Finding the bones

May 2 (3 of 3): The Ossuary de Douaumont houses the unidentified remains of nearly 130,000 French and German soldiers.

We were herded into an auditorium for a film. When the film ended we climbed to the cloister. The walls were square stone panels and each panel was inscribed with a soldier’s name. I struggled with the cold that wasn’t on my skin but one that had invaded my core. I crossed my arms in front of my body like armor to gain some warmth inside but it was useless. Too many sensations had assaulted my senses in Fort Douaumont. 

The Belgian woman pointed out a stone with five names on it. She relayed the story that the guide told the group. A woman lost her husband and four sons. She would visit the stone daily and told people, “The war took everything. This stone is all I have left of my family.” 

The front doors of the Ossuary were open so I stepped outside. The Ossuary is built on the Thioumont crest and yet on that day, there wasn’t a panorama of rolling hills to see. My view was confined to endless rows of white crosses standing in green grass against a gray velvet cloak of fog. A lighter fog hovered amongst the crosses. It seemed to me that the dead soldiers were there. And they were, their bodies buried in the earth. 

The tour exited through those doors and we took a walk around the outside building to look at the stones carved with the coat of arms of French towns and villages. The Ossuary was built with donations and each coat of arm represented a town that contributed to the construction fund. 

While planning my trip to Verdun, I had read that there were windows in the Ossuary revealing the bones buried within the mausoleum. We found them on the back side of the building. There were small windows near the ground.

I saw the bones of thousands of soldiers. The bones seemed to be separated by body part – mounds of ribs, heaps of vertebrae. In one window there was a skull with a bullet hole.

That skull brought the war home, perhaps because it is easier to recognize a skull as a part of an individual. It was hard to peer at the heaps of ribs and think, “These are the remains of soldiers.” The first impulse was to look at the ribs and say, “That’s a big heap of ribs.”

Then, I had to step back and think, “The rib bones are connected to the back bone.” Once I was thinking, I could build a skeleton in my mind and connect it to an individual. I remember a jaw with teeth. That jaw chewed bread at one time. That jaw moved when the soldier spoke. Again it was easier to connect a person to the jaw. But to look at the piles of bone parts was overwhelming and sad. It was hard to reconcile the sight. 

Humanity was lost in the pile of bones. 

Writer’s Note: Trench of Bayonnets and the evening are not included. May 2 was a long day.