Bakhmut and the spirit of Verdun

A hollowcrater bright with wild flowers marks the spot where the little village school used to stand. Another, the former bakery. Today, on the ridge above Verdun in eastern France, buttercups and clover waft in the breeze where shrapnel, blood and ground flesh once scarred the soil. Swallows dart to and fro. During the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the village of Fleury-devant-Douaumont swapped hands over a dozen times, as French and German troops bombarded each other in a pitiless war of attrition to advance the front line. By the end of the battle, one of the bloodiest of the first world war, the French had lost 163,000 men and the Germans 143,000; the front line scarcely budged.The unimaginable slaughter, in a small place of little renown, came to mark an existential struggle against an imperialist aggressor. In the French mind, Verdun stands for resistance and honour, sacrifice and unity. It was at Verdun in 1984, before the cemetery, that François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, then French president and German chancellor, held hands in a gesture that became emblematic of Franco-German reconciliation and peace in Europe.