Verdun and WWI

The sanctuary at Verdun

The graves of over 10,000 French WWI soldiers

The dormitory in the fort at Verdun, each bed can sleep 5 guys. They didn't use straw beds, they encouraged lice and bed bugs.

The gun turret at the fort.

Me on the bus.

Today was a fairly sobering day. We stopped at the WWI monument in Verdun. Pull out your history books, this was a long time ago, 1914 to 1917. A serbian killed a duke of Prussia and all hell broke lose! Because of all the alliances, the whole of Europe started fighting. Sounds like the French were spoiling for a war anyway, they had lost the Alsace region and the Loire valley to Germany within 50 years of this event and they wanted it back. Get some hot heads from Russia and Serbia in it, stir in some of the Brits because they were friends with the French and you have a mess of trouble. I am not sure when the US joined but we added our two cents sometime too. The conditions were horrible, millions of lives were lost in the Verdun area. We learned about hand to hand combat and livin/fighting in trenches. We saw a french fort that Germans took over for about 3 months...I have no idea how anyone could live in this fort...there were four levels, all underground. Cold, damp and absolutely no water to drink and very little provisions. Such a contrast with today and our drones, humvees and technology...To say that this was sobering is really under rating it...we saw bones of 130,000 men and boys all buried together because they were not sure who or where they came from. It took almlost ten years to compplete the monument, gather the bones from the battle field and put them in their final burial place. So tonight, when you say your prayers, thank God for America, for living in the 21st century and for all the prior generations that sacrificed their lives for us and our freedom!