List of World War I memorials and cemeteries in Verdun

This is a list of World War One cemeteries and memorials in Verdun.

List of World War I cemeteries and memorials at Verdun
One French Lieutenant at Verdun who was later killed by an artillery shell wrote in his diary on 23 May 1916

The monument at Mort Homme and that to the 40th French Infantry
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" style="width:1000px;"|The monuments at Mort Homme
 * This quite haunting memorial is the work of the sculptor Jacques Froment-Meurice and was erected by the veterans of the 69th French Infantry. The skeleton of a French soldier is draped in the flag for which he has sacrificed his life. He carries the flame of victory and the monument is Inscribed ring out the declaration of resistance.
 * This quite haunting memorial is the work of the sculptor Jacques Froment-Meurice and was erected by the veterans of the 69th French Infantry. The skeleton of a French soldier is draped in the flag for which he has sacrificed his life. He carries the flame of victory and the monument is Inscribed ring out the declaration of resistance.

The inauguration ceremony took place on 10 September 1922, in the presence of Generals Nivelle and Berthelot, Boichut, the Governor of Verdun and Mon.Taufflieb, the senator for the Bas-Rhin, who had commanded the 69th.

100 metres from this monument is the granite monument to the soldiers of the 40th French Infantry. A photograph is shown in the gallery at the end of the article.

Both monuments stand on Cote 304 which was yet another piece of high ground that had to be fought over and the memorials are dedicated to more than 10,000 French Soldiers who were to perish there. The hill was first attacked by the Germans on 20 March 1916 and again on 9 April 1916. Neither of these two attacks were successful but finally on 29 June the Germans took the hill and less than two months later the French were able to re-take it. On the right hand side of the memorial to the 40th are listed the divisions who fought here in 1916 and on the left those divisions who fought in 1917, when further fighting took place.

Jacques Froment-Meurice was born in Paris in 1864 and died in 1947. He was a pupil of Chapu. In 1925 he worked on the war memorial at Saumur.

The wall of the Israelites at Fleury-devant-Douaumont
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" style="width:1000px;"|The wall of the Israelites


 * This monument stands between the Douaumont ossuary and the monument dedicated to the Jews who died at Verdun's and is dedicated to the memory of those Jews who laid down their lives in the 1914-1918 war. The wall is 25 metres long and 15 metres high and is inscribed with the text of Hebrew Laws, reminding one of Jerusalem's "Wailing wall". The inscription reads

This is the exact translation of the inscription : The memorial says :

TO THE FRENCH, THE ALLIES AND THE FOREIGN VOLUNTARY ISRAELITES -1914- DIED FOR FRANCE -1918-

Memorial to the men who maintained the Voie Sacrée at Moulin-Brûlé
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" style="width:1000px;"|The memorial to the men who maintained the Voie Sacrée at Moulin-Brûlé It was inaugurated on 14 May 1967 by General Boucaud, the president of the "Fédération du Train (FNT)" and has sculptural work by François Barrois of Commercy. It was designed by the architect Gaston Schmitt of Toul. The monument stands on the point where soldiers would arrive in trucks and then would walk the 8 kilometres to the front line. Barrois' relief depicts the various kinds of trucks used on the Voie Sacrée, the railway with a depiction of the Corpet-Louvet locomotive, and the men working on maintenance. In the centre of the relief the words inscribed read
 * The memorial to the men who maintained the Voie Sacrée is located by the road in question and on the plateau of Moulin-Brûlé.
 * The memorial to the men who maintained the Voie Sacrée is located by the road in question and on the plateau of Moulin-Brûlé.

It was along this road that French men and supplies were fed to the fighting area. At one point it was calculated that vehicles were passing every fourteen seconds day and night to ensure that Verdun could withstand the massive onslaught that it was subjected to in 1916. It was indeed the "road to Hell". Thousands and thousands of men passed along the Voie Sacree each day and 2,000 tons of munitions. To ensure the road was kept clear all men on foot were obliged to march through the surrounding fields and to maintain the road surface a unit of soldiers, equal to a full division of men, threw down some 700,000 tonnes of stones during the 10 months of the battle. A narrow gauge railway ran alongside the road. The Voie Sacree is now marked along its length with posts capped with a model of a French soldier’s helmet. The posts tell the reader how far he is along the road from Bar-Le-Duc to Verdun. How many times must soldiers have wished they were travelling in the direction of Bar-Le-Duc.



"They shall not pass"
The Battle of Verdun was to popularise General Robert Nivelle's: "They shall not pass" this being a simplification of the actual French text: "Vous ne les laisserez pas passer, mes camarades" ("you shall not let them pass, my comrades") which was part of Nivelle's " Order of the day" on the 23rd June, 1916. About two months earlier, in April 1916, General Philippe Pétain had also issued a stirring "Order of the day" which is also often quoted

Nivelle's words perhaps betrayed his concern for the mounting morale problems on the Verdun battlefield. The French military archives document that Nivelle's promotion to lead the Second Army at Verdun, in June 1916, had been followed by manifestations of indiscipline in five of his front lire regiments This unprecedented disquiet would eventually reappear with the French army mutinies that followed the unsuccessful Nivelle offensive of April 1917.