May 2 (2 of 3): It was still raining as we departed the van. The parking lot of Fort Douaumont was a white muddy field. Barbed wire encircled the fort’s perimeter, and green grass covered the surrounding craters. There was a winding path leading up to the top of Fort Douaumont, but we headed down into the entrance door and visitor’s center. My first impression after crossing the fort’s threshold was the stench. It smelled like a rotten Pont l’Eveque cheese. (Pont l’Eveque is a pungent cheese when it’s fresh.)
There was a space heater by the wall in the visitor’s room. I warmed my hands and feet while the tour guide bought tickets for the group. The warmth helped me forget the assaulting odor. We passed through another door and into more dark corridors.
Fort Douaumont was dark. Small stalactites hung from the ceiling and dripped with water. Water also trickled down the walls. The walls were coated in variations of white, grey and black slime. The overhead dripping was so constant that I wanted to pull out my umbrella. The stone floor was puddled with water. There didn’t seem to be an inch of dry ground in this underground fort.
We seemed to be in the center of darkness with only small light bulbs hanging overhead to illuminate our way. Occasionally I would peer into a dark room and see a small hole that revealed the outside world draped in dense fog. We trudged through the corridors, over boards and steel hatches, with the constant drip of water falling down upon us. (Chinese water torture?) My hair and wool jacket were drenched. It was not May in Fort Douaumont. It seemed to be a gray and rainy winter day. I was chilled to the inner bones of my being. All this misery led the Belgian woman and me to think about the soldiers who had lived (or perhaps the better word is existed) here. If we found it so miserable taking the tour, we wondered how it was for them to live in here in these darkened tunnels – especially when you add the constant barrage of bombs, grenades and gunfire, the descending smoke and death from the bombardment above, the emotional stress, the stench of death and the confined quarters of life, and all the other miseries too numerous to mention. During the war, this had to be a pit of hell.
At one point, the tour guide lifted up a hatch and dropped it down to demonstrate how the noise resounded through the corridors. It was deafening and it was only one hatch. Thousands of bombs fell on and around the fort. I could only imagine the constant noises resounding through the rooms and ricocheting off the walls.
We walked to the west end of the fort where we came upon a German chapel. Here was yet another brick wall that became the demarcation between the living and the dead. While the tour guide spoke in French, my eyes took in the German chapel. Red, gold and black ribbons, the colors representing Germany, decorated the stone altar. There was an inscription in German. Flowers rested against the altar. White mold covered some of the flowers and ribbons, and yet some of the aged flowers looked fresh. It reminded me of Miss Habersham’s house in Great Expectations. There was a bank of unlit votives by the altar. Maybe five were lit. I had the intuitive sense that I needed to light a candle but the wimpy part of me reared up, “Oh no! Don’t light a candle for the enemy! What will people think?”
But I knew better this time. Flashes of the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy flooded into my memory.
At Fort Douaumont, I stood in the chapel facing the enemy that was on the other side of the brick wall. It was easy to look at the decay, to feel the bone chill, and forget why I was here. Fear was tugging at my sleeve asking once more “What will people think?” I remained watching the flames from the few votive candles illuminating the darkness.
It has always been my practice to light a candle of remembrance. A choice had to be made. Would I light one for the German WWI soldiers? They too were unknown soldiers. My gaze returned to the bank of mostly unlit votives by the altar. It was so dark. I heard the stronger and wiser call rise up within me, “Do it.”
I began fishing for a five-franc coin, but ended up with a one-Franc coin. I tried again and pulled up another one-Franc coin. I realized this was going to take conviction, and I searched for three more one-Franc coins. I dropped each one with a clink in the metal box that seemed to resound as loudly as when the hatch dropped earlier. I picked up an unlit votive candle and touched the white wick to the flame of one of the few burning candles. I will always remember that white wick igniting with a golden flame cupped with a cobalt blue undercurrent. I placed the glowing candle down and said a prayer of remembrance for the Germans, and for the unknown soldiers, and stood there for a moment looking at the candle’s flame.
In this dark place, it was one small beacon of light.
My awareness expanded, and I noticed my tour group had left. I turned and walked down the dark corridor to find them.
We descended to another level of Douaumont and walked to the east side of the fort, which housed another huge rusted gun. The gun would only fire for the French since they removed a key part when the fort fell to the Germans. Once the French recaptured the fort, they put the part back in the gun, and it fired again. After viewing the gun, we snaked our way through the labyrinth of halls. It was easy to get lost. We took wrong turns, but finally made it back to the visitor’s center. I didn’t pause to buy souvenirs. I wanted to breathe fresh air and walked outside. It was raining and I opened my umbrella. Wading through the stream of white flowing mud, I remembered the quote by the German officer, Erich von Falkenhayn, who said, “I will bleed France white.”
I knew he wasn’t referring to the ground, but at Fort Douaumont, France bleeds white when it rains. Here again, was another bizarre juxtaposition at Verdun. The white runny mud easily transformed, by my imagination, into the crimson blood that covered the ground during the war.
From the book, RESURGAM Standing on the Ground of Remembrance by Jean Niedert
creative meander 
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