Verdun 2

The ‘epargnes’, where the caps of the hills were blown off, turned inside out from peak to trough buy the diligence of miners and mines placed under enemy dug-outs.

France was invaded, the French Coq de Combat is outraged atop his monument. France lost 1, 357, 800 men, and when you include all casualities in addition to those killed in action, this represents 76.3 percent of troops mobilised, as compared to 908,371 British deaths, 35.8 percent of troops mobilised.

In the more « civilised » beginnings of the war, the ‘Kroneprinz’ (Crown Prince Wilhelm) had this shelter built, with nicely detailed window frames.

This is an extraordinary place, the Douaumont Ossuary, where tombs are laid out in long lines, each containing 14 cubic metres of mixed human bones. The building looks out onto the far plains, the forest, and the forest of crosses upon crosses, each one a loved one, nothing to salvage but the name and the honouring. A place to cry.

How could such a thing ever be cleared up ? In the chapel of the Ossuary the French artist Georges Desvallières designed these stained glass windows. He lost two sons in the 1914 - 18 war, fought in it himself, and became interested in developing religious art following the war.  In one picutre he envisages two ruddy faced angels lifting up a soldier grey faced in death. In another, Christ takes up a dead soldier, boots and all, and presses the soldier’s face to his in a gesture so pure, it gives me hope for a love revival.

What would the dead from this time and this place say to us?  I don’t seem to hear them say ‘remember’, I hear rather : save yourselves.

Verdun, rebuilt, is now a world centre for peace.

How can we understand more about violence, recognise it and transform it before it grows great enough for a great war ?

"Formally I have condemned violence, I have escaped from violence, I have justified it, I have said it is natural.  All these things are inattention.  But when I give attention to what I have called violence and in that attention there is care, affection, love, where is there space for violence?"  says Jiddu Krishnamurti.

“The fact is that we are violent, and to ask "How am I not to be violent?" merely creates the ideal, which seems to me to be utterly futile. But if one is capable of looking at violence and understanding it, then perhaps there is a possibility of resolving it totally”.