From the western front, literally this time..
The cold rain is pouring down from a steel gray sky, perhaps fittingly considering the torment and anguish that is forever attached to this place. How could the sun ever shine from a clear blue sky around here? On every square meter where I am walking, an estimated one thousand bombs have fallen. Some have still not exploded, almost one hundred years later, which is why large parts of this battlefield are still off limits to anyone. Looking around me, it is hard to imagine that it happened so long ago. It could have been yesterday. The scars of war are everywhere. Kilometer after kilometer, the field of craters is endless in this abysmal landscape. Pockets of dark ugly woods and remnants of bunkers and trenches, are lined with open expanses of dented fields that will never again be cultivated due to its contamination of explosives, corpses and poisonous gas. This place is an eternal memorial of the stupidity of man. During eleven months in 1916, this was hell on earth for the almost countless men who fought and died here. The exact number is not known, but around one million people lost their lives here, in a completely meaningless effort of warfare.
I am standing at the epicenter of the fighting in the champs de bataille outside the small city of Verdun, France. Death surrounds me. It is said that if you take a shovel and dig the ground, you will immediately find human remains. It is not an exaggeration. Ten years after the Great War, the leaders of France, Britain and Germany met here in reconciliation, so that this would never happen again. A beautiful thought, but less than ten years later a crazy person took power in Germany and the rest is, as you say, history. In general, people don’t learn and the horrors of war are repeated again and again. History repeats itself endlessly.
Verdun was the strongest point in France before the war, and the German strategy was to “bleed the French white” in a swift surprise attach. The French were expected to throw every man they had into the furnace of battle and once they had been defeated, Britain was to be brought down as well. However, the French put in hard resistance under the leadership of General Pétain, who would later take part – as a traitor no less - of the Vichy government in WWII, and the losses were heavy on both sides. In the end, no significant strategic positions had been gained. After all those futile months of fighting, the cost of war was close to a million casualties, evenly spread on both sides and to boot countless British, American and others’ lives had been wasted. Needless to say, Verdun and the surrounding countryside is the saddest place I have ever been to.
