VERDUN

Verdun can be a sad place that seems to bear the heavy weight of French nationhood on its shoulders. You don't have to venture far among the wooded heights overlooking the city to find traces of one of the 20th century's most notorious and bloody battles. The hills and forests around Verdun are still strewn with trenches, craters, bunkers and the hulks of once-mighty ruined fortresses which formed part of the French defensive cordon around the city.

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Among these relics of 1916 stands Fort Douaumont, the largest fortification at Verdun, and the small Fort Vaux where Major Raynal's garrison withstood a terrible siege for a week under appalling conditions. At the centre of the battlefield is a huge French military cemetery with over 15,000 graves and the haunting Douaumont Ossuary which holds the remains of thousands more fallen soldiers, both French and German, in the crypt beneath the chapel.