Verdun and Meuse-Argonne

Tidewater

Hall of Fame
Mar 15, 2003
22,401
13,177
287
Hooterville, Vir.
Okay, yesterday, I went to Verdun to pay respects to the dead.
First stop, the Verdun Ossuary. A long building, built after the war, with some kind of American involvement. 450 yard wide building and underneath the floor, the French have placed the bones of the dead. If you want to see the actual bones you have to go outside and crouch down. There are little windows outside. Whenever a Frenchman found a bone in that area of France, they brought them to the ossuary. (Thus, it probably includes Frenchman, Germans, and Americans)
In front of the ossuary, are 16,142 graves of French soldiers who died at Verdun.


Next, I went to Fort Douaumont, the “hinge” of the system. Captured by the Germans in the summer of 1916. Retaken by Moroccans in October 1916. The ground looks like lunar landscape. Crater on top of crater. Ther Germans fired 3.6 million artillery rounds at in in 1916. The interior of Fort Douaumont is really impressive and can be visited.


Next, lunch in the town of Verdun, which is really a nice town.
Beautiful ride through the Meuse Valley to the American Memorial, the biggest memorial in Europe. Lots of visitors.


The Meuse-Argonne cemetery, which holds 14,246 American war dead, and the names of 954, whose burial places are “known but to God.”


The reason I went was to pay my respects to Maryland Virginia Griffith, a young lad from Hooterville who died 100 years ago last Wednesday in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. M. V. Griffith’s father was a railroad doctor and his grandfather was a Confederate veteran from Baltimore. He was 21 years and 2 months old the day he died. He was within 32 days of surviving the war.


I honor his memory, even though I have never met him, or, as far as I can tell, his extended family.

I recommend Verdun to those who have the time, money and inclination. Beautiful country, and these Frenchmen remember.
 
Last edited:

Bazza

TideFans Legend
Oct 1, 2011
35,577
21,205
187
New Smyrna Beach, Florida
Thanks for sharing this with us, TW.

Reading your comments makes me a bit ashamed that I do not put more effort into remembering our fallen service people.

Please continue to give us these reminders, although I realize that was not your intent, it did serve that purpose for me.

Godspeed to those who gave all.....
 

tattooguy21

Suspended
Aug 14, 2012
3,615
612
132
The people throughout that area of France are very......not French, if you compare them to the likes of people in Paris or other major cities. If you've travelled France I believe you'll know exactly what I mean.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
 

TIDE-HSV

Senior Administrator
Staff member
Oct 13, 1999
84,527
39,615
437
Huntsville, AL,USA
When I first started practicing in the early '60s, I had an elderly gentleman client who was slowly dying of scleroderma. He had been wounded at the battle of Verdun and told me that a large percentage of people wounded there went on to die later of it. They had a loose association of veterans in that same condition. This was back way before internet days and they're all dead now, anyway...
 

TIDE-HSV

Senior Administrator
Staff member
Oct 13, 1999
84,527
39,615
437
Huntsville, AL,USA
The people throughout that area of France are very......not French, if you compare them to the likes of people in Paris or other major cities. If you've travelled France I believe you'll know exactly what I mean.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
My daughter has moved to Savoie in the Rhone Alps, Chamberanger near Pralognan in the Vanoise Alps and National Park. We recently spent a bit over a week with her. The people there are as friendly as southerners. You don't dare pass someone without making eye contact and saying "Bonjour."
 

tattooguy21

Suspended
Aug 14, 2012
3,615
612
132
My daughter has moved to Savoie in the Rhone Alps, Chamberanger near Pralognan in the Vanoise Alps and National Park. We recently spent a bit over a week with her. The people there are as friendly as southerners. You don't dare pass someone without making eye contact and saying "Bonjour."
I saw those pictures you posted around the time of the Texas a&m. Seemed like a lovely neighborhood

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
 

Tidewater

Hall of Fame
Mar 15, 2003
22,401
13,177
287
Hooterville, Vir.
The people throughout that area of France are very......not French, if you compare them to the likes of people in Paris or other major cities. If you've travelled France I believe you'll know exactly what I mean.
Too many Americans visit Paris and that is all of France they see.
Like foreigners judging Americans by the behavior of folks in New York city. They are quite different.
 

Tidewater

Hall of Fame
Mar 15, 2003
22,401
13,177
287
Hooterville, Vir.
My daughter has moved to Savoie in the Rhone Alps, Chamberanger near Pralognan in the Vanoise Alps and National Park. We recently spent a bit over a week with her. The people there are as friendly as southerners. You don't dare pass someone without making eye contact and saying "Bonjour."
Living in Tiberias, Israel, I had the exact opposite experience. If you said "shalom" to someone you did not know, the look they gave you was the same as I imagine a stranger would if you walked up to him in Huntsville and said, "Give me $20."
It was sort of, "Who the heck are you and how dare you speak to me?"

A local explained that most Jews in Tiberias at the time had come from the USSR and from Arab countries, and it was not wise to let it be known you were Jewish in those circumstances, so the people were intensely private.
 

Tidewater

Hall of Fame
Mar 15, 2003
22,401
13,177
287
Hooterville, Vir.
When I first started practicing in the early '60s, I had an elderly gentleman client who was slowly dying of scleroderma. He had been wounded at the battle of Verdun and told me that a large percentage of people wounded there went on to die later of it. They had a loose association of veterans in that same condition. This was back way before internet days and they're all dead now, anyway...
The German arty fire was so intense that, in 1916, the French policy was, if you got wounded, you just lay there, because sending a stretcher teams would only mean two more wounded or dead Frenchmen. It was futile trying to save the wounded. The tragic math of Verdun.
Lots of soldiers died of survivable wounds.
 

GrayTide

Hall of Fame
Nov 15, 2005
18,810
6,245
187
Greenbow, Alabama
Thanks for posting those pics, Tidewater. It is such a tragedy to think that a war that killed so many was repeated 20 years later, "Man's inhumanity to Man".
 

Tidewater

Hall of Fame
Mar 15, 2003
22,401
13,177
287
Hooterville, Vir.
Thanks for posting those pics, Tidewater. It is such a tragedy to think that a war that killed so many was repeated 20 years later, "Man's inhumanity to Man".
I'm typing this from Europe. Europe today, in some ways, has the same "feel" as I imagine it had in the summer of 1914.
Insouciance.
And a belief that, "if we refuse to see the other guy as an enemy, he will not see us as an enemy and we'll all get along fine."
 
Last edited:

Its On A Slab

All-SEC
Apr 18, 2018
1,290
1,721
182
Pyongyang, Democratic Republic of Korea
Not a thread hijack, but I am amazed at how ignorant some of our erstwhile educated youngsters are of WW I and WW 2.

I have a friend who went on a brewery tour of Belgium a few years ago. She came back incensed that there were so many memorials to fallen servicemen, especially at Bastogne.

I asked her, "Do you really not know what happened or the significance of what happened at Bastogne, and the Battle of the Bulge?"
 

Tidewater

Hall of Fame
Mar 15, 2003
22,401
13,177
287
Hooterville, Vir.
Not a thread hijack, but I am amazed at how ignorant some of our erstwhile educated youngsters are of WW I and WW 2.

I have a friend who went on a brewery tour of Belgium a few years ago. She came back incensed that there were so many memorials to fallen servicemen, especially at Bastogne.

I asked her, "Do you really not know what happened or the significance of what happened at Bastogne, and the Battle of the Bulge?"
Wow. Incensed?
Every little village in Belgium and France has a memorial to the lads of 1914-1918. Not just one per county, but every little village. Normally, they list the names of the young men from the ville who died. Then, after WW II, they added the names of those who died in WW II.
This is a common style.
 
Last edited:

Latest threads

TideFans.shop : 2024 Madness!

TideFans.shop - Get YOUR Bama Gear HERE!”></a>
<br />

<!--/ END TideFans.shop & item link \-->
<p style= Purchases made through our TideFans.shop and Amazon.com links may result in a commission being paid to TideFans.