VERDUN TORCH

Evening Star, Issue 19127, 19 December 1925, Page 14

VERDUN TORCH

A GREAT FREKCH TOWEB TO BURN FOREVER FOR-THE ■ DEAD. Of the thousands of war memorials which stand in tho village squares and upon tho roadside of Europe, the most impressive is rising along the top of a ridge about eight miles north and a little cast of Verdun. It is eventually to contain within itself and in the terraced cemetery beneath it tho bones of 300,000 French soldiers who died in the Verdun area and whose remains, according to French army records, cannot be identified._ It is to consist of a long vaulted cloister with a central tower, at tho top of which a light is to burn perpetually. To Frenchmen it is to he a memorial to the defenders of Verdun, but to the rest of tho world it will, incidentally, symbolise that epitome of tho war which is contained in Verdun’s name (writes Clair Price, in tho New York ‘ Times ’). Nothing is lacking to make Verdun’s story memorable. The human clement is inherent in it as it is not in the stories of Ypres and the Somme. The figures of the German Crown Prince, the resolute Petain, and the driving Mangin make a great drama of Verdun, its rapid encirclement in 1914, its stubborn defence in 1916, its final freedom in ]9IS make it stand out to all the world as the typical episode of the war in the west.

It is no less typical in tho_ peace. Since 1918 tho French frontier has moved eastward, and the French army has moved with it. After 1,500 years as a frontier fortress, alternating between French and German possession, Verdun is now abandoned to the tourists and next of kin. PERPETUAL TORCH TO THE DEAD. Tho greatest of its war monuments is rising below and about 800yds southvest of the squat ruins of Douaumont Fort. At tho northern corner of the military area of Verdun Douaumont. Fort crowned the highest point of the hard limestone ridge known as Douaumont Plateau. With Vaux Fort, two miles to tho south-east. Douaumont was in the outer line of Verdun’s immanent fortifications. It was not seriously attacked until tho Gormans began their heavy assault on Verdun in February, 1916. Douaumont was then _ tricked into surrender by German infantry wearing the uniforms of dead Zouaves. It was recaptured late in May, and was lost again almost at once, Vaux Fort going with it, despite a determined defence. It was recaptured in October, Vaux retaken in November, and the outer line was entirely cleared in December. The nature of tho fighting which contested every inch of Verdun’s outer line for the better part of a year hardly needs to bo indicated. Behind Douaumont the Thiaumont Redoubt formed the northern end of Verdun’s second line, which ran southeast through the village of Fleury and the forts of Souville and Tavannes. Throughout tho summer of 1916 the Germans subjected this line to such pressure as had never previously been known in warfare. They hammered a deep bend into it which brought them almost to the moat of Souville Fort, the nearest point to Verdun itself, which they succeeded in reaching, a distance of about five miles. Ground like that of the Thiaumont farm changed hands daily through Juno and July, and when the German pressure lightened in August in consequence of the Allied offensive on the Somrne, it was finally recaptured by encircling attacks instead of by the ghastly business of direct attacks. French army officers say that the numbers of dead in the fighting for Verdun were 400,000 French and 600,000 German, most of whom on both sides were wiped out in the fighting along this second lino. The figures may be inaccurate, but, whatever the accurate figures are, they are beyond the comprehension of most of us. Verdun has been besieged at least ten times since Attila destroyed it in the year 450, but it has never seen anything like this before. ALL THAT NOW REMAINS. It is at tho northern end of this second line, where Thiaumont farm lay in front of the Thiaumont redoubt, that the memory of Verdun’s most recent defence is to burn perpetually in the tower of the new memorial. It would have occupied a site nearer to Douaumont fort at the outermost point of Verdun’s permanent defences if there had been room for it beside the dislocated chunks of turret armor and the shattered masses of reinforced concrete which are all that now remain of the top of the fort.

It is to bo called the Douanmont ossuary. In onr language the word “ ossuary” is obsolete, hut its meaning is obvious. The low-vaulted cloisters, which are to extend for distances of 300 ft on both sides of the central tower, are to be divided into twenty-six chapels, each containing two tombs. There were fifty-two designated sectors in the Verdun area, and each of the tombs in the chapels of the ossuary is to contain the human bones which have been gathered from a given sector, ft will thus bo possible for a woman who has never recovered the body of a husband or a son lost in the Verdun area, but who knows approximately where he fell to go and pray in the chapel which is consecrated to that area, with the feeling that there, if anywhere, is the grave she seeks. On the terraced slope beneath the ossuary there is to he space at first for the graves of 20,000 unknown dead, but there is ample room for almost unlimited expansion. Ascending paths through the cemetery are to converge at the main portal of the ossuary in the base of the central tower. The portal is to give access to the Catholic chapel, and there is to be a Protestant chapel. The ossuary project is a national one, and is not one exclusively Catholic.

The little group of buildings on both sides of the road stand in the dazed confusion which characterises the entire area. The tin hnt which serves as a temporary ossuary with the statue of a woman whoso head is bowed in resignation standing before its door; the similar lint with a red cross painted on it which serves as a dressing station for members of search parties wounded by live explosives; the permanent residence of the ossuary chaplain, a large new building of white stone; the tenced-off grave of a French general; a massive corner-stone on which nothing has yet been built; a few pieces of German heavy artillery with trench mortars and machine gnus dropped about the big caterpillars’ wheels, the rust toning down the once bright camouflage—these stand in a confused group not far from the crane which is moving blocks of cut stone into position in the foundation of the permanent ossuarr. BURIED ALIVE STANDING UPRIGHT.

Despite the living grass which mantles it, this Verdun area is dead. It is a physical impassibility to run a plough through any of it, even if any man dared attempt it. There are places in it in which French soldiers are still standing where they were buried alive in 1910, and their bayonets are sticking np through the surface of the ground. A Buffalo man was so affected by the sight of one of these places that he paid for a heavy colonnaded monument which now T shelters one of these rows of thin wreath-draped bayonets. There are places where yon ran poke aside the grass and find the muzzles of rifles sticking up through the soil. Tt is probable that in such spots the soil will not he moved. “ The place is sacred, all of it is too sacred to touch,” a French officer said the other day. “ Besides, it is of no use to anybody.”

The quiet is nnholieyahle. The whole area is so still that yon are apt to find yourself .believing that your ears are tricking you, that you have gone gundeaf and can’t hoax*