DESTROYED VILLAGE OF DOUAUMONT

Created in the Gallo-Roman era, the village of Douaumont led a simple and peaceful rural life until 1884 on its heights overlooking both the Woëvre plain to the east and the Meuse valley to the west.

From 1885, its population of 192 suddenly increased to 576 with the arrival of a large number of construction workers, mainly Italians, tasked with building Fort Douaumont. This influx of people led to the development of numerous small businesses, contributing to the village’s real prosperity.

On the eve of the 14-18 war, it still had 288 inhabitants, including many military personnel.

During 1915, the French high command lost confidence in the effectiveness of fortifications against new types of munitions, such as the torpedo shell, which had proven effective early in the war against Belgian forts. They decided to partially disarm their forts, including Fort Douaumont.

During the major German offensive in February 1916, Fort Douaumont remained a serious and symbolic target for the German high command, who captured it on February 25 without significant resistance.

Conversely, the village of Douaumont itself underwent heavy bombardment and deadly assaults from late February until March 2, 1916, falling alongside many French soldiers and officers.

It was during this battle that Captain Charles de Gaulle, commanding a company of the 33rd Infantry Regiment, was wounded and then taken prisoner in Germany until the end of the war.

On March 4, 1916, the entire ruined village of Douaumont and its fort fell into German hands, subsequently enduring continuous bombardment from French artillery.

The fort, occupied by numerous Germans, experienced a violent explosion on May 8, 1916, when a grenade and flamethrower depot was hit by a shell. This explosion killed over 800 German soldiers. Unable to bury all the bodies near the fort, the German command decided to wall in 679 bodies in a gallery of the fort, which remains the only German necropolis at Verdun today.

On October 24, 1916, the French army, launching a major offensive under General Mangin, managed to retake the ruins of the village and the fort thanks to Moroccan colonial troops engaged in this sector of Douaumont, which remained under French control until the end of the war.

In 1919, Douaumont became part of the list of nine destroyed villages and the infamous “red zone” where reconstruction was prohibited.

However, the territory of the commune of Douaumont was chosen, between the wars, to host not only its war memorial in 1926 and its Saint-Hilaire shelter chapel, inaugurated in 1932, but especially the large national necropolis created in 1925, above which the impressive Douaumont Ossuary was built and inaugurated on September 18, 1927. This was initiated by Monsignor Ginisty, Bishop of Verdun, who wished to provide a more dignified final resting place for the remains of soldiers gathered from the battlefield of Verdun.

Douaumont and its ossuary became an even stronger symbolic place when, on September 22, 1984, Mr. Kohl and Mr. Mitterrand, hand in hand, marked the reality of Franco-German reconciliation in front of the ossuary.

To see:

• The chapel
• Saint-Hilaire Shelter
• The war memorial
• Fort Douaumont
• The ossuary
• The national necropolis