Day 24 - War Memorial and Cemetery in Verdun

Today we travelled from our beautiful hotel in Vinay to Strasbourg. On the way we made a poignant stop at Verdun, the site of the heroic French stand in the First World War. The building in the background is an ossary and memorial tower. The lower floor of the ossary contains the bones of soldiers collected after the end of the war, apparently from 110, 000 dead soldiers. The cemetery on this site contains 15,000 graves.
In 1870 Verdun was German territory so in 1916 they aimed to reclaim it. The horrendous battle was waged over 10 months with the French repelling the attack. The total loss of life was 300,000.
I found the visit quite depressing.