🌍 Travel Blog S1E4: Douaumont Ossuary and Cemetery in Verdun, France

florijansworld (41)in #history • 7 years ago (edited)

Before I begin with the actual blog I just want to point out, that I will make multiple parts just from Verdun, because there were so many things to see and photograph, that one looong post would make no sense.

We arrived at our hotel in Verdun at around 1 AM and had some difficulties getting inside, but got inside eventually (read Episode 1). The next day started out great! The sun was shining and the breakfast was delicious. We checked out of the hotel and drove our way through the beautiful landscape of Verdun.

We stayed there for only one day, but still saw many great things: Fort de Vaux, Fort de Douaumont, the trenches of WWI, Mémorial de Verdun (museum), Trench of Bayonets and Douaumont Ossuary which I will write about today.

Douaumont Ossuary

In the Battle of Verdun, also known as "Die Hölle von Verdun" in German, "The Hell of Verdun" in English or "L'Enfer de Verdun" in French , around 230,000 men died out of a total of 700,000 casualties - dead, wounded or missing. The battle took place on a battlefield covering less than 20 square kilometers, fully understandable why its called the hell.

The memorial, located in Fleury-Devant-Douaumont area, is made out of two parts:

The ossuary
The cemetery

The ossuary

It contains the remains of unidentified German and French soldiers who died on the Verdun battlefield. At the lower edge, at the back side of the monument you can see the skeletal remains of at least 130,000 soldiers through small outside windows. The number of remains is getting bigger day by day with the help of archaeologists. I didn't take any photos of the remains to respect the fallen soldiers.

Inside of the ossuary building, the ceiling and walls are covered by plaques bearing names of French soldiers who fell during the Battle of Verdun, they were carving in new names as we were there as well. A few of the names are from fighting that took place in the area during World War II. The families of the soldiers that are recognized here by name contributed for those individual plaques.