Original postcard, Fort De Vaux, Verdun France, WWI Verdun, France. A campaign, not just a battle. 1916, 1917.
The illustrations here are actual postcards, undated (unused) but yellowed, with captions in French, and some with English as well.
The area consists of several "forts" and cemeteries, a trench still showing the bayonets of soldiers caught beneath (see other post), and a huge Ossuary.
This one is Fort de Vaux. There is the main trench, and a tunnel entry, structures and a wooden walkway to the top.
And Fort du Douaumont.
That trench has walls to hold back the hillside.
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Original postcard, Fort du Douaumont, Verdun, France WWIAnd the Ossuary. Ossuaire du Douaumont.
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Original postcard, Ossuary, Verdun, France WWI.
The Ossuary tower is above the place where rest the various remains of some 150,000 specifically unidentifiable French and German soldiers. The walls inside the Ossuary list the missing. It still looks like that. For an overview of the Campaign, see www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Base/3495/FVerdun25a.
The phrase, "They Shall Not Pass," originating with this campaign, became the motto of the later ill-fated French Maginot Line WWII. See photos and narrative, The Forts of Verdun, by Robert Duchesno at www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Base/3495/FVerdun2a. at Part IV.
"An act of military madness," wrote Correspondent Eric Margolis about the Verdun campaign. See www.ericmargolis.com/archives/1999/11/they_shall_not.php. Read it all.
This campaign involved the Foreign Legion, heroic Moroccan troops (buried in a group in the main cemetery, but with headstones all at the angle facing east to Mecca, and very moving) who received many awards for valor. See the Duchesno site. There were carrier pigeons, there was phosgene gas, trenches and structures burying people alive, thirst unto death, madness.
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