Tag: Montfaucon

Entering Cote 304

Cote 304, Verdun France

May 3: Finding my way to Cote 304

I could see the approach of Cote 304 because a grove of Australian pines was nearing. The worst areas devastated by the war were reforested in the 1930s with Australian pines. It would take over three to four centuries for nature to fully recover the area. That evidence was clear wherever I went from Fort Vaux to Le Mort Homme where the artillery had broken the ground and shattered the subsoil.

The car turned onto a narrow lane that meandered through a forest of green conifers, which held back the sun and cast darkness onto the wood line floor. We approached the summit and circled around a tall monolith memorial. Marc and I got out of the car and I walked over to the woods at Cote 304. The ground was pocked and cratered by the bombs and ammunition that had blasted devastation into the ground. There was a dirt road cutting into the wood line. The stronger voice inside me whispered, “Go there.” I walked into the wood line aware of the magnitude of death that saturated the soil, knowing each step I took at Cote 304 was on the battleground where the living had fallen dead.

I stood there, feeling like a living sacrifice, with my hand up near my face. I could feel my breath on my hand. I could feel my face against my hand. I needed this sensory connection to life. As I stood there, the wind whispered through the pines. My eyes noticed the ground was blanketed in pine needles. Green moss grew in patches. Weeds grew in other places. There was life on the wood line floor. Although it looked dark from the road, I realized there were shafts of light streaming in the wood line. The wood line wasn’t filled with death. I stood on the ground of Cote 304. I wanted to remember and feared that my memory would forget. I took two pictures, and then regretted the noise from the shutter clicks. The woods deserved silence. I decided not to make any more noise on the ground where so many thousands of soldiers had died.

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They lived. They loved. They have a story to tell

Remember
You are the hands of the present generation.
You hold the hands of a future generation.
You hold the hands of past generations, some now departed, and they in turn held the hands of older generations.
Hearts that once beat with life still beat in remembrance. 

It is All Souls’ Day, a day not recognized through the spring and early summer of my life.  Since writing the words above as the Foreword of Resurgam – Standing on the Ground of Remembrance in 2008, there have been the departures of older generations and the arrivals of younger generations.

Now it’s a day with meaning, a day to pause, to remember them and reflect on all those hands and hearts that once walked on this earth and cultivated the ground in so many loving ways. All the unseen actions that went unrecognized yet made a difference in the future, which has become the present. 

To honor them and remember them, I’m sharing “Stones Unknown,” about finding peace in the most unexpected place. The inspiration (not surprisingly) was a stone.  This is a chapter from the revised story—The Ground of Remembrance—the fruit received through cycles of seasons from the hearts and hands of older generations. As the early story of Resurgam goes, “They lived. They loved. They have a story to tell.” I have been listening and learning. This small, yet new chapter took 25 years of learning how to listen and trust my heart. It is the beginning.  My heart overflows with gratitude for a gift from past generations that continues to grow.

Read: Stones Unknown

Background: A photograph of a solitary soldier standing on a hill of ruins captured my attention in 2013. (Hill of Loss) Something was familiar. The caption revealed the location: “A solitary American soldier looks at a ruined church on the crest of Montfaucon, France, after the town was captured.” I had been to there! My guide took me to Montfaucon on my way to Cote 304. That discovery and the journey inspired a new chapter of fiction, Stones Unknown in 2022.

From the book “RESURGAM – Standing on the Ground of Remembrance” – the discovery of Montfaucon, France (and the Center for Peace):

(c) 2022 Jean Niedert, an excerpt from “The Ground of Remembrance”

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Pax (peace) in Montfaucon

It’s a notable discovery when a single nugget of information ‘suddenly’ transforms a place. This summer I found a new connection to an old story. Turns out there was a Benedictine monastery in Montfaucon, France. It was destroyed in World War I although some church ruins remain.

There would have been a main entrance to the grounds of the former Benedictine monastery founded in the 6th century. Over the archway would have been the message: Pax intrantibus—Peace to those who enter here. (Or perhaps just Pax.)

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