Douaumont Ossuary Memorial

Douaumont Ossuary memorial honors the soldiers who lost their lives in the Battle of Verdun during World War I. It forms the resting place of the bones of approximately 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers collected from 36 sections of the battle field.

 

The 46 meter tower which, according to the tourism literature, is constructed to represent a bomb shell has a bronze bell weighing 2 tons. There are red lanterns in this bell tower that shine as a beacon for the dead.

From the top of the tower you have an expansive view of the battlefields as well as the 15000 crosses of the fallen soldiers. This necropolis of Fleury is one of 19 national necropolises  in the Meuse Department of the Lorraine Region. It’s difficult to capture the vastness in the span of a web page so I’ve split the view into thirds.

 

 

 

Inside the 137 meter long cloister of the memorial you find 52 tombs. They contain the unknown remains of the soldiers recovered from 52 battlefields. Each stone here bears the name of a missing soldier.

 

 

You arrive in awe with a view of the imposing ossuary on the horizon. Then,  you leave a changed person as the immensity of the loss suffered impacts you.  300 days of fighting, 26,000,000 bombs dropped, approximately 300,000 French and German soldiers missing.  Fort Douaumont is but a short distance away and beckoned us to go to the place where these soldiers lived before suffering death.

 

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