Ossuary at Verdun

[phil andrade]

Yanks in the Ossuary ?

Not likely ; although it's possible, of course.

The great US push was in the Argonne. There is a huge American military cemetery there - fifteen thousand plus burials. When I visited it I was struck by the relatively small proportion of unidentified dead ; there was, IIRC, a memorial commemorating the names of the missing....again, a relatively small number.

This reflects the difference between the later 1918 fighting and the earlier battles. The loss of life in the final battles was huge, but the proportion of unrecovered and unidentified dead was small compared with the static battles of 1915-16-17, or the earlier fighting of spring and early summer 1918, when the Allies were pushed back and abandoned their dead.

The monstrous number in the Ossuary at Verdun reflects the nature of the earlier static fighting, when the ground and the dead it contained were pulverised by relentless artillery fire on a static front.

There might have been American volunteers at Verdun in 1916, if the Foreign Legion fought there ( Alan Seeger died on the Somme).

But US dead in the Ossuary from the later 1918 battles ? I would be very surprised.

Phil (PJA)

[seaforths]

I am still following this thread with great interest and have learned so very much. Especially with regard to the recovery of the German men. I would like to submit the following taken from a co-authored book (published in 1923)by two captains of the 6th Bn. Seaforth Hrs. They took over the Labyrinth sector from the 78th Regiment of the French in March 1916. The author writing this particular piece is Capt. Peel:

'...Over the whole area the French and Germans had been engaged in heavy hand-to-hand fighting during 1915, and as each side gained a little advantage fresh trenches were dug and consolidated, probably only to be abandoned later when a counter-attack redressed the balance. Consequently one found derelict trenches leading off in all directions, guarded with hastily erected belts of wire and in many cases full of decomposed corpses, both German and French.'

The second reference to this book is after the battalion arrived in France at the beginning of May 1915 and his comments here are made at the end of May:

'...After marching up to the trenches, we started our unpleasant task, which consisted of collecting and burying the dead, which lay behind the front line. The corpses had been lying out in the hot sun for the last week or more, and the horrible charnel-house reek which pervaded everything was a sore trial to the squeamish...'

The reason I include the above is twofold. Firstly his use of 'charnel-house' is the first in the book but it is also used in later incidents in the book when making reference to the presence of the dead. When I read the book originally, I wasn't quite sure what a charnel-house was and looked it up. I did surmise from the context it was in that it was some sort of vault or crypt where bodies might be found. Today I decided to look into that further: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/08/2013/the-rothwell-charnel-chapel-and-ossuary-project So one example of some that I found of a charnel-house/ossuary in England. Bearing in mind the invasion of 1066 it could be said that the ossuary was something that came over from France but gradually its use ceased in Britain. It might have already been in existence pre Norman conquest and the English term for it was charnel-house. My point also being that Capt. Peel seemed to know what the 'reek' of a charnel-house was. Certainly the article in the link suggests that particular site was still on-going in its construction in the 16th century. However, it could be that the vocabulary usage existed for longer than exposure to such places.

Forgive me if I seem to be raising points that people already know but this is all very educational for me and perhaps this information might also be new to some of those following this post with as much interest as I am.

[phil andrade]

In this case, surely, the " charnel-house" is a metaphor for the horrors of the battlefield.

A name that sticks with us long after the usage of such places apply to [british] culture.

Phil (PJA)

[seaforths]

They don't (imo) apply it in that context. When used in the book it refers to the smell (reek) of the bodies being the same as that of a charnel-house. The other point I was trying to make was that the words ossuary and charnel-house are no longer part of our vocabulary as though they never existed at all. I do agree that the vocabulary use could have continued long after the demise of the places themselves and said that too 'However, it could be that the vocabulary usage existed for longer than exposure to such places.'

We are so far removed from their existence through the passage of time that they are now alien to us and our culture but nevertheless they remained in use in mainland Europe. Possibly this was because of the Catholic influences there. As you will see from the article, they largely stopped being used because of the Reformation (being linked to Catholicism) and they were revived a little afterwards but for whatever reason, they seemed to cease in their usage in our country. They may not have been so alien to our ancestors several generations ago.

It must have also been known at the time, the bones contained in the WW1 ossuaries were not solely French.I doubt that any French from that era that had witnessed the horror of the war would be naïve enough to think otherwise but as I also said in a much earlier post, it may have helped some people to deal with their grief by denial of the truth and choosing to believe they were only French.

[Christina Holstein]

The Foreign Legion cleared Cumieres in 1917 but I don't know if they had Americans with them. I would also doubt whether any American casualties from the 1918 fighting lie in the Ossuary but as the left flank of their Meuse-Argonne front crossed the Haumont-Bois des Caures sector, I suppose it's possible. I'd certainly expect men from the French colonies to be in the Ossuary.

Chris - interesting comments from your vets. There are plenty of Algerian War vets in the Verdun area too. As for the Mayor, I haven't heard of the trademark attempt but if he's called Arsène Lux, it's the same man.

Christina

[Fattyowls]

Just to amplify Christina's point the right flank of the AEF's operation to clear the St Mihiel salient was just to the east of Verdun around Watronville and Haudiomont no more than about 7 miles from the ossuary. As I remember the French retained control of the Verdun battlefield throughout which necessitated the whole US force being transferred across the French lines of communication to take up their positions ready for the offensive we now know as the Meuse-Argonne. The transfer was organised by a chap called George Marshall. I wonder what became of him?

I do remember reading that on the 11th November American, German and French troops met around a bonfire built at the Daumloup high battery. I suspect this was from Horne but I could be wrong.

Pete.

[Christina Holstein]

I think it is from Horne but I wonder how true it is. When German soldiers approaches Americans in the Azannes/Chaumont sector on the night of 11th September, they weren't welcomed. I can't imagine French officers at Verdun allowing fraternisation like that.

Christina

[phil andrade]

Seventy thousand German dead in the Verdun Ossuary, then.

Seventy thousand !

Remember that the Germans prefer not to have their dead interred thus.

They were reconciled to their mass graves, under their own aegis, in their own national cemeteries.

Forty five thousand recovered for burial in their biggest Great War cemeteries. Nine hundred thousand for the entire Western Front, with the obvious corollary that hundreds of thousands more were not recovered.

But seventy thousand in one single ossuary ?

I sound obdurate, don't I ?

Forgive me, but it just doesn't sound right.

I hope you don't mind me saying this, egbert, because you've worked hard and really made a superb contribution.....but something just doesn't " click" here.

I wonder if the French have told the Germans that it's a fait accompli, done too soon after the war for the Germans to do anything about it, and that, in effect, they must " get over it" , and that the Germans have resigned themselves to it.

Seventy thousand of their men dumped in that one place ? It's so out of character.

Perhaps I'm the one who needs to get over it !

Phil (PJA)

[healdav]

Seventy thousand German dead in the Verdun Ossuary, then.

Seventy thousand !

Remember that the Germans prefer not to have their dead interred thus.

They were reconciled to their mass graves, under their own aegis, in their own national cemeteries.

Forty five thousand recovered for burial in their biggest Great War cemeteries. Nine hundred thousand for the entire Western Front, with the obvious corollary that hundreds of thousands more were not recovered.

But seventy thousand in one single ossuary ?

I sound obdurate, don't I ?

Forgive me, but it just doesn't sound right.

I hope you don't mind me saying this, egbert, because you've worked hard and really made a superb contribution.....but something just doesn't " click" here.

I wonder if the French have told the Germans that it's a fait accompli, done too soon after the war for the Germans to do anything about it, and that, in effect, they must " get over it" , and that the Germans have resigned themselves to it.

Seventy thousand of their men dumped in that one place ? It's so out of character.

Perhaps I'm the one who needs to get over it !

Phil (PJA)

I think its quite reasonable. The battlefield clearers find a body, more likely a part of a body. Are they going to say, "I wonder whether this is a gallant Frenchman or one of those dastardly Germans. Were the French ever in this trench?" Hardly. It's a body, no marks to be found that say which nationality it was, so put it in the cemetery, ossuary, mass grave, that is being used today.

That's what I would do, and I sure what anyone else would do when faced with half a million bodies.

[phil andrade]

In the Ossuary Notre Dame de Lorette, there are twenty thousand dead interred : Frenchmen, supposedly, with clearly defined numbers for each of the several buildings which comprise it.

Nearby, there are about forty five thousand German dead in a massive cemetery.

This Artois battlefield was as bad a killing ground as any.

Yet there is separation here ....it is not claimed that the ossuary is for thousands of Germans, too.

Why the difference ? Does date of construction and progress of battlefield clearance account for it ?

Phil (PJA)

[egbert]

Phil it is amazing to realize that you object the undisputed facts, researched by the most renowned and accepted German/French historians, who work for museum and government projects to include for the centenary projects. .

I cannot help you further!

I was extremely pleased to get into real contact, (no associate response) with Prof Krumeich. Since that contact we have further email contact on this matter and I have learned a lot and accept the findings of French-German historians on Verdun matters. Krumeich is executive member of the Historial de la Grande Guerre de Perronne. The French government called him into a French committee for the centenary and such. In the email contacts I have learned by the way that he was the speaker at the occasion of the French-German setting of the flags on top of Ft.Douaumont in June 2010 .

Do you think he and other historians who are in the public eye can afford to report nonsense or lies?

Give me a break please.

The answers on your repeat questions are all given in my previous postings.

You still cannot believe that out of some 155.000 dead in the ossuaire some 70.000 (by googling today, I even found the number 70.000 to 80.000) are German?

The hottest battle in Verdun took place from 21.2.1916 until 18.12 1916 (some say 15.12.), Historians say that some 30-40 tons of iron per square-meter fell down on the Verdun battlefield, a total of some 700.000 dead was the result of a 10 months man-slaughter. There were no front line trenches, no no-man's-land there were shell hole positions that varied by the hour. The troop reinforcements or replacements stumbled from hole to hole into enemy lines because the front line was fluent and unrecognizable, it was a total mess of shell holes only. It was not an orderly line of trench or shell holes but an irregular patchwork of shell holes occupied by the living and the dead. Over time the dead were grinded 100times by the artillery until they were crushed to nothing. Those dead who stayed recognizable as former human beings rotted for a total of 2.5 years buried by follow-on artillery duels and uncovered by them, bleached in the sun, ate by rats until incognizable.

You cannot imagine that 155.000 dead in form of their bare bones were collected of whom half are German?

For the ossuaire, Prof Krumeich by the way today campaigns to the French authorities and the museum/ossuaire executives to erect an entry- plaque that says something like "La moitié des soldats dont les os sont rassemblés dans cet ossuaire sont des soldats allemands, rip", For me the only thing that counts is REMEMBRANCE and RECOGNITION of the souls lying in the ossuaire. you can do that without national symbols. But denying the German dead in the ossuaire, what you do Phil, is killing them a second time.

[Seadog]

"La moitié des soldats dont les os sont rassemblés dans cet ossuaire sont des soldats allemands, rip",

Meaning what, sorry but I do not speak French

Norman

[healdav]

"La moitié des soldats dont les os sont rassemblés dans cet ossuaire sont des soldats allemands, rip",

Meaning what, sorry but I do not speak French

Norman

Half of the soldiers whose bones are assembled here, were German soldiers.

[phil andrade]

Phil it is amazing to realize that you object the undisputed facts, researched by the most renowned and accepted German/French historians, who work for museum and government projects to include for the centenary projects. .

Give me a break please.

The hottest battle in Verdun took place from 21.2.1916 until 18.12 1916 (some say 15.12.), Historians say that some 30-40 tons of iron per square-meter fell down on the Verdun battlefield, a total of some 700.000 dead

There you are . You speak of 700,000 dead. No. Seven hundred thousand casualties....there is a big difference : about thirty per cent of them were dead.

Verdun is so notorious that commentators let the figures run away with themselves. They speak of a million dead.

Please do not mistake my attempt to draw attention to such exaggeration as any kind of slight to people, both inside and outside the Ossuary.

This has not been edited as I wanted...it's all in one lump. Sorry.

Phil (PJA)

[egbert]

Phil you are right, I used the figure for casualties for the 10 month campaign. Other sources speak of 800.000 casualties , that includes the wounded, missed, dead and such. I do not know right now the figures for the rest of the war until 1918. Verdun saw more bloody slaughter in 1917.

But it shall not destract from the ossuary fact of ca 155.000 dead entombed from both nations, half of the number are German dead.

Edited for the inclusion of another French source that speaks of 150.000 dead inside the ossuaire. (Wiki says 130.000, other www-sources say 155.000).

[phil andrade]

You speak of 155,000 as the " fact" , egbert. Earlier on it was 130,000. The margin suggests a good deal of guesswork.

I'm not trying to be clever. And I want you to know how much I honour your effort....yes, you have helped me, and I am anxious to express thanks.

You can understand, I'm sure, that I am bewildered at the difference between this battlefield and other ones when it comes to the dominance of the ossuary.

As far as I can tell, there is no other where the dead of the two sides are mingled as promiscuously as they are said to be at Douamont.

I have to ask you to forgive me here....I have my doubts about the actual number of dead interred, and as to how far they are divided in roughly equal measure.

There are other places on the Western Front where fighting raged with equal intensity, and where hundreds of thousands died. In none of these places, as far as I know, were German dead " ossuarified" ( forgive the word ) on the grand scale. No...Menen with nearly fifty thousand German soldiers buried and the Notre Dame de Lorette with forty five thousand....these attest the determination to secure a separate burial ground for German nationals, even if this entailed mass graves.

You say that I am killing the German dead of Verdun twice by implying this. I invite you to reconsider.

You are angry with me for challenging the statements of academics, government officials and worthies associated with museums. Let me say that I have encountered all too many such people who have made outrageous statistical errors, or willingly accepted the presumptions of others.

Sometimes these errors assume scandalous dimensions.

Please try and understand my point of view ; if you can't understand it, please try and respect it.

Phil (PJA)

[Christina Holstein]

I've always wondered how anyone knows how many men are in the Ossuary. One reads the figure of 130,000 all the time but I've never seen an explanation for it. How do they know? Are they counting skulls? How else could you do it? Every group I guide at Verdun asks me how they know and I have no idea. I shall have to ask them next time I'm there.

Christina

[Christina Holstein]

This link http://www.lesfrancaisaverdun-1916.fr/histo-verdun-bilan.htm has a lot of information about the Ossuary and some interesting photos, including a truly awful heap of bones. I'm sorry it's all in French. In the paragraph just above the picture of coffins being transferred to the permanent Ossuary it says: "The fifty two coffins, representing the remains of 130,000 French and German combattants, are carried in procession to the forty six chambers in the Ossuary."

'Representing' is an odd word but I suppose it means that the coffins symbolically represent complete remains. So I suppose that means they were counting skulls.

The beginning of the article gives figures for French and German casualties and I've been looking into these today. To my surprise, every resource I've looked at gives more or less the same figures and the following come from Verdun 1916 by General Allain Bernède. I'll go with his as he was military governor of Verdun not so long ago and he does meticulous research. They're pretty close to those at the top of the article.

Overall casualties in the order of 713,000.

Of these French casualties amount to 378,000 and include 61,000 killed, 101,000 missing and 216,000 wounded.

German casualties amount to 335,000 and include approximately 140,000 killed and missing. He gives no figure for wounded, for some reason, although the article mentions 190,000 German wounded.

I'm always being asked how many French soldiers were killed at Verdun because people believe it runs into hundreds of thousands. I have to admit to conflating the figures for killed and missing. I certainly didn't realise that the figure was as low as it was. Must do better in future.

Christina

[phil andrade]

Christina,

It has been suggested that the 130,000 is a gross exaggeration.

It is certainly a disproportionately high number compared with ossuaries on other battlefields.

The 61,000 confirmed French killed at Verdun in the 1916 battle needs to be increased by a large number to allow for a significant proportion of the missing who were also dead. Of the 101,000 missing, the greater number were taken prisoner ; the Germans claiming more than 65,000 by mid July. My guess is that thirty per cent of the missing were dead. There were additional men among the 216,000 who died from their wounds. All in all, I think that thirty per cent of the 378,000 French casualties in the battle were killed or died from wounds : somewhere around 115,000 strikes me as a plausible figure.

Using the same criteria as those above for the Germans produces a figure of about 95,000 killed and died from wounds in the 1916 battle. Their killed were somewhat fewer than those of the French ; they lost more wounded, though. The French claimed 26,500 prisoners, the great majority taken in October to December.

I find it hard to reconcile these figures with the supposed 130,000 in the ossuary, even allowing for the heavy loss of life in 1914 and 1917.

I have been reluctant to state this until now, because people get angry.

If the figure of 130,000 - or 155,000 by egbert's reckoning - is valid, I would like to know the whys and wherefores of Verdun's differentiation from other battlefields that resulted in such an inordinately large ossuary.

Phil (PJA)

[SiegeGunner]

Was literally every bone and skeletal fragment recovered from the battlefield deposited in the Ossuary, however small or damaged?

[Christina Holstein]

Bones are to be found on the battlefield today, so clearly not every bone was collected. As for tiny fragments, I wouldn't have thought that the burial parties bothered to collect them as they had such a huge task on their hands, but Mgr Ginisty's men might have done.

Phil - you're right that a proportion of the missing would also be dead. I was just struck by the figure of 61,000, as people ask me how many French soldiers were killed. While one can never be sure, it's useful to have an official figure.

The point I should have made about the quotation from the linked article above is that it repeats the same information as is found in every document I have about the Ossuary and the wording is always identical. I conclude that they all copy from an original document but I don't know what it is or when it was written so I can't check the source or the evidence. I'll ask in the Ossuary next time I'm there. Perhaps the answer lies with Souvenir Francais.

Christina

Christina

[phil andrade]

Alistair Horne wrote that Verdun was the Great War in microcosm.

The mythology of the conflict is amplified when it comes to Verdun : and I believe that to be true of its statistics.

Barbara Tuchman alludes to it as the ultimate exemplar of the slaughter that we associate with the war :she alludes to one million dead in the battle.

To a degree, I suspect, this applies to the Ossuary, too.

Once the place becomes a symbol of the supra- national, or Pan European agenda, the attempt to discern the difference between popular, prevailing folklore and reality runs up against a barrier....one feels almost like a sixteenth century protestant facing the Inquisition.

Your reaction to the official figure of 61,000 French killed is understandable and widespread, Christina.

It's surprising how low a proportion of an official casualty list is classified as confirmed killed in action : sometimes fewer than ten per cent are classified thus, when in reality the real number of deaths is much greater, when the missing and the died of wounds are taken into account.

Three hundred thousand French soldiers died in 1914. September was the month with the highest casualties. The official number of French killed in that month is 19,000. Enough said.

Phil (PJA)

[andalucia]

Would not the regiments of all sides have kept records of their men, and of those who died/missing during fighting. Would these not give a rough figure of the amount that died.

Great thread by the way, learning me a lot.

[phil andrade]

Those fifty two coffins that were deposited in the official opening of the Ossuary were supposed to "" represent" one hundred and thirty thousand dead.....see the link that Christina sent us.

Is it plausible that the fifty two coffins each contained, on average, the remains of 2,500 men ? That, if my arithmetic is correct, is what one hundred and thirty thousand divided by fifty two comes to.

There is a nuanced emphasis on the word " represent", I suppose.

Editing : Do I misunderstand the French, or have I failed to see something to contradict....?

There is mention of more than five hundred bodies being recovered every month for several years. Six hundred a month ? That brings a yield of 7,200 annually....several times that number might bring us to thirty five or forty thousand....maybe even more than fifty thousand. There is something very notional about this legendary one hundred and thirty thousand.

I would be ignorant - and arrogant - to dismiss it out of hand ; but I trust my circumspection is merited, to say the least.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

From Ian Ousby's The Road to Verdun, page 268 :

In 1916 Verdun had been a charnel house, as the troops often put it ; after the war a charnel house, literally, was needed. In the 1920s the bones were gathered from the soil and placed in the crypt of the gigantic Ossuaire built on the site of the Ferme de Thiaumont, not far from where the Fort de Douaumont still stands. The number of these anonymous dead runs perhaps to 75,000 , perhaps to 150,000 , depending on which tourist brochure or guide book you read. Most of them remember to specify that all the bones are French.

Thank Goodness I've managed to find something to lend some support to my heretical contentions !

Phil (PJA)