The final in this series on the villages in Meuse destroyed in WW1. This place is the only one of the seven which is on the left bank of the Meuse river.
The village lies under the hill called Le-Mort-Homme where there is a statue to the dead soldiers and celebrating the army’s words "They shall not pass".
After our first visit to Mort Homme, a few years ago, I wrote this poem…
They did not pass
It has been called
Dead Man’s Hill
for centuries.
The name was an apt one
in 1916 during
the Battle of Verdun;
the longest and bloodiest
battle in that dreadful conflict.
Today desiccated leaves
on bare twigs, rustled by
the wind, weaved a whispered
tale of the sacrifices made
by thousands at Morte Homme.
For ten months they battled
and they won.
Suddenly the silence was
shattered by gunshots.
La Chasse are out, we said.
A different hunt brought
faint echoes of the
largest bombardment in
the history of war. First strike,
80,000 shells that turned
1km into hell’s quagmire.
Verdun was grateful
for their sacrifice; the
city was saved and a
memorial was raised
Their motto is engraved
beneath the feet
of a sculpted skeleton
draped in a flag.
“Ils n’ont pas passé”.
It is ironic, if that is the right word, that from such wholesale deaths and widespread destruction of the Meuse department during The Battle of Verdun has sprung such a stunningly beautiful area. Before WW1 it was, apparently, plain farmland. Now the farmland is still there but interspersed with rolling, thickly-forested hills. The land was so badly scarred the order went out to plant millions of trees.
We paid our first visit to the area in 2005 and a year later I wrote the following poem to coincide with the 90th Anniversary. The Battle of Verdun commenced on 21st February 1916 (incidentally my mother’s 9th birthday).
90 Years On – The Battle of Verdun 1916
The mud, the mud, the stinking mud
that held them fast, sucked out their souls
The mud, the mud, the blood-soaked mud
between the hills. Both armies’ goals.
The stench, the stench, of rain-filled trench
The burrows underground
The squash, the squish of rotting flesh
as arms and legs were found.
The noise, the noise, no escape boys
from the whine and thud of shell
“What did you do in the war?”
“I fought and lived in hell.”
“Fight for the ridge! Fight for the hill!
It’s where we’ll see them best!”
Flattened the ridge, flattened the hill
O’er buried soldiers gone to rest.
Villages gone to tank and gun
Left – a bloodied battleground.
Forests - all trees gone, every one.
Then eerie silence – not a sound.
Now the rolling hills are green again
The fields are lush with growth
New forests house the birds again,
happy to play host
In this calm and peaceful scene
when you hear their joyous song
Sometimes, carried on the breeze,
joining in – a ghostly throng
As their voices rise from the well-kept graves
and from the blood-soaked earth
Thousands of voices, now in harmony, sing
“This is what our deaths were worth.”
