Verdun, May 23

After our tour of Strasbourg Cathedral, we drove to the Verdun battlefield. It is poppy season, which is fitting.

On our way, we saw some old bunkers from the Maginot Line out in fields full of what looked like wheat. The bunkers are just there, in the middle of the fields, without anything to mark them. We saw one sign with an arrow that told us we were in the Maginot Line area, so we knew to be on the lookout.

The Maginot Line was a series of defensive bunkers built by the French between the two World Wars to keep the Germans from invading through the south of France as they had during World War I. However, the Germans went through Belgium and completely bypassed the line and took over France in six weeks.

But that's another war.

Verdun is the location of some of the highest number of casualties of the First World War. 

The French built this monument to their fallen, and on both sides, past the bushes you see above, are fields that look like this:

This is where some of the Fremch soldiers who died in the area are buried.

Besides the graves, the area has been largely untouched, and there are trenches, bunkers, forts, and battlefields slowly being grown over by trees and grass.

There are no tour guides or anyone to make sure that you don't get lost in the woods, so you can wander at will, seeing everything at your own pace.

The area set aside for remembrance is huge, and you could explore it all for days, but we were there for only an afternoon.

The French had a railway built into this fort.

The view looking out from the fort. The barbed wire is still there.

Inside of one of the bunkers, which had this tunnel going almost straight down.

Then we got back into the car for the final leg of our journey, to Paris for a few days.