Instead of houses, we saw giant, empty shell holes that looked more like moon craters. After Verdun, there are six completely destroyed villages that were never rebuilt due to the utter destruction and danger presented by unexploded artillery shells. The death count is astounding and Verdun is still considered to be the bloodiest and deadliest battles in the world.īecause I am not an official history professor, I want to limit my thoughts to the sites we visited and experienced all with Thiery’s help!Īt the onset of WW1, many villages near the frontlines were evacuated. To this day, it is still estimated that 100,000 French and German soldiers remain in the woods that still contain artillery shells. Described as hell on earth, the French eventually rotated nearly every division through Verdun so people could take a break. For the next 300 days, there would be over 300,000 deaths, 300,000 wounded, and many, many scars.
By 25 February, the Germans would advance as far as they would in the 10 month battle and far away from their planned objectives. Should the hills be captured, the Germans could focus their heavy artillery on the French and British counter-attacks and let them run into a meat grinder.īeginning on a foggy morning on 21 February 1916, the Germans attacked with a 1 million artillery barrage. Designed by the Germans to inflict mass attrition and to wear down the French, Verdun almost held no strategic value other than the surrounding hills offered an unique vantage point. While a private tour is more expensive at 440E, I really wanted to do it since I am a history buff!Īfter Thierry met us at our hotel, he began our tour by giving us an overview of Verdun’s nasty history. If traveling via train, the journey can be quite long and probably not possible as a day trip unless you like 4 hour train rides! Coming from Paris, one would have to connect in Metz to Verdun for about 3-4 hours of total train time.īecause of the village’s somber history, we wanted to see the WW1 battlefield - sorry, I wanted to see it! Since I did not know too much about the battle, I wanted a guide so I researched heavily on google and stumbled upon a great guide, Thierry Houba, who does many WW1 and WW2 tours around Belgium and France. Since the hotel provided breakfast and dinner, it was really great! Our hotel, Les Jardins du Mess, was in the middle of Verdun located on the river. I would hurry to read our overall travel planning post here to get some tips! Because we drove to Verdun, our trip was very easy as to plan and coordinate.
While Americans were not involved in this costly and deadly battle, I learned a great deal of a horrific battle. Because we were slowly making our way to Reims from Strasbourg, we spent one of our days on the somber WW1 battlefield of Verdun.
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