Douaumont Ossuary

Mr X and I made our way through Luxembourg, Belgium and then down into France, toward Verdun to see some World War I sites. The drive itself is beautiful and interesting with the 'destroyed villages' and random glimpses of old war bunkers.

We passed by the Memorial de Verdun. We wanted to go in but we were short on time and we really wanted to make it to the Douaumont Ossuary. They both were built as memorials to the Battle of Verdun in World War I.

The Battle of Verdun lasted for 300 days and there were 700,000 casualties. Of the 700,000 casualties 230,000 people died.

Inside the memorial, the walls and ceiling are covered with plaques bearing the names of French soldiers that died in the battle.

The ossuary sits on top of the remains of at least 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers. As you walk around the memorial you can peer into small windows and see the humbling remains.

The land in front of the ossuary consists of the largest French military cemetery of WWI: 16,142 graves.

Here's a better picture of the whole place, courtesy of Wikipedia (also where I pulled a lot of my information from for this post):