On 2014-07-25 10:12 AM, Nancy Young wrote:

>> As you drive along past all those rows of
>> crosses it is quite mesmerizing.
>
> Seemed like it went on forever, whichever way you looked.

It has an interesting effect of spokes rotating as you drive along.
>
>> This cemetery is about 25 miles from Verdun, which saw some of the worst
>> fighting of that war. I was amazed at what I thought was a regular war
>> cemetery with 130,000 markers. It turned to be an ossuary for the
>> remains of the unidentified war dead. There were a lot more war
>> cemeteries in the area.
>
> A real shame all the way around.

It was a battle of attrition that went on for almost a year. More than
two million troops faced each other and there were close to a million
casualties, almost half a million killed in the initial battle.
Throughout the war there was an average of about 3,000 artillery rounds
per day hitting the battlefield. There is hardly a square foot of the
battlefield that is pockmarked with artillery craters.

It makes me cringe to hear people referring to them as cheese eating
surrender monkeys. A lot of men lost their live, and a lot of the
casualties were the result of incompetent commanders. France lost a big
chunk of a generation of young men in that war, as did Britain.