La Grande Guerre
The Great War
The War to End War
La Guerre de Quatorze
And, prior to 1939, merely The World War

Last November, Madeline had a conference she wanted to attend in Metz, in Lorraine in eastern France, so we decided to make the trip together and see some sights. The focus of the trip for me was the Great War of 1914 to 1918. When Prussia defeated France in 1870-1871, the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine became part of the Prussian (later German) Empire. Metz was therefore a German city from 1871 until 1918. The city of Verdun, just to the west of Metz, became a linchpin of the French attempt to build a defensive wall against any future German attack. That attack came in 1914, when Germany declared war on France. (This was a result of Austria-Hungary’s war with Serbia and the interlocking system of European alliances that triggered the worldwide conflagration known as the Great War.) Germany’s war planning depended on a quick victory over France in the West, so it could then turn its attention to Tsarist Russia.

Germany came close to reaching Paris in the first weeks of the war, but its armies were stopped in the First Battle of the Marne. Verdun held firm in French hands, and over the course of the war, the city became a symbol of French resistance. France’s losses in the First War were horrendous: of 7.5 million men mobilized, 5.6 million ended up killed, wounded or missing. That is a casualty rate of 75%. Nothing in the American experience comes close—even the Confederacy’s casualty rate, horrific as it was, amounted to about 25% of the forces mobilized during the course of the war. Along the former front lines in Belgium and France, 90 years have not been nearly enough for the scarred landscape to fully recover.

By chance, we ended up staying for three nights in a bed and breakfast in Gussainville, east of Verdun, that is owned by the Leforts. Monsieur Lefort, Francis, is president of Ceux de Verdun (those of Verdun), an organization founded by veterans that is dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the men who defended France on the Verdun front. Francis told us that an uncle of his, who served throughout the war, had regaled him with stories when he was young, kindling an interest that has led Francis to devote his retirement to memorializing the World War One generation. His office down the hall from where we slept is a small museum of La Grande Guerre. Francis showed us his uncle’s medals, examples of incised artillery shells (decorating the shell casings was a pastime for bored soldiers), and a fragment of the white flag carried by a French soldier between the lines when the armistice was finally declared in November 1918.

With advice from Francis and our guidebooks, we began our exploration of the sites surrounding Verdun. The huge cemetery and ossuary at Douaumont was a project, not of the French government, but of the bishop of Verdun, who solicited contributions from around the world. The ossuary is a bizarre structure, combining a low, reptilian mass with a central tower that can only be described as phallic. On the outside are the names of all the cities that sent money for the project, including Chicago and Toronto. (http://www.verdun-douaumont.com/en/index.html)

Douaumont is also the site of one of the forts that protected the Verdun salient. Life for the soldiers in these fortresses was grim in the extreme. The forts were dark, dank, and unhealthy. No amount of fumigation could fully control the lice and fleas that afflicted the men and they were under virtually constant artillery bombardment. A single road kept the soldiers in the Verdun salient supplied. In the words of a 1917 newspaper account: “It is twenty miles from Souilly to Verdun, and the road has come to be known as La Voie Sacré - the Sacred Way - because on the uninterrupted flow of ammunition and supplies over that road depended the safety of the fortress. Three thousand men with picks and shovels, working day and night, kept the road in condition to bear up under the enormous volume of traffic.” Today, la Voie Sacré is marked with millebornes like the one shown.

One of the most affecting places that we visited was the Butte de Vauquois. In 1914, Vauquois was a village on top of a 900-foot hill. The chances of war dictated that the German advance stop right at the edge of the village. The two opposing armies built systems of trenches within yards of one another. Then each side got the bright idea of tunneling under its opponent and exploding mines to undermine the enemy’s position. Several hundred explosions later, nothing was left of Vauquois save for a long line of craters. The pockmarked landscape of the butte delivers a powerful message on the absurdity and waste of war. (http://www.worldwar1.com/france/vacquois.htm)

America came to the Great War late, in 1917, but its armies played a big role in turning the tide against Germany. The U.S. mounted offensives south and west of Verdun, known as the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne campaigns. In those areas and also at Belleau Woods and Chateau-Thierry are American cemeteries and war memorials. The cemeteries we visited, maintained by the American Battlefield Monuments Commission, were all beautifully kept and largely deserted. (http://www.abmc.gov/home.php) We also visited a German cemetery near Belleau Wood. It was sobering to see graves of German Jews who had died serving the Kaiser in the First War.

The American memorials to the Great War represent the last echoes of the Beaux-Arts tradition. The monuments and memorials at Civil War battlefields in the U.S. are eclectic, reflecting the various artistic currents of the late 19th century: Gothic Revival, Romanesque Revival, Beaux-Arts and rustic styles were all used. The monuments in France, designed by architects like Henry Bacon and Paul Philippe Cret, are much more uniform—all are firmly within the Beaux-Arts tradition. The memorials call upon the neoClassical architectural vocabulary, but it is a very spartan and austere version of neoClassicism. The wafer-thin Aisne-Marne American Memorial, designed by Paul Philippe Cret, with its crisp, sharp corners, is a good example. (Cret was born in France, but made his career in the U.S., teaching at Penn’s architecture school. By chance, he was in France at the outbreak of war in 1914. Cret enlisted in the French army and was awarded La Croix de Guerre.)

On our way back to Brittany, we visited the clearing in the woods near Compiegne where the armistice that ended the slaughter was signed (at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918). What we now celebrate as Veterans’ Day in November was originally Armistice Day. During the Second World War, Hitler insisted that the formal French capitulation take place on the very same spot. Between 1918 and 1940, the French had converted the Compiegne clearing into a memorial landscape with statues and plantings. In June 1940, Hitler sat in the same chair in the same railway car that had been occupied by Marshal Foch in 1918 when he accepted the German surrender. The Nazis then dismantled the memorial statues and carted them and the railway car off to Berlin as trophies of war. The rail car was eventually destroyed, but after 1945, the French brought back the pieces and reassembled the memorials. Marshall Foch’s colossal statue now has a ragged look, with the pieces not quite fitting together. (http://www.webmatters.net/france/ww1_rethondes_2.htm)

We stayed one night in Ressons le Long, near Compiegne, at the La Ferme de la Montagne. This turned out to be a rambling stone farm complex on top of a mountain (well, a hill). The barn on the property is 600 years old, dating to the period when the farm belonged to an abbey. We wandered into the barn and bought a couple of dozen apples to take home. They also grow sugar beets, as you can see. (http://lafermedelamontagne.free.fr/)

Our route home took us near the cities of Reims and Rouen, so we stopped there to take a look at their famous 13th-century Gothic cathedrals. The cathedral at Reims was largely in ruins following the bombardments of the Great War. Its restoration was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. The sculptures on the west front of the cathedral are truly impressive. Reims is one of the capitals of the Champagne region, but we will have to return to more fully investigate that region’s most famous product.

It was raining when we got to Rouen so we have no good exterior shots. Inside Rouen’s cathedral is an effigy-tomb of Richard the First of England (Richard Coeur de Lion of Robin Hood fame), although it is only his heart that is buried at Reims. The rest of the king’s remains were interred at two different abbeys, in Aquitaine and Anjou.

Our Metz-Verdun-Reims-Rouen trip was our first using an in-car GPS. I had to be persuaded that this was a useful gadget, but I am now a convert. Disputes over directions are a thing of the past.