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A few months ago, I was visiting this old house in the countryside near Agen (100km from Toulouse) that a friend couple had just purchased and intended to rebuild. Lovely place, nice land, few houses around. There was really only one house close to theirs, and their neighbour (from that very house) invited us three over to his place to visit his house.

He showed us his 300+ year old cedar trees which were planted at the time his house was built (apparently this was a tradition back then), gave my friends some tips on what to do, what not to do in terms of rebuilding such an old house in that particular area. He then took us inside and around this house, which was a 17th century bourgeois house, and which actually even looked like one on the inside (he had assembled  furniture and curtains etc in 17th century fashion, which isn't really my idea of nice decoration (too much glitter!), but which nevertheless as a whole gave the place a harmonious look).

At one point, while going through some passageway, we stopped in front of some antiques on a shelf. "We" meaning: the neighbour (who was 55+ years old), my male friend (35), and my female friend and I (30). I asked if I could pick up this particular antique up to observe it, the neighbour didn't object. It was a certificate of participation in the battle of Verdun. The neighbour then told us that it had belonged to his grand-father who had fought at Verdun and picked up a life-long limp there from schrapnel. My male friend then said "all my great-grand fathers fought in Verdun but luckily survived unharmed", to which I added "3 of my great-grand fathers fought in Verdun [the 4th was too young], one was blinded, another had all sorts of life-long health complications due to schrapnel, and the last one was also wounded with schrapnel but suffered no after-effects". Then we suddenly all seemed to realize, simultaneously, that something incredible had just happened. We all turned towards my female friend (my male friend's wife, for those who haven't been following), who is German. She said in a soft voice: "I don't know about all my great-grand fathers, but I know that one of them died at Verdun from a sniper bullet".

And it suddenly struck us ... nearly 90 years later, here we were, all connected to this dreadful battle, celebrating the house purchase of a young Franco-German couple. It was moving for a short instant, we were all sort of dumb-struck. Not for the "coincidental" part (believe me, no coincidence anyhow on the French side, as every single French unit fought in Verdun [troop rotations were very frequent due to the sheer trauma suffered on the battlefront], which means that nearly every single family has an ancestor who fought there). But the part about it being absolutely trivial/normal for a French man and a German woman to be married today, knowing that maybe their ancestors shot, gassed, knifed, drowned each other 90 years ago in muddy trenches.

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Of ancestors, I only know that one of my great-grand fathers who fought there, would always burst into sudden tears any time anyone mentioned the war (Basil Fawlty would have been his worst nightmare). I never met him, my mom told me this ... that even in his old age he would still burst into tears whenever someone mentioned the war. Imagine that, 60 years later and the trauma was still just as strong.

I was also recently shown some old documents that my grandfather had kept from his father (another one of my great-grand fathers who fought at Verdun, among other places). He had been in the telegraph unit, and I found all these "glorious" medals (Légion d'Honneur etc) and Citations de l'Armée about all the mad things he did (quote: "ran under constant shelling for three days straight to check the lines, fix the lines" - it's still running in the family blood, I hate it when my internet connection runs dry). There was even a piece of schrapnel that had been extracted from his body several years after the war!! But what struck me most, is this letter that he wrote to his general in Dec 1916, asking where his brother was ("having received no news from my brother, I would be grateful to know if there is any information that you can provide me with on his disappearance"). And the general's reply: "Our study gave us no indication as to the exact circumstances which accompanied your brother's disappearance. Some people from his section who were captured confirmed that he disappered during the night of August 3rd to August 4th, during the attacks on the village of Fleury" (ie. a village just outside Verdun). That's it. You just never get to see your brother again, and you have no idea what happened to him (probably under 3 feet of mud, somewhere). I found it immensely sad.

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I would argue that the battle of Verdun was one of the most important events in modern European history. Had Verdun fallen (and it's absolutely astonishing that it didn't, at times the whole battle boiled down to one person holding one entire trench to himself with a machine gun, given how outnumbered, outgunned, unprepared, undisciplined, and outflanked the French were - nota bene: I am only saying this regarding the beginning of the battle), Germany would have won the war by easily reaching Paris. A lot of countries would have then toned down the war rhetoric, even on the Eastern front, after the capitulation of France. The Kaiser would not have been removed after the war. WWII may not have occurred, the Cold War may not have occurred, the European Union may never have existed ... the colonies may never have been let free. God knows what the Empire of Japan would have done ... The world would have been anyhow entirely different.

A final word: I read some figures in the other thread here on ET, ie. the one I missed (Verdun remembered), and noticed that something important had been left out: what makes Verdun a horrible battle is not just the number of casualties (I see that some people were quick to mention that Stalingrad in WWII was far worse in that department, and besides the battle of the Somme in WWI was even more murderous than Verdun) ... but also the fact that they occurred over such a tiny area of land (slightly less than 10 kilometers squared!!). Over the course of the battle every meter of the battlefield received 1000 shells! That's 5 shells on every square meter, every day. There was just nowhere to hide, nowhere to stay.

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