![]() ![]() This means that after simply having been selected as mayor for the past decade, Charles Saint-Vannes will actually face his first proper election in 2014. Though the village proper was destroyed and has not been rebuilt, there are now a few people who live just outside the "red zone" within its bounds. The village of Ornes, on the other hand, is located on the very edge of the “red zone” and part of its territory spills over to the other side. Being designated a mayor has also become a family tradition for some, passed down from grandparents to children or grandchildren.įrancois-Xavier Long, a doctor from Verdun, became Mayor of Louvemont after proving his great interest in history and military medicine. For the most part, family history and a sense of attachment to the villages is the reason for a mayor’s selection. To be designated as the mayor of one of these villages, “candidates” must send a letter to the local authorities, explaining why they want the post. But nonetheless they are still administered by unelected mayors, who are chosen by local authorities after a law was passed in 1919, symbolically maintaining their administrative existence. The area was later designated a “red zone” meaning that any construction or digging was prohibited, since the ground had been left filled with tons of leftover shells and ammunition, as well as bodies of those who died.Īfter the war, it was decided that the villages should not be rebuilt, and most have remained without any inhabitants. The bombings sculpted the landscape, pockmarking the ground with craters. Most houses were completely destroyed their former locations are now marked only by signs. People say that each square meter of the battlefield was hit by a shell and the village of Fleury alone was struck by 90,000 tons of bombs in one day, according to its mayor. It is very hard when you arrive in the area now to have any idea of what the countryside looked like before the war. An estimated 300,000 French and German soldiers were killed and over 450,000 were injured. German troops did not come through, but nine villages had been utterly wiped out. Ten months of fighting saw German and French troops being pushed back and forwards, and by December 1916 the French had retaken almost all the territory that had been lost. A charity named “The Western Front Association” writes that during the initial stage of the Battle of Verdun, Germany fired more than a million shells. On Februthey started the assault with a huge bombardment. The city was fringed by hills – hills in which a network of forts were built to protect the border.ĭuring the First World War, the Germans wanted to make a massive attack on a target that had great historic significance for the French, and they thought that weakening France around Verdun could change the face of the war. It was also one of the most murderous.Īfter the 1870-71 war between France and Prussia, which ended with the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the Germans, Verdun was at the eastern edge of France. ![]() The Battle of Verdun in northeastern France was the longest battle of the so-called Great War, lasting some ten months from February to December 1916. It is a time of local elections, and it is also the hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War. The year 2014 brings together the past and the future for France. "It is very hard when you arrive in the area now to have any idea of what the countryside looked like before the war."
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