Spring break trip 2023 (D5: Douaumont)

We checked out of the hotel and started our way back to Germany. Along the way, we stopped at a place called Douaumont. Douaumont was one of nine villages outside Verdun that were destroyed in the early days of fighting. They were recognized as having "died for France" and awarded the Croix de Guerre. The land there still bears the scars of the war. Each of the dips in this field represents a spot where an artillery shell landed. In this regard, it resembes the terrain surrounding the Canadian Memorial at Vimy, which I had visited in summer 1992. (Although the land around Vimy is even more uneven.) The only building still standing is the chapel, which was rebuilt.

Down the road is the Douaumont Ossuary, where 16,142 French soldiers are buried -- the largest single French military cemetery of the First World War.

The ossuary itself contains the remains of at least 130,000 unidentified combatants of both France and Germany.