The French paid a costly human price at Verdun but prevailed. The great battle began 100 years ago today and raged until December, 1916. German artillery fired an estimated 1 million shells that first day alone. France and Germany lost around 300,000 men at Verdun over the course of the next 10 months -- a significant fraction of total war casualties.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
On Ne Passe Pas (They Shall Not Pass)*
Leaving Paris, the train to Luxembourg tracked the Marne River valley, rolling eastwards through the Champagne region and then veered north to Reims. I recall glimpsing the famous cathedral -- not at night but in harsh daylight. But what I remembered the most (and hadn't foreseen) were the haunted place names along that ride. The names confronted me through the train window one-by-one as stops along the way: place names like Verdun-sur-Meuse. This map shows how the train's route between Paris and Luxembourg crossed the Western Front of the First World War:
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*Blog post adapted from a longer version here.
I appreciate your theory, chickelit, though not so much your implementation. Philosophy is one thing; demonstrated effort is another thing.
Also, my friend, you spent too much time and cred--for my liking, anyway--advocating that which you and your family didn't choose for itself.
Which finally forced me to accept something I didn't want to accept:
You didn't mean what you said.
@r,l: I watched "My Fair Lady" (1964) today and actually liked it except for the abrupt ending and its lack of resolution.
Also, I know "Pygmalion" but never picked up the homoerotic vibes like I did from "My Fair Lady."
chickelit:
You are playing around, because you know that you can, on account of the fact and reality that I am unwilling to betray you. I am weak in that way: I don't want to.
---
How pyrrich.
[And so it goes.]
A good piece of history and remembrance. I've been vaguely aware of the 100th anniversary of the Great War, but really haven't given it much thought. Thank you for this reminder.
I did have occasion, 5-1/2 years ago, to drive over the Western Front in Belgium. It's still there, filled-in and overgrown. I remember a freeway overpass to get across the buried remains of what appeared to be a large, boxy fortification. The softened remains of trenches and earthworks stretch as far in either direction from the overpass as you can see. They still have collection points for unexploded shells that I read about but didn't see. In any event, the remains of war are everywhere if you know what to look for in parts of Belgium and, of course, Flanders. The WWI remains are on a completely different scale, however, than, say, the plaque telling you that the town parking structure is on the site of fortifications built in 1672 "nach den Koning van Frankrijk."
France died at Verdun.
France died at Dien Bien Phu. It's been all down hill for them after that.
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette -- now THERE was a Frenchman.
Great post. Its funny how the 70th anniversary of WW 1 (1984) seemed like ancient history while people still act like WW2 was yesterday. People are still running around talking about Hitler and Nazi's. When the last time anyone talked about the Kaiser or called someone a "Pan-German"?
People forget the French lost 70,000 killed in six weeks of fighting in 1940. That's more that the US Navy and Marine Corps combined lost in all of WW 2.
That France won WW I but was thoroughly demoralized by the bloodletting is understandable. Less understandable is the German appetite for a second round considering the extent of Germany's losses in WW I.
The people who kept sending their children to die went to church on Sunday and had studied the classics. Ludendorff sent five of his stepsons off to death. He pulled strings and allowed one stepson, who had previously been disabled by a war injury, join the flying corps and become a pilot. He was subsequently killed in battle Somedays Ludendorff would sit at his desk and just sob. Then he would pull himself together and plot another offensive that would kill another hundred thousand young men.........Those who say that "there is no way to peace, peace is the way" should consider the example of Russia. Russia abruptly withdrew from the war and signed a ruinous peace treaty. This triggered a civil war that caused many more deaths and casualties than their losses against the Germans. And those casualties were no longer just young men of military age. The civil war was brutish beyond all imagining........Petain was the True French hero of WWI. When the French army mutinied, he listened to their complaints, made some reforms, and preserved the integrity of the French Army. Perhaps France would have been better off, if he were not so successful.......It does seem that just about any other resolution of WWI would be better than the one we ended up with........,.The Germans felt that they had not been fairly vanquished on the battlefield. They felt rather that they had been snookered by Wilson's Fourteen Points and the starvation inflicted by the Armistice. Foch claimed that a war such as WWI should not end with an armistice but with a victory parade in the enemy capital. That would have demonstrated to the Germans that they had lost the war...........The more you read about WWI, the more despairing you become of the illimitable stupidity of humankind.
Lest we forget, All Quiet on the Western Front should be required reading in high school English, as it was for me. The new barbarism brought by chemical weapons and improved munitions, coupled with an old school sense of honor, damn.
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