Cemeteries and Destroyed Villages

During the Battle of Verdun in the first world war, nine villages in France were destroyed. After the war France decided to basically turn the remnants of these villages into a sort of memorial to those that died. Mr X and I visited several of these destroyed villages during our World War sites tour.

A small chapel has been erected at the entrance to these villages...

As you walk along the rather obscure paths through the villages there are signs marking where certain known places used to be such as the school or the mill or so-and-so's house. The photo below is marking the "Maison de M. Le Cure" - so the house of the Cure family.

This was some sort of ammunition container for the town...or the remnants thereof. The townspeople had been forced out by the Germans and they were using it as a sort of supply post. I guess I didn't feel as badly about this town getting destroyed since it wasn't bombed until after the Germans were occupying it.

This sort of monument was out in front of several churches in the small towns (not destroyed ones) around the area of Verdun.

It was very interesting to visit a German war cemetery rather than an American or French cemetery. Mr X told me that he'd heard that the Germans had taken to burying their dead two or more deep but he'd never given it much thought after hearing it. But then we saw the headstones and they had two names on them so I guess it's true.

I thought it was interesting that in the first World War Jewish Germans fought right alongside every other German but then only slightly more than twenty years later so much had changed.