Here, presents Eisenstaedt’s quietly powerful color pictures from Verdun: images of an idyllic landscape that still bears the scars, and seemingly harbors the ghosts, of “the war to end all wars.” The suffering and sacrifice, the killing and death that this area has seen lie in the very air itself, and with force and profundity bring back the war for modern generations in all of its terrible destructive fury.In the spring of 1964, LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt-who served as a German artilleryman during World War I and saw action in the terrible fighting at Passchendaele-and correspondent Ken Gouldthorpe traveled to Verdun, in northeastern France, where one of the costliest battles of WWI took place five decades earlier. People come here to reflect and to try to understand the enormity of what occurred here. These are not light and joyful places to visit. The tourism office is excellent and there are impressive monuments, memorials, and graveyards as well as a museum.Īlthough a tourist attraction now, the town of Verdun and the surrounding battlefield are heavy with the awful weight of World War I and of history itself. The rebuilt town of Verdun itself is also well worth a visit. You can discover bunkers, isolated graves, gigantic mine craters, lonely markers where villages once stood, and any number of murderous hills and valleys where hundreds of thousands of men fought and died. Wander around the entire grounds where modern French families often come to picnic. They are damp, cool, moldy places, which adds to the eerie effect.īut by no means should you limit your visit to the major sites of the battle. Inside, both forts can be explored by a self-guided tour. On top of these squat and solid structures are the battered steel cupolas from which the French poured out fire from machines guns or 75mm canon if you kick the whitish ground during the dry season, you will see that it is tinted orange with the rust of rotted equipment, barbed wire, and weaponry, and you may even find contorted chunks of shrapnel and wire in the fine, pulverized earth. Climb onto their earthen roofs to get an expansive view of the entire battleground, and to see the points from which the Germans launched their opening attacks across the Meuse River. A Profound Place of Reflectionįorts Vaux and Douaumont provide center points to the present battlefield, just as they were focal points of the fight in 1916. Although most of the bayonets have been stolen by souvenir hunters, this is still a place seeped in horror and memory. Lying underneath a massive memorial are the rifles and bayonets of two battalions of the French 137th Infantry Regiment, buried alive on Jduring an artillery bombardment. The Tranchée des baionettes, or Bayonet Trench, is equally moving and disturbing. Outside, in white well-kept rows, lie an additional 15,000 French soldiers. Many of these bones are visible through viewing windows cut into the building. Somber and dreadfully magnificent, this beautiful art deco building holds the remains of 130,000 French and German soldiers who lost their lives among the surrounding hills, fields, and forests. Graves mark the entire area, but the most impressive one on the battlefield-indeed one of the most impressive graveyards in all Europe-is the giant Ossuary, located near the ruins of Fort Douaumont. Dominating the center of the museum is a chillingly realistic reproduction of a section of the battlefield, including superb reproductions of a German Fokker E.III and a French Nieuport 11 flying overhead. Located at the site of Fleury, one of the nine villages that were wiped off the face of the earth during the battle, this is a grim and excellent exhibition of the weapons, machines, and uniforms used during the titanic struggle. You may want to start your tour with the Mémorial de Verdun museum. The battlefield itself is huge and you could easily spend a week exploring it indeed,a car is necessary to reach its fascinating and far-flung sites. And you are entering one of the most sacred areas of France-the Verdun battlefield. The ground is warped and rippled by innumerable shell holes. But as you drive upwards and peer through the leafy undergrowth, you began to perceive that there is something wrong, even sinister, about this place. From a distance, the bush- and tree- covered hills seem innocuous, even welcoming.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |