|
I like the concept of thin places because it implies that the divide between the here and now and the other world is not as hard and fast as we would think. It seems to me to be appropriate that Remembrance day should be so close to Samhain, the druids new year. The lengthening nights and the onset of winter imply a turning point in the year, a point where the old year dies and the new one, the new post war world is not far away. And so my thoughts turned to world war one and to the greatest battlefield of them all, that of Verdun in eastern France. Over a quarter of million men died between February and November of 1916 and total casualties were around 1 million. The German high command sought to bleed the French army dry at Verdun and in many ways achieved this aim for the French were scarcely able to launch a major offensive afterwards. To visit the battlefields which lie some miles to the north west of the town of Verdun is to enter a thin place. The years have been kind to the landscape which is now deeply forested. It is however a landscape of craters, of graveyards and of the dead. As you approach the battlefield you sense the silence, there is little in the way of birdsong and human voices are lowered. To walk from the forts of Douaumont to Vaux is to enter a torn world. It is said that at Verdun the trench warfare system broke down because the shelling was so continuous and so intense that whole battlefield became a series of shell holes. Indeed some three quarters of the casualties were killed by artillery shelling rather than in direct combat. The undulating landscape although largely covered by trees still reflects this. The consequence of such intense shelling was that most of the men who died were blown to pieces and although there is a large burial ground on the battlefield it is the ossuary that holds the remains of the majority of the dead. Indeed the bones of 130,000 men lie in the ossuary of Douaumont which is built on ridge near the fort of the same name. Atop the linear building is a chapel. However underneath the building is where the dead lie. It is possible to walk around the base of the ossuary and to peer through thick windows down into the mountain of bones; here there is pile of arm bones, there some thigh bones and beside these a pelvis wedged against a skull. Germans and French soldiers all lie together gradually turning into dust. An overpowering sense of mortality emanates from the ossuary, here indeed one meets the dead. But the dead are not solely the mountain of bones, the dead still walk the forests and shell holes where they once fought. The thinness of the divide between the living and the dead is palpable in this place. You may believe in life after death, you may not, it is immaterial, all you can do is sense the closeness of the dead, they walk with you. It seems to me they do not lament their passing, they are here to tell us, the living, that there is another world and that it is ok. Was there a purpose to such mindless slaughter? Well perhaps there was, perhaps it was necessary to open a thin place in this world where we, the living, could walk with the dead. At some point in my life I will learn that my departure for the next world is imminent. Then I shall make a last journey to Verdun where I will meet the dead again and be comforted.
Colin Griffiths. |