Day 4- Death and Misery. And Chocolate

I must start at the end. For dinner we went to a restaurant entitled "Restaurant" to my untrained eye. I ordered (Claudio ordered for me) a steak and fries, which was 10 euro, not bad, really. The same money would get a Burger King meal back in Switzerland. Anyway, the food was good, but they brought the menus back.. for dessert.

In America the entree usually leaves a person feeling bloated and sick with fullness, so dessert is rarely an option. Here though.. that was not the case. I immediately chose the chocolate. Claudio pointed out other things, I said "no, chocolate." Evidently I was so persuasive that everyone else ordered one too. Now, my camera battery died, so there's no visual proof, but let me regale you.

There was a chocolate brownie, good, walnutty. There was a chocolate mousse. A warm fudgey concoctiono, some sort of cold thin white chocolate soup thingy, and a white chocolate ice cream. All good on their own. Adequate.

But when one dipped the brownie in the hot fudge. Mein Gott. It was wonderful. Far too rich, of course. After eating it all I've probably moved up a couple tax brackets, but it was good.

Ahem, back to the beginning. Yet another early day, we left at seven thirty local time, and drove for several hours, arriving in the Verdun area around 1PM. For those of you unfamiliar with Verdun, it was a French fortress city during the first World War. It was surrounded by a double string of forts.

During said Great War, the Germans were tired of the stalemate, and so struck at Verdun, hoping to bleed the French army dry. What resulted was a ten month meat grinder, with 750,000 dead on the field, for no particular gain. Verdun took on an almost religious feel after the war. It was a bloody battlefield in a war full of them, but it became the poster child for how bad the war was. Veterans flocked there, and many memorials were built.

Our first stop was one of the many graveyards filled with the war dead of Verdun. The perfectly straight rows of crosses seemed to demand silence and respect, and indeed few words were spoken as we walked through the cemetery.
These many dead are but the tip of the iceburg.

Our second stop was to one of the line of forts guarding Verdun, Veux, I believe. It was an unlovely structure, nearly destroyed in the war, as it was taken and retaken.

It was manned by nearly 600 French soldiers, who kept fighting off German attacks until they were low on food, water, and ammo. The Germans were so impressed that they gave the commander a ceremonial sword.

It certainly has the feel of a fortress, as you can see below.
The tunnels run deep into the rock, so even on a hot day like today the fortress is cool, almost cold. It is hard to walk the halls without a feeling of claustrophobia. I hate to think how much worse it would have been with German gas attacks and artillery barrages. They were not without their own defenses, however, and had a few big guns set up in bunkers overlooking the likely approaches.
Add to this a few machine guns and a couple rifle companies, and you can imagine it was no easy nut to crack.

The second fort, Douanamont, was in much better repair, and larger, being in its time the most impregnable fortress in Europe. It could hold nearly 3,000 men and had a huge armament, including a large cannon that could be raised and lowered between firings. Some of the machinery for this is shown below.
And here is the hatch through which the gun is fired, with a half Claudio for measurement purposes.
It must also be said that the tunnels of this fort were dripping wet, and limestone calcifications were everywhere. Also, despite this being the premier fortress in Europe, it fell to the Germans with ease. The French decided that manning the forts was a waste of men, so left them unguarded. Once they realized how much it was helping the Germans, they took it back.

Here is a picture of what the artillery did to part of the fort.
You can see it blew through three feet of concrete into the room below. Killing everyone inside.

Our fourth stop of the day was the Ossuary. This massive structure (which I don't have a picture of) is fronted by another huge graveyard, but it is the bones inside that are most important. You see, the Ossuary is the final resting place of 130,000 men. Their bones have been found over the years, and placed here. They are placed in great piles without consideration as to race or religion, creed or country. No distinctions are made. German bones sit next to French bones.

This may sound macabre, but it is done respectfully, and only the bodies of the unknown are found in those halls. The Ossuary has a great tower that you can climb, and though it nearly gave me a heart attack, I made it to the top. Look at what I saw.
We stopped also at a museum of Verdun that had many cool things I wasn't allowed to photograph.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow we go to Bastogne and Caen, next to the Beaches of Normandy.