On our way back to southern Bretagne, we took a beautiful and peaceful campsite in the countryside near Verdun.
While there, we took a sombering drive through the World War I battle field on the trenches dug through the fields and forest amid destroyed villages and saw some of the remnants of the three hundred day and night slaughter that killed three hundred thousand with four hundred thousand more injured in a small area covering less than twenty square kilometers.
Surrounding devastated farmland was replanted with trees—the ancient forest lost—and the core of the battlefield left to Nature, restored in the intervening century.
At the heart of the slaughter lies the national ossuary and necropolis with sixteen thousand marked graves of the French dead and the former containing the unidentified bones of an estimated one hundred thirty individuals, both French and German combatants, president Franรงois Mitterand and West German chancellor Helmut Kohl famously held hand here at the memorial dedicated in 1932 in September of 1984 to honour the fallen in an act of reconciliation, understanding and friendship.
synchronoptica
one year ago: hair shavings as battery components (with synchronopticรฆ) plus more mysterious monoliths
ten years ago: assorted links worth revisiting, Hell is other people plus more links to enjoy
twelve years ago: tiny museums plus social contagion
thirteen years ago: willow shoots, the US army in Germany plus Switzerland’s hidden defences
fourteen years ago: using Google search to transmit secret messages
