Heroes of Verdun

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 154, 20 September 1927, Page 11

Heroes of Verdun

DOUAUMONT OSSUARY—GREATEST MEMORIAL TO HEROIC SONS OF FRANCE

MASS BURIAL PLAN ’JHE greatest memorial to the heroism of war is the Ossuary at Douaumont, the resting-place of the remains of 380,000 sons of France. It is the opening of the longprojected mausoleum there that was reported in a cable message yesterday. Douamont and Fort Vaux were the strong points guarding Verdun round which the unprecedented inferno raged ia 1916 and 1917. No war records greater horrors or such indomitable courage as that shown during the French defence. Half a million of the contending warriors never left the field. Of these it is estimated that 420,000 Frenchmen were killed, but only 40.000 bodies were identified. It is to commemorate these heroes that the famous Ossuary at E'ouaumont was established and far from enshrining the bodies of only 50 men as the cable message stated yesterday, it contains all the remains that parties were able to gather after the immediate carnage was over. MASS BURIALS Thei question of giving these heroes a fitting commemoration was solved by dividing the battlefield into sectors and placing all the remains from each sector in separate boxes, which were each, labelled and numbered in accordance with its sector, and ranged round the walls of a temporary wooden church.

Toward these boxes folk who had lost their soldiers round Verdun could feel that perhaps some of their bones might be enshrined there, and for them they could have masses said. A picture published on another page shows the boxes round the walls of the temporary church at Douaumont. For ten years there has been building the magnificent mausoleum opened recently in the presence of General Petain, 100 otner generals and two cardinals. Subscriptions have been liberally given both in France and in America, and wealthy tourists have also contributed to the fund. It was planned that the interior walls should be of marble on which would be inscribed the names of lost soldiers and their next of kin. And in niches in the marble walls were to be placed the remains as they had been preserved in the temporary church.