![]() The fortifications consisted of a double ring of 28 modern, mutually supporting forts set into and using the contours of the land to great effect, as well as a huge number of secondary military installations. The landscape was a prepared battlefield. The landscape offered protection to the attacking Germans as well as the defending French with the woods and valleys offering some sort of protection against aerial observation, (Duffy 2007: 326). On the eastern side – facing the German border – the hills form high cliffs and steep sided ravines that concentrate communication routes into a few natural gateways and offer many natural defensive positions (Holstein 2009: 9). The area is surrounded by hills and the river Meuse has cut into both sides of the valley leaving interlocking spurs that dominate the river crossings. ![]() Verdun stands at the crossing point of two communication routes – the river Meuse and the old road from Paris to Eastern France. ![]() At Verdun this transformation of matter can be seen in its most extreme forms both from the destruction caused by the incessant use of heavy artillery and also by the altering of the landscape before the battle to incorporate huge forts and underground “cities” which could withstand almost constant shelling. Saunders states that “fundamentally, war is the transformation of matter through the agency of destruction the character of modern technological warfare is such that it simultaneously creates and destroys more than any previous kind of conflict” (Saunders 2004: 5). It will discuss the destruction of the area and the steps taken to rebuild the shattered city and it’s surroundings after the war. This work will explore the changing nature of the landscape of Verdun as it progressed from one of conflict through to one of remembrance, tourism and change. To understand the battle of Verdun and its far-reaching implications it is important to go beyond the constraints of a traditional Military History perspective. Forests are destroyed, and only the dead remain above ground, while the living shelter beneath”, (Sillars 1987: 2).Īn archaeologist must look at conflict in the twentieth century and its legacies using a multi-disciplinary and multi-sensorial attitude to examine areas of interest that are still to some extent in the collective memory. The landscape was forever changed all along the Western Front, as Sillars puts it, “The natural landscape which remains after battle has a similar quality of terrible unreality, both in itself and in the way it altered men’s lives. The devastation was so extreme that villages were wiped from the map and medieval visions of hell became a reality for the first time. It was part of a new 20 th century ethos the utter destruction of a nation and its people. Patients lay on the floor in rows, exactly as the reconstructed pews now stand today.The Great War is characterised by the massive destruction it caused and the fighting at Verdun in 1916 is perhaps the most frightening example of modern industrial warfare waged on a people and the landscape that they inhabit. troops.īombed out and full of rubble, it was still the sturdiest building in town. In a war that claimed some 14 million lives - 5 million civilians and 9 million soldiers, sailors and airmen from 28 countries over four years - and left 21 million wounded, the town church in nearby Neuvilly-en-Argonne became a field hospital for U.S. Today, children ride a toy tractor past the same spot. soldiers ran through the main street of Exermont trying to escape German fire, as a comrade-in-arms lay motionless nearby. ![]() To the north and the east, allied troops were struggling to push back the front line, which had nearly reached the French capital. troops marched in a Fourth of July parade in the summer of 1918, through a Paris whose historic buildings and cobblestone streets stand little changed 100 years later. The wartime gloom lifted briefly when U.S. The Americans arrived late in the war, in 1917, and gave crucial help to Britain, France and other allies fighting Germany.
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