Verdun hosts sombre WWI ceremony

[struggle4progress]

Source: BBC News

By Jonny Dymond
Verdun

... The centrepiece of the battlefield is the Great Ossuary, a building of grey and blackened stone 137m (150 yards) in length that houses the bones of 130,000 soldiers cleared from the battlefield in the decade after the war ...

At the bottom of this field dignitaries gathered under a heavy grey sky: French President Nicholas Sarkozy; the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles; the Governor General of Australia, Quentin Bryce; the President of the upper house of the German Parliament, Peter Mueller ...

President Sarkozy said .... "Behind each destroyed house, each devastated village, there was a deep wound that will never fully heal."

From this ceremony, for the first time in France, one thing was missing. No French veteran of World War I was alive to witness it. The last died in March this year ...

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7722457.stm

[onehandle]

1. I was there just a few weeks ago with my wife.

Surrounded by beautiful countryside.

It was astounding. You could feel the place. Hard to explain.

[dipsydoodle]

2. In memoriam

John Mccrae "Flanders Fields" WW1 Poem Movie Animation
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SIBKtFfOR3I

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. I've bookmarked the website...

...for the Ossuaire, and sent it hundreds of times, to anyone spouting that 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' nonsense.

[Coventina]

4. One of my pet peeves about "Veterans' Day"

is that it masks the fact that it was originally "Armistice Day."

WWI is grossly overlooked in this country. It really was the lynchpin on which our entire subsequent history has turned. Not only did it wipe out an entire generation of young men, but it spawned the Russian Revolution and planted the seeds for WWII.

Don't get me wrong, I want to honor our veterans of every conflict we've been involved in, but I wish they hadn't changed "Armistice Day" to "Veterans' Day."

[sofa king]

5. The actual day in question was disgraceful.

The damned politicians and chateau generals decided it would be appropriate to end the war on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

In the meantime, the artillery crews and machine gunners of both sides got wind of the arrangement, and started blasting off all the ammunition they had, so they wouldn't have to carry it home. At least ten thousand soldiers were killed or wounded in the time between the final agreement and the actual ceasefire. One poor Canadian fellow was sniped at 10:58 am. To the very end, the machine of war treated its most important parts as fungible, disposable, and insignificant.

Edit: And now we hide behind that most disgraceful day to actually honor our people in uniform. It's just as wrong as if our nation was to choose November 22 as President's Day.

[Coventina]

6. I agree, and would go on to say that the WHOLE WAR was disgraceful.

The only thing good about it was that it DID end. And they even managed to screw that up.

[sofa king]

18. Truth.

[struggle4progress]

21. French town honors last US soldier killed in WWI

November 11th, 2008 @ 3:49pm
By MARIE-FRANCE BEZZINA
Associated Press Writer

NANCY, France (AP) - ... Henry Gunther was hit by German machine gun fire at 10:59 a.m. in the northeastern French town of Chaumont-devant-Damvillers in a final-minute clash with German troops.

A monument honoring the 23-year-old from Baltimore, Maryland, was erected in Chaumont-devant-Damvillers before Tuesday's 90th anniversary of the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice that ended the bloody four-year conflict ...

On that fateful Nov. 11, his regiment took up position in Chaumont-devant-Damvillers. Gunther and a fellow American soldier made for the German lines, bayonets fixed, Lenhard said. The Germans, who at 10:45 a.m. knew that the armistice was to take effect at 11 a.m., fired into the air above their heads. The two soldiers hit the ground, but Gunther got back up on his feet and surged ahead -- only to be gunned down.

Lenhard said it was not clear why Gunther stood up ...

http://ktar.com/?nid=46&sid=988865

[LanternWaste]

7. Suicide in the Trenches

Suicide in the Trenches by Sigfried Sassoon


I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Sassoon is my favorite wartime poet as he sets aside the notions of the heroic, the sacrifice, the glory, and the "glamor" that far too many individuals perceive as the end all and be all of war, and lays out plainly for us that war is ugly-- regardless of what novels and movies may otherwise say.

[trungpa ricochet]

8. Armistice Day

Today my wife and I marched with everyone else in our village and were welcomed by the mayor, a retired army general. At the village memorial, the mayor read a statement acknowledging all the sacrifices, including the Americans'. The French have not forgotten. The names of the fallen are etched in stone in every village who lost people, and that's quite a few villages. Our kids all sang the Marseillaise. This happens every year and will continue.

[saigon68]

20. Merci

Que nul parmi ceux qui se sont tant combattus ne songe plus à dominer l'autre, et bien le temps est venu d'honorer tous les morts sans exception.

[onager]

9. Verdun, usual irrelevant trivia and weird ramblings...

Firsts for Verdun:
--The tactic of "artillery duels." Many of the dead were literally vaporized in artillery barrages that went on for hours.
--First use of poison gas
--First use of flame-throwers
--First extensive use of trucks, by the French.

--The first shell fired in the battle of Verdun, from a German Krupp artillery piece, blasted away the corner of the town's ancient cathedral.

The German commander-in-chief, Erich von Falkenhayn, flatly said his strategy was to "bleed France white" in a battle of attrition. He knew that national prestige would require the French to keep shoveling troops into Verdun.

He forgot that attrition cuts both ways, and that strategy also forced him to keep pouring in German troops.

After months of fighting, neither side had advanced more than a couple of miles. By the time the battle finally shuddered to a stop, both armies were back at their original starting points.

[Davis_X_Machina]

10. First use of gas, Ypres, 1915. n/t

[Thothmes]

14. In addition

Every year hundreds of artillery shells work their way to the surface of local fields. Most were part of the several million artillery shells fired in the Verdun sector during the 6 month battle. Every once in a while a French farmer will blow himself up while plowing his fields.

[onager]

23. Happens a lot here in Egypt, too...

At the El Alamein battlefield, there are still an estimated 1 million WWII-vintage landmines buried in the desert. (Axis and Allied.)

There are probably even more landmines, of more recent vintage, in the Sinai Desert. Some of the crazier separatists/terrorists here go out and dig them up to get the explosives, according to the newspaper.

I live in Alexandria, only about 100km/60 mi from El Alamein. The British cemetery there is very touching. The names of the dead are engraved all over the walls and ceiling of the memorial monument, which looks out on the cemetery itself.

Once I was going out there with some visiting Americans from my company. I explained to them that they could see British, German and Italian cemeteries.

"Well, Where's the AMERICAN cemetery?"

"There isn't one. We didn't fight at El Alamein."

"Yes we did! I saw it in the movie Patton!"

:banghead:

[Lionel Mandrake]

11. Something else is missing.

There is no American among the politicians who were mentioned.

Were we not invited, did we decline the honor, or did the BBC fail to mention our presence?

[brentspeak]

13. American forces didn't fight at Verdun

The U.S. didn't enter the war until 1917, though that didn't prevent American troops from being chewed-up and spit-out in the WWI meat-grinder: over 116,000 American troops killed, over 200,000 wounded.

[Lionel Mandrake]

17. Did the British and Australians fight at Verdun?

I thought the Battle of Verdun involved only French and German forces.

It's true that the USA hadn't yet entered the war at the time of the battle. But as you mentioned, we suffered casualties at an incredible rate once our troops were in action in WW1.

It seems to me we should have been invited, just as our allies were invited to the ceremony. Maybe we were. I wonder about this.

[sofa king]

19. Some few did.

As something of a propaganda stunt, the Lafayette Escadrille was posted to the Verdun front for five months in 1916. Technically, they were flying for France, but their presence at Verdun was followed closely by Americans.

Edit: links.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=MXerZAd-e1kC&dq=american+verdun&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=SZ5oXsZvtD&sig=PQqPL_KPlGnAc0kcETRv8E27rmo&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA6,M1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_Escadrille

[Strelnikov_]

12. ..

[struggle4progress]

15. Some images

http://www.vahs.org.nyud.net:8090/wwi/verdun03.jpg
http://www.expatica.com.nyud.net:8090/upload/verdun-battle.jpg
http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl.nyud.net:8090/warpictures/battlefield01/images/17-mitailleurgroep-verdun.jpg
http://www.battlefield-tours.com.nyud.net:8090/archive_picd_verdun_german_dead.jpg
http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl.nyud.net:8090/battleverdun/battleverdun66/fotokerkhof01.jpg
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz.nyud.net:8090/files/images/stories/artillery/artillery-006.jpg
http://www.claggettwilson.com.nyud.net:8090/img/greatwar/photos_29.jpg
http://www.schuylkillarsenal.com.nyud.net:8090/Verdun1.jpg

[GregW]

16. And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda...

(Grab kleenex)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlYynHmE8b0

[auburngrad82]

22. I was there years ago

It was truly chilling to look into the Great Ossuary and see all the bones of the men who were killed there.