Verdun

After a quick rental car pick-up from the Mediterranean coast, we reversed our river cruise up the Rhône valley, then continued north (eight hours on autoroutes or toll roads) into the Meuse valley and ended up in the little village of Ancemont. There we chose to stay at Chateau Lebessiere while we visited the Verdun battlefield. First, the chateau. Run by René and his wife Marie, the chateau was a real ducal retreat even unto the 1950s, when US Air Force Colonels used it as quarters for the then-American airbase at Étain-Rouves. But the Americans left (President DeGaulle impolitely asked them to go) and the Chateau fell into disrepair, until René decided to buy it (it was a wreck filled with squatters). It took him and his wife seven years to evict the squatters and restore the chateau to its former glory. And glorious it is!

If you ever decide to visit Verdun, or the American World War I battlefields near St. Mihiel, or Bastogne, or the Meuse river valley, stay here. It is spectacular, fairly priced, and incredibly welcoming. And the food (dinner & breakfast included)? Beyond belief!

But one does not travel to this area for the food (although it is good), the wine (ditto), or even the cheese; one travels for the histoire. Americans should be forgiven for not knowing too much about the Great War. Our experience was late and short, and it shows even in our language. We refer to World War I or the First World War, making this epochal event into some kind of prequel. An American version of the history of this period, if it is taught at all, goes something like this: corrupt, tottering European kingdoms stumbled into a disastrous war which stupidly cost millions of lives, but eventually the Americans joined in to save the day and democracy flourished. All of which has elements of truth. But the history is so much more than this.

Verdun is firstly a battlefield, and there is quite a story there. By 1916 (two years in to the war), the trench lines on the Western Front ran from the Swiss border to the English Channel. There was literally nowhere to maneuver, so the Germans decided to launch a massive attack on Verdun, a French fortress city which the Germans had managed to surround on three sides earlier in the war. The German high command hoped to use suprise and an unprecedented artillery bombardment to take high ground overlooking the city itself, which they believed would goad the French into suicidal counterattacks that would bleed the French Army dry.

The little village of Fleury was the deepest penetration by the Germans, and it changed hands sixteen times. Nothing is there today but archeological markers, like it was a settlement from a thousand years ago, not one hundred years ago.

The German offensive began with four million artillery shells: that is not a typo. The sound of the unrelenting multi-day bombardment was heard one-hundred miles away as a continuous thunder. Everything along the French front lines was destroyed: forests, towns, bridges, trenches. The Germans made steady initial progress, but the French rushed reinforcements and counterattacked before the Germans secured the high ground. The battle went back and forth for ten months: the longest single battle of the war. In the end, the German plan failed, with unfathomable results: over 700,000 dead or wounded on both sides along a thirty-mile front. In the end, little territory was gained or lost.

That is the military story of Verdun, but there is a world-historical story, too. Verdun represented the high-water mark of a civilization. The apogee of European civilization wasn’t found in the enlightened salons of Paris, nor in the hedonistic cabarets of post-war Berlin. It was found among the forests, farms, and villages of the Meuse valley near Verdun. People of that day and age were cosmopolitan: they travelled, imported items, argued over new ideas. They followed the current scientific breakthroughs and sought to perfect mankind and men. The governments may have been monarchies, but the armies were thoroughly democratic: doctors and doormen, poets and plumbers. The rich may have sought officer ranks, but they served on the frontlines nonetheless. The soldiers were not brutes: they knew early on what the war was like, and yet they continued to show up, and serve, and die.

They enlisted for something bigger than themselves, they fought for each other, and they died for little reason. But the armies which fought around Verdun in 1916 were still committed to causes, and they refused the “there’s nothing worth dying for” sentiment. Level any criticism you want at the inept political leaders. Do the same for the Generals. But what can one say about a culture that can produce such young men?

On 9/11, a few Americans aboard Flight 93 took matters into their own hands, and heedless of the consequences, they stopped the slaughter in one day and at something less than 3,000 dead. Now imagine that slaughter continued: new flights, new fights, more crashes, more deaths, every day for ten months. And with that outcome, you would equal what the French and Germans experienced at Verdun.

All subsequent 20th Century history grows from the Great War: America’s rise, Russia’s instability, the “German problem,” the end of the British Empire, France’s loss of elan, de-colonization, the rise of fascism and communism, demographic catastrophe, the roaring ’20s, therapeutic psychology, consumerism, atheism, and on and on. We very much live in a world determined by what happened during the “war to end all wars.” Europe was never the same after the Great War, and Verdun was the battlefield where its heroes became the ghosts who haunt it to this day.