Germany 2025 - Back into France and The Battle of Verdun

 Friday 10th - Charny-sur-Meuse, Verdun

Last night’s site really was good for €5. We didn’t use the electricity in the end, we are quite happy being self sufficient. 

Back into France today. I have loved Germany and look forward to returning one day. There have been such changes in the landscape, but the mountains have been my favourites. Richard has been disappointed with the roads, he feels that the French ones are better. We have had 12 days in Germany plus the three days when we dipped into Switzerland and Austria. 

Our drive was relatively easy.  We went through a series of tunnels, a couple of them were about 1 km long.  There was lots of mist over the trees which looked a little eerie.

It was strange that the German roads were really busy with lorries, but once in France they seemed to disappear - where did they all go.  We noticed that suddenly, just before the French border, all roads lead to Paris, it was the same on the way down!

We passed Forbach which is where we started our journey into Germany 15 days ago.

The colours have really changed while we’ve been away. All along the roadsides the trees are green, yellow, orange and red. Beautiful.  The photos were taken in Germany - as we got into France the colours weren’t so vibrant. 

Our destination was a small town north of Verdun, but we needed some shopping first and I found one of my favourite supermarkets, Carrefour, in Verdun.  I do like French supermarkets, especially Carrefour, but this one wasn’t as big as some I have been in, but I managed to get some English tea!

We found our stopover right by the River Meuse in Charny-sur-Meuse.  It is quite large and says it will take 50 motorhomes.  We found a hard standing but they were few and far between so any one else would have to be on the grass which was quite long and wet.  

Our visit to this area was to visit some of the WWI sites.  The Battle of Verdun was the longest battle in modern history which took place from 21st February 1916 to 15th December 1916 - a total of 303 days.  The French suffered 377,231 casualties and the Germans 337,000, a total of 714,231 souls. 

In the evening Richard and I were planning on what to visit in the area. This made me think about my Great Uncle (my mother’s Uncle), John George Mason. He was registered at birth with that name but his army records show him as George. He is shown as missing on October 30th 1914. I hadn’t done any research since just before Covid, and there is a bit more out there now. I found that his name is on the Menin Gate.  

162 miles

Saturday 11th October - Charny-sur-Meuse

The first day of our two day WWI tour.  Today it was Verdun and on Monday it was the Somme.  But the day started with a trip to the vet for Rio to have his worming pill and fit to travel check.  He passed with flying colours though he felt a bit rough later in the day after the worming pill.  The vet asked me if I spoke French and I said a little so he said he would speak English - excellent English at that!

In 1914, Verdun was a major military stronghold, standing opposite the town of Metz which had been German since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Verdun had a double ring of 28 forts and was protected by 60,000 men and 670 guns. At the end of August, German troops got to within 20 kilometres of the town.

During the Battle of the At the end of September, the town was attacked from the south and west. The German army had Verdun in its grip and it isolated the town by cutting many of its lines of communication.  The 300 day Battle of Verdun commenced.

Our first stop was the Memorial de Verdun, a very moving museum, built on the battlefield and which remembers both French and German soldiers as well as civilians who lost their lives.  We were both interested to learn just how many soldiers were active in the area (1 million) and, even more, the amount of countries that were involved in WWI - over 30.  The front round Verdun kept moving backwards and forwards and the small village of Fleury, which is next to the museum, changed hands 16 times.  In one place we walked on the mud floor of a trench (it was solid and very difficult to walk on!) with a field kitchen on it.  Exhibits included a soldier’s life, weaponry, vehicles as well as modern day interactive and multimedia displays. There was even a recreated trench system.  It was very dark in the museum so the photos are rather dark too.

Next we went to Fort Douaumont, which was the heart of the battle of Verdun.  It had been built after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to defend France.  It was the largest and highest fort on the ring of 19 forts which protected Verdun.  We got the feeling from the audio guide that the Fort was occupied by the French during most of the battle before the Germans took it over, but the internet says differently in that 98 German soldiers took it over on February 25th 1916, 4 days after the start of the battle by entering through an open window.  The French felt that Douaumont would be ineffective against German firepower and they had been partly disarmed and left virtually undefended - there were 56 troops and a few gunners.

Douaumont was finally recaptured by three infantry divisions of the Second Army, during the First Offensive Battle of Verdun on 24th October 1916. This event brought closure to the battle in 1916.

We were way underground and our audio guide gave a very good description of nearly each room. The soldiers did not go outside and, apparently, the smell was pretty awful.  The fort was built to house a garrison of 635 soldiers.  On May 8th 1916, a store of grenades exploded killing about 850 soldiers.  Some bodies were buried outside but 679 were walled up in two casemates inside the fort.  There is a shrine in front of one of the casemates.

The main gun in the fort was a 155mm and was able to be raised to fire and then lowered back down  to be protected by the fort’s roof.  The turret the gun was attached to weighed 70 tonnes and was operated by hand cranked winches.

Next was the Douaumont Ossuary which is a memorial containing the remains of both French and German soldiers who died on the Verdun battlefield.  There is no photography inside the building but everyone was.  You access the building by a spiral staircase and enter the Cloister, which is 450 feet long and home to 46 cenotaphs in 18 alcoves which contain the remains of at least 130,000 unidentified soldiers of both nations which were found in various areas of the battlefield.  Through small outside windows, you can see the skeletal remains which are filling up alcoves at the lower edge of the building.  I had read about the skeletons but it was still such a shock when I looked in the first window!  Outside there are 16,142 graves for identified French soldiers. This is the largest single French military cemetery of the First World War.  The foundation stone was laid in 1920 and the corpses were transferred in 1927 with an official opening in 1932.

Our last stop was to the deserted village of Fleury. The 422 residents were given a few hours to leave the village and it was razed to the ground within hours.  It changed hands 16 times during the war.  After the war it could not be rebuilt due to contaminated shells, explosives and poisonous gas.  Today there are markers to show who lived in each house - the baker, wine grower, plumber, weaver, tin smith are just some of the trades who lived there.

Back at the camp site our pitch was empty (well we had left our reserved sign out!) and next to us was a Danish motorhome. These two pitches were demarcated by a strip of grass in between. Later a French campervan reversed in between the two motorhomes - he was literally 2 feet away from the Danes and 6 feet between us  - we had his sliding door on our side!  There was so much space on the site on the grass but he obviously wanted a hard standing.  Not acceptable in my eyes. 

29 miles

Sunday 12th October - Bray-sur-Somme

We left Charny-sur-Meuse to go to Bray-sur-Somme, 2 big rivers!  But first we wanted to visit the Butte de Vauquois, (a butte being an isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top.)  

We arrived at a deserted car park and not really knowing where we were going.  We saw some steps and climbed them, deviating off to the side for a rest!  There we found entrances into the hillside, which all shut off.  We wandered around then went up to the top of the hill where we found barbed wire wrapped round chevaux de frise, still there from WWI.  On the other side of the hill were huge craters.

The hill was a crucial high-ground position with a commanding view making it a strategic stronghold for both.  The Germans held the hill at the end of September 1914, while French troops failed to gain ground. This was reversed in 1915 when the Germans finally reached the summit. However, the troops paid a heavy price in terms of human losses. Faced with this new status quo, a landmine war broke out a few months later. 

Both armies dug extensive networks of tunnels to undermine the enemy positions, leading to a continuous subterranean battle.   The tunnels totalled about 10.5 miles.  The German side had 7.5 miles and the French side was 3 miles.  The constant subterranean explosions obliterated the village of Vauquois, which was located on the hill.

The French and German tunnelling units fired 519 separate mines making a landscape full of craters.  Some of the German mines used up to 60 tons of explosives. There were a huge number of casualties, with estimates suggesting around 14,000 soldiers died on this small section of the front. Some estimates place the number of missing soldiers at 8,000.

The land mine battle finally ended September 26th 1918, when the doughboys of the 138th and 139th US Infantry Regt, 35th US Division, captured the hill on the first day of the American Meuse-Argonne offensive.

From Vauquois we drove to Bray.  We were driving along the A4 when we started seeing huge balls on the verge.  We assumed they were modern art, especially when pyramids and totem-like poles joined in too!  I looked them up and discovered that the balls are large, polychrome cylindrical sculptures by artist Guy de Rougemont. The public art installation consists of a series of these large sculptures placed along the shoulders of a 30 km section of the A4 autoroute, particularly in the area near Reims.  It made some interest along a rather boring stretch of road.

From the busy main roads to the quieter roads where we found fields filled with short sunflowers mixed in with blue flax, the colours were lovely. 

We found our site, another Camping-Car Park, right beside the River Somme.  It is a small site of 10 pitches, all side by side, marked out by poles - no squeezing in by a campervan tonight!  We overlooked the river with a lovely boat moored up in front of us.  We took Rio for a walk and found behind us a series of lakes with lots of fishermen.  Rio loved it just as he had loved running around at the Butte this morning.

175 miles