French survivors engaged the attackers, yet the Germans suffered only 600 casualties.
Mike, Ron ,and Bone read about how hard early in the battle the Germans fought their way to the border of Fort Douaumont by February 22.
D'Oh! The Homer Simpson Strategy that led to the fall Fort Douaumont to the Germans!
By 22 February, German troops had advanced 3.1 miles and captured Bois des Caures, at the edge of the village of Flabas. Two French battalions led by Colonel Émile Driant had held the bois (wood) for two days but were forced back to Samogneux, Beaumont and Ornes. Driant was killed, fighting with the 56th and 59th Battalions de chasseurs à pied and only 118 of the Chasseurs managed to escape. Poor communications meant that only then did the French High Command realize the seriousness of the attack. The Germans managed to take the village of Haumont but French forces repulsed a German attack on the village of Bois de l'Herbebois. On 23 February, a French counter-attack at Bois des Caures was repulsed. Fighting for Bois de l'Herbebois continued until the Germans outflanked the French defenders from Bois de Wavrille. The German attackers had many casualties during their attack on Bois de Fosses and the French held on to Samogneux. German attacks continued on 24 February and the French XXX Corps was forced out of the second line of defense; XX Corps (General Maurice Balfourier) arrived at the last minute and was rushed forward. That evening Castelnau advised Joffre that the Second Army, under General Pétain, should be sent to the RFV. The Germans had captured Beaumont, Bois des Fosses and Bois des Caurières and were moving up ravin Hassoule, which led to Fort Douaumont. At 3:00 p.m. on 25 February, infantry of Brandenburg Regiment 24 advanced with the II and III battalions side-by-side, each formed into two waves composed of two companies each. A delay in the arrival of orders to the regiments on the flanks, led to the III Battalion advancing without support on that flank.
The Germans rushed French positions in the woods and on Côte 347, with the support of machine-gun fire from the edge of Bois Hermitage. The German infantry took many prisoners as the French on Côte 347 were outflanked and withdrew to Douaumont village. The German infantry had reached their objectives in fewer than twenty minutes and pursued the French, until fired on by a machine-gun in Douaumont church. Some German troops took cover in woods and a ravine which led to the fort, when German artillery began to bombard the area, the gunners having refused to believe claims sent by field telephone that the German infantry were within a few hundred yards of the fort. Several German parties were forced to advance to find cover from the German shelling and two parties independently made for the fort. They did not know that the French garrison was made up of only a small maintenance crew led by a warrant officer, since most of the Verdun forts had been partly disarmed, after the demolition of Belgian forts in 1914, by the German super-heavy Krupp 420 mm mortars. The German party of 100 soldiers tried to signal to the artillery with flares but twilight and falling snow obscured them from view. Some of the party began to cut through the wire around the fort, while French machine-gun fire from Douaumont village ceased.
The French had seen the German flares and took the Germans on the fort to be Zouaves retreating from Côte 378. The Germans were able to reach the north-east end of the fort before the French resumed firing. The German party found a way through the railings on top of the ditch and climbed down without being fired on, since the machine-gun bunkers (coffres de contrescarpe) at each corner of the ditch had been left unmanned. The German parties continued and found a way inside the fort through one of the unoccupied ditch bunkers and then reached the central Rue de Rempart.
After quietly moving inside, the Germans heard voices and persuaded a French prisoner, captured in an observation post, to lead them to the lower floor, where they found Warrant Officer Chenot and about 25 French troops, most of the skeleton garrison of the fort, and took them prisoner. On 26 February, the Germans had advanced 1.9 miles on a 6.2 miles front; French losses were 24,000 men and German losses were c. 25,000 men.
A French counter-attack on Fort Douaumont failed and Pétain ordered that no more attempts were to be made; existing lines were to be consolidated and other forts were to be occupied, rearmed and supplied to withstand a siege if surrounded.
By the 29th of February, the German advance was contained at Douaumont by a heavy snowfall and the defense of French 33rd Infantry Regiment. Delays gave the French time to bring up 90,000 men and 21,000 tons of ammunition from the railhead at Bar-le-Duc to Verdun. The swift German advance had gone beyond the range of artillery covering fire and the muddy conditions made it very difficult to move the artillery forward as planned.
Officer Quarters in the Fort!
As Ron, Bone, and Mike started the tour of the Fort while learning how the Germans fought hard to get to the Fort, then walked in, and noticed just how horrible it must have been during the bombing sitting in this fort. Walking the halls, it shore ain't no Hilton!
"Dis eze h'ours!! (Broken English French) The French finally recapture Fort Douaumont.
Walking in the Mike, Bone, and Ron learned that the Visitor Entrance was used for housing troops until the explosion of May 8th 1916 during the battle, which ignited as stock of hand grenades in the room below and ripped out the floor, which was not repaired until the 1970’s. The size and shape of the barracks are typical for a French fort but is unusual in having two doorways into the main corridor.
An Unappetizing Kitchen!
Walking through, you get the idea was it was like, dark, dreary, humid, even before you add the constant shaking and noise from the exploding shells everywhere from both sides, From Barrack Room 38, the Boys walked into the main floor corridor. When the French arrived back in the Fort in October 24th 1916 a large section of the roof had been brought down by their shelling, the named it the Galerie Mangin, after the Commander of the operation that retook Fort Douaumont from the Germans.
The "Guts" of the 155mm Gun Turrets!
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The 155mm Gun Turret shown below was heavily damaged by the shelling from both sides and the repairs after the War are pretty apparent. Running the Turret took a team of an officer and 18 to 20 men to load, aim, and fire, quite the operation! From there, the Boys headed down a dark corridor to a . . . . Cemetery?!!.
A German Cemetery , , , In the Fort!?!
The Boys emerged into Barrack Room 31 where there are beds of a type that were used during the War as well as the stoves used to heat the Fort. Right next to it is a two-story extension built in 1887 with a road for wagons to carry ordinance. At the north end is a memorial to the 78 German soldiers killed in the Fort explosion of May 1916. They are buried outside the Barracks in two artillery shelters and the site is considered as an official German war grave. On the wall Mike, Bone, and Ron read the memorial plaque in German and French that records their burial. The 45 minutes they spent in Douaumont definitely gave the Boys a lesson in why War is hell!
Not in the Fort, but on the Fort!
The exterior of the 155mm Gun Turret!
The 100 year old remnants of the bomb craters around Fort Douaumont!
It is damned amazing that after 100 years the landscape still is completely pocked as far as you can see, a testament of how brutal those months of the Battle of Verdun.
The Fort Douaumont View to Verdun
Through the spring and summer the battle between the French and Germans raged. The French Army had to not only defend, but regain the Forts, for reasons of strategy and prestige. Two factors slowly, painfully, started to turn the tide. First, the start of the Somme by the British in July forced the Germans to pull men and materiel away from Verdun, and second the French brought in more, bigger guns that were finally better than the big German Krups.
As the Boys continued to wander around the exterior, they learned that the attack that finally liberated Fort Douaumont started in late October when French attached on October 25th at 11:40 a.m. The infantry advanced about 55 yards behind a creeping field-artillery barrage, moving at a rate of 55 yards in two minutes, beyond which a heavy artillery barrage moved in 550–1,090 yard lifts, as the field artillery barrage came within 160 yards, to force the German infantry and machine-gunners to stay under cover. The Germans had partly evacuated Douaumont, which was recaptured on 24 October by French marines and colonial infantry; more than 6,000 prisoners and fifteen guns were captured by 25 October but an attempt on Fort Vaux failed. The Haudromont quarries, Ouvrage de Thiaumont and Thiaumont Farm, Douaumont village, the northern end of Caillette Wood, Vaux pond, the eastern fringe of Bois Fumin and the Damloup battery were captured. The heaviest French artillery bombarded Fort Vaux for the next week and on 2 November, the Germans evacuated the fort, after a huge explosion caused by a 220 mm shell. French eavesdroppers overheard a German wireless message announcing the departure and a French infantry company entered the fort without firing a shot; on 5 November, the French reached the front line of 24 February and offensive operations for the most part ceased.
With the Tour complete, Mike, Bone, and Ron headed for the hills , , , , , , , and the Trenches!
The French Trench Works of the Battle
Boys will be Boys now matter how old or in what weather. As the Boys left the Fort they decided to check out (really play in the mud) the trenches on the way back to Verdun.Mike, Bone, and Ron imagined what must had been like to huddle in these trenches, while 70mm shells rocked the ground on both sides of the trench with a continual rain of machine gun lead all around them, truly a corridor of death.
Gettin' Trench Foot in the Rain!
After walking a couple hundred yards through the trenches the rain started to come down pretty hard so the Boys started to drive back from Fort Douaumont towards Verdun to see a sea of white crosses.
A Sobering Sight: the Verdun Ossuary
That sobering sea of white cross the Boys came upon is the Verdun Ossuary, which is a memorial containing the remains of both French and German soldiers who died on the battlefield. Through small outside windows, the skeletal remains of at least 130,000 unidentified combatants of both nations can be seen filling up alcoves at the lower edge of the building. On the inside of the ossuary building, the ceiling and walls are partly covered by plaques bearing names of French soldiers who died during the Battle of Verdun.
A few of the names are from fighting that took place in the area during World War II, as well as for veterans of the Indochina and Algerian Wars. The families of the soldiers that are recognized here by name contributed for those individual plaques. In front of the monument, and sloping downhill, lies the largest single French military cemetery of the First World War with 16,142 graves. It was inaugurated in 1923 by Verdun veteran André Maginot, who would later design the Maginot Line. The Ossuary was officially inaugurated on 7 August 1932 by French President Albert Lebrun.
A Bone, Ron, and Mike honoring the Fallen of Verdun
As with Tyne-Cot or Theivpal, the French white crosses as far as the eyes can see creates both a sense of horror and astonishment of how horrible the Battle was and the broader impact it left with widows, lost brothers and friends.
After a half hour of reflection and pictures the Boys moved on to the second fort of the day, Fort Vaux!
The Amazing Story of the Brave French of the Fallen Fort Vaux!!
As the afternoon began to wane the Boys visited Fort Vaux, in Vaux-Devant-Damloup, Meuse, France was built from 1881–1884 for 1,500,000 Francs and housed a garrison of 150 men. Vaux was the second Fort to fall in the Battle of Verdun after Fort Douaumont which was captured by a small German raiding party in February 1916, in the confusion of the French retreat from the Woëvre plain. Vaux had been modernised before 1914 with reinforced concrete top protection like Fort Douaumont and was not destroyed by a German heavy artillery-fire which had included shelling by 16-inch howitzers. The superstructure of the fort was badly damaged but the garrison, the deep interior corridors and stations remained intact when the fort was attacked on June 2 by German assault troops, who were trying to knock off their second fort after the more important Fort Douaumont.
As Mike, Bone, and Ron ducked in the Fort to avoid the rain they read how the defence of Fort Vaux was marked by the heroism and endurance of the garrison, including Major Sylvain-Eugene Raynal. Under his command, the besieged French garrison repulsed German assaults, including fighting underground from barricades inside the corridors, during the first big engagement inside a fort during World War I. The last men of the French garrison gave up after running out of water (some of which was poisoned), ammunition, medical supplies and food. Raynal sent several messages via homing pigeons, requesting relief for his soldiers. During his last communications, Major Raynal wrote "This is my last pigeon".
Painting the the Fall of Fort Vaux
(notice the bomb craters everywhere!)
Even the Germans were impressed with Major Raynal!!
After the surrender of the garrison on June 7, the German army group commander Crown Prince Wilhelm, presented Major Raynal with a French officer's sword as a sign of respect. Raynal and his soldiers remained in captivity in Germany until the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
As the Boys headed to the exit they learned that the fort was recaptured by French infantry on November 2, 1916 after an artillery bombardment involving two long-range 400-millimetre railway guns. Reaching outside just like Douaumont, the landscape was a panarama of bomb craters and strewn debris. However,..... the clock was ticking !!!
A Collapsed Roof area of Fort Vaux
By now it was pushing 4:15 and the last thing they wanted to check out was the Citadel which closed at 5:00 !! So racing like Le Mons drivers the belated boys pushed their fat butts and car to the limit and ran up just in time to get the last tickets of the evening. So what is this all about?
The Citidel of Verdun, or in English an F@#king Waste of Time !!
Through the whole Verdun Campaign the Germans never actually entered Verdun and the French coordinated all their efforts from the central fort smack dab in the middle of the city on a hill. In fact it was the hill that the Romans founded the city; it was the hill that Charlemagne’s descendants agreed to partition Europe into now what is France and Germany in the Treaty of Verdun; where at the end of the 19th century the French dug into to create the Citadel of Verdun; it is where Mike, Bone, and Ron had an experience for which they will never recover in terms of money and emotional distress from the complete F’ing waste of a time they call a tour!!!!!!
The underground citadel, or lower citadel, was dug in the late nineteenth century and has 7 km of galleries at the end of the First World War. It serves as a refuge, a command post and a refueling base. On November 10, 1920, it hosted the appointment ceremony of the Unknown Soldier who rests under the Arc de Triomphe of Etoile in Paris. As stated by one of the Commandants Gaston Gras” it is covered with heavy masses of earth, the citadel of Verdun is more than a barracks, it is a redoubt, it is the point of contact between the Front and the Back. That's where all the turns come in, that's where they all start - it's the marshalling yard between War and Peace. "
The Citadel could hold 2,000 men and served as a refuge, a command post and a supply base. It consisted of six powder magazines, seven ammunition stores, a bakery, a mill, a telephone and telegraph exchange, water-lifting machines for the city and forts, kitchens and large stores. During the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the underground citadel accommodates up to 10,000 soldiers and bread ovens produce 28,000 rations of bread a day.
Now dear reader, did the tour talk anything about the history of the hill, the Verdun Battle logistics? No!! We are French !!! We talk about drama ! and feelings ! and god-stupid cart rides with animatronics that took the Boys through a bizarre Disney-like (btw, bad Disney!) showing snippets about the war of generals arguing over BS (not even tactics, only drop Ron, Mike, and Bone in front of a bunch of fake Palm Trees in a deadend tunnel for 15 minutes of excruciating dead time. Or for the 20 euros a piece, the Boys coulda had 2 beers and a better time learning about the Citadel by surfing Wikipedia !!!! Disgusted, the Boys drove downtown to check it out and grab a much needed beer!
Musing the Meuse River!
Heading into Town the Boys came up to an iconic site, the Châtel Gate over the Meuse River!
In 1670, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban visited Verdun and drew up an ambitious scheme to fortify the whole city. Although much of his plan was built in the following decades, some of the elements were not completed until after the Napoleonic Wars. The Châtel Gate shown on the other side of the Meuse River is the only remaining part of those medieval city walls. It leads onto La Roche Square, which is a lovely little square with lots of outdoor pubs and kitchy restaurants.
The Medival Châtel Gates of Verdun
The Châtel Gate shown on the other side of the Meuse River is the only remaining part of those medieval city walls. It leads onto La Roche Square, which is a lovely little square with lots of outdoor pubs and kitchy restaurants. Wandering around the Boys enjoyed a little apertifs of cheese and beers and settled down from the Citadel and enjoyed an beautiful early evening!!
A Hotel right out of Film Noir at Night, in the City of Light!!!
Mike, Bone, and Ron chomped on cheese and slurped suds while triangluating next steps. Since they had two places to go it is best to drive towards Paris and where the Germans damned near won the War, the first Battle the Marne! On the way to the car the Boys stopped for a picture at the Victory Monument. The monument was inaugurated on the 23rd of June 1929. At the top of the steps is a 90-foot-tall column on which stands the figure of a Charlemagne, and a pair of Russian field guns flank the column. There are annual commemorations here in June each year. With that the the Boys were Done, with Verdun!!
A Hotel right out of Film Noir at Night, in the City of Light!!!
The Boys headed west again driving through the bucolic hills that had made up the Western Front, Bone used that fabulous Google engine to find a hotel as close to the Marne battlefield as possible. Now it is important to discuss an interesting factoid about Paris. In the US most suburban areas are well kept and upscale and the downtown snotholes. Paris is the exact opposite where the downtown is fabulous, and the suburbs snotholes. "Shore nuff," the Marne Battlefield was fought in what now is suburban area of Paris, or a snothole! They checked into a kitchy or shoddy hotel (too dark to tell) around 8:30, dumped their stuff and drove around to find a grungy Brasserie where they had ho-hium burgers but mass quanties of local beers to celebrate the day. They headed back around 11:30 so they would be up and ready to end the campaign and the War the next day!