In the years after the war, a local bishop wandered through fields of bones - the remains of about 130,000 unidentified soldiers. The nearby Douaumont Ossuary is the tomb of unknown French and German soldiers who perished in Verdun's muddy trenches. On the battlefield nearby, a young French officer named Charles de Gaulle was wounded he spent the next 32 months as a German POW. From the perch at the top, looking out at fields leading to Germany and imagining the carnage in that horrible battle is an unforgettable experience. The massive central gun turret was state-of-the-art in 1905, antiquated in 1915, and essentially useless by the time the war arrived in 1916. Visitors can also climb to the bombed-out top of the fort to see the round, iron gun emplacements that could rise and revolve. Visitors today can experience these corridors, where soldiers were forced to live like moles, scurrying through two miles of cold, damp hallways. Soldiers were protected by a thick layer of sand (to muffle explosions) and a wall of concrete five to seven feet thick. Built on top of and into the hillside, it ultimately served as a strategic command center for both Germany and France at various times. Constructed in 1885, the fort was the most important stronghold among 38 hilltop fortifications that protected France from a German invasion. On both sides, most men died without ever seeing the enemy.Īnother key sight for visitors is Fort Douaumont, just northeast of Verdun. I found out that the majority of injuries in this battle weren't caused by machine-gun bullets, but by shrapnel: Every time an artillery shell exploded, jagged bits of the shell's casing sprayed like buckshot. You can learn about medical help in the trenches and leaps in technology (from X-ray machines to machine guns with synchronized firing, which prevented bullets from hitting airplane propeller blades). In one part of the museum, a battlefield replica - complete with mud, shells, trenches, and WWI military equipment - is visible through the glass floor. The museum is rich in artifacts and works to pair German and French objects for example, you'll see a circa 1916 loaded-up German rucksack right next to a French one. To get a good overview, start at the Verdun Memorial Museum, which delivers gripping exhibits about the battle (with lots of information in English). You can ride through the eerie moguls left by the incessant shelling, pause at melted-sugar-cube forts, ponder plaques marking spots where towns once existed, and visit a vast cemetery. From here it's possible to see (with a guided tour, rental car, shuttle bus, or taxi) the most important sights and appreciate the horrific scale of the battle. A string of battlefields can be found along an eight-mile stretch of road outside the town of Verdun. Plenty of rusty battle remnants and memorials are still accessible.

Today, the traces of war are buried under thick forests, the soldiers' vast network of communication trenches overgrown - and haunted by their ghosts. The longest single battle of World War I, it left the landscape barren for decades. It was here in 1916 that roughly 300,000 lives were lost in what's known as the Battle of 300 Days and Nights. Perhaps the most powerful WWI sightseeing experience is located about 140 miles east of Paris at the battlefields of Verdun. While there are no more survivors to share their stories first-hand, WWI sights and memorials scattered across Europe, especially in France and Belgium, do their best to keep the devastation from fading from memory. 'The war to end all wars' - World War I, which cost an estimated 40 million lives - is now more than a century in the past.

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