Table of Contents for this Episode
Categories: Alsace and Lorraine, French History
Discussed in this Episode
- Grand Est
- Alsace-Lorraine
- Metz
- Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery
- Montfaucon American Monument
- Verdun
- Verdun Memorial
- Episcopal Palace of Verdun
- Meuse River
- Bar-le-Duc
- Douaumont Ossuary
- Douaumont National Necropolis
- Fort Douaumont
- Fort Vaux
- Fort Thiaumont
- Trench of Bayonets
- Côte 304
- Butte de Vauquois
- Department of the Meuse
- Chemin des Dames
- Belleau Wood
- Aisne-Marne American Cemetery
- Reims
- Hauts-de-France
- Calais
- Arras
- Vimy
- Bully-les-Mines
- The Somme
- Colmar
- Western Front
- North Sea
- Swiss Alps
- Belgium
- Ypres
- Menin Gate
- In Flanders Fields Museum
- Tyne Cot Cemetery
- Langemark German Cemetery
- Essex Farm
- Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62)
- Dodengang (Trench of Death)
Annie: [00:00:00] This is Join Us in France, episode 623. Six cent vingt-trois.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: Visiting Verdun and the WWI Battlefields of Eastern France
Annie: Today I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about World War I sites in the Grand Est.
We cover the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, the Montfaucon, the Douaumont Ossuary, and the forts around Verdun, and also what I saw inside the Verdun Memorial Museum.
We also talk about where to base yourself out of, and Elyse recommends films and books to prepare. And of course we are nearing November 11th, the anniversary of the end of First World [00:01:00] War, so I felt like this was an opportune time to put out this episode.
Podcast supporters
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support. If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary consults. I’ve written eight tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and I can take you on day trips from Toulouse, where I live, in my electric car. Everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
And if you shop on Amazon anyway, starting at joinusinfrance.com/amazon costs you nothing but helps the show. And you get travel insurance before traveling to France, right? I hope you do. Start your travel insurance shopping at joinusinfrance.com/insurance. If you do, you’ll help the show at no extra cost to you. And most of my listeners recommend Allianz, and from this link you can get Allianz, or you can compare with other offerings to see which one suits your needs best.
Magazine segment
Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, [00:02:00] I’ll discuss an exhibit about Lady Liberty at the Orsay Museum and why French people are turning to electric vehicles en masse. And also of course, kudos America. Wow. Color me surprised at the results of the midterms.
Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie: Usually I like to start with “We have a fun subject today”, but today’s not going to be a fun subject, I’m afraid. We’re going to talk about the sites to visit if you’re interested in World War I history, and specifically in the Grand Est region.
I mean, we’ll mention Belgium a tiny bit probably, because I mean, World War I took place from the North Sea all the way to the Swiss Alps, yes.
Elyse: Swiss Alps.
Annie: Yeah. So it’s a big wide area, and it was devastating, and there’s so much you can [00:03:00] visit. So we wanted to concentrate a little bit about the Grand Est because that’s where I was recently, and also because that happens to be the area where most of the French and American soldiers did their thing.
If you go to Belgium and to the area of the Hauts-de-France, which is Calais and Arras and places like that, that was mostly Commonwealth countries, which is also very important. But you have Australia, England, New Zealand, Canada. So we’ll concentrate more the Grand Est for this episode, but there’s so much to see.
Elyse:
WWI Trauma In France
Elyse: It’s interesting too, and we’ve been talking about it, but it is interesting maybe because this is 2026, most people, if they are interested in any of this, they’re interested of course in World War II, and maybe just because with the very short distance of time actually between the two, more people know members of their family who were implicated and involved in World War II. I mean, [00:04:00] there’s always a grandparent or whatever that was involved, and it’s touched a lot of people. And it is even for me something that I knew until recently much less about than World War II.
Annie: Right. Although, if you want to understand France, you really have to understand World War I because it was a major…
Elyse: Traumatism.
Annie: Yes. It was traumatizing.
Elyse: It was a traumatism.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: And it had a lot of consequences going forward.
Elyse: Yes, and of course when we talk about traumatism and the consequences, I know because this is something that happens if I take people around to do the Resistance Tour, I start by explaining what happened at the end of World War I. To put people in the mindset, I think, of what happened to French people after that, one-third of the men in France were killed, and apparently one-third were badly maimed for various reasons. That’s an enormous amount, and no wonder that is such a traumatizing experience.
Annie: Right, it was unfathomable the sorts of [00:05:00] damages, but there it is. It really happened.
Elyse:
Front Lines And Geography
Elyse: And not only that, but doing a little bit of the background, I knew that you were going to do most of the talking, but it was in a concentrated area compared to, for instance, what happened later on. It’s interesting when you see it, that it follows a kind of zig-zag line. It was over 400 miles of line, but it didn’t cover most of the country. It just covered very, very specific parts that covered the borders, the frontiers between Germany, France, Belgium, a little bit Luxembourg as well. Very isolated. Interesting when you think about it in terms of what happened later on.
Quick WWI Recap
Annie: Definitely. So maybe you want to give us a quick recap of what happened in World War I.
Elyse: Well, you know, I think we have to sort of back up even without going into any of the politics of it that, you know, remind people that the French and the Germans were basically at it for a certain number of years. There had been this very brief war between the Prussians, which at that point were in the process of uniting Germany in 1870, 1871, which was started by the French, but which was technically [00:06:00] won by the Prussians and left, of course, the whole Alsace-Lorraine area annexed to the Germans and created lots of bitter feeling.
And then it gets very complicated, and I am the last person to be able to explain all of the geopolitics of Europe at that time, you know?
Annie: Right, but there are also some excellent War of 1870 memorials and museums in the Grand Est. I saw several of them. I mean, when you visit the Grand Est, if you like war history, it’s, like, amazing because you have the War of 1870, you have World War I, and you have World War II. I visited a great site of the Maginot Line.
You can still visit some of these places, and it’s really interesting to see, you know? So if you are a war buff, you will love that part of France. It’s a must-see.
Elyse: It’s a must-see, yes. And the city of Metz, was one of the sites of some terrible battles all through this, every single one of these wars.
How Trench Warfare Worked
Elyse: But basically, everybody talks about World War I as being a trench [00:07:00] war. And of course, it was a trench war. Interestingly, why? People talk also in a kind of satirical, mocking way about the fact that the French soldiers, like the British soldiers, at the beginning of World War I went into battle wearing red pants, which was something that was totally archaic, and of course made them absolutely visible to the enemy.
But it turns out, I found that interesting, that one of the reasons why both the French and the Germans decided to dig these incredibly deep, horribly complicated trenches that follow the lines of all of the fighting, were because of the development of new weapons. I think we can imagine some movies where you see these two groups of soldiers all standing facing each other from a certain distance, firing at each other with these rifles. Well, all of a sudden, there was much more sophisticated artillery.
Huge artillery was developed. Tanks were invented for the very first time. All of this new equipment that was fighting equipment just made it ridiculous to be able to just stand up [00:08:00] there and wait to be shot.
So in order to try and find a way of being defensive, because that’s basically what these trenches were, is they were defensive. Both sides, I do not know, honestly, if one side decided first or if they both simultaneously decided to do the trenches. But you have miles, hundreds of miles of these trenches, which became, in many cases, death traps.
Annie: Right. Yeah.
Elyse: Horrible death traps. And so this is the war of the trenches, and this is the war where, unfortunately, there were times that the French inscripted the soldiers. It was a draft. You didn’t have any choice about going into the army.
There were several instances of the French officers actually killing their own soldiers because they literally refused to go out of the trenches and fight, because for them, it was just pure death to just go out there.
Annie: Right, so I’ll mention that when I talk about what I saw at the museum at Verdun.
Elyse: It’s pretty awful, right? So when we get done, I’ll mention several movies that I have seen that are really excellent, [00:09:00] that are a good way of getting an introduction to it if you don’t want to have to deal with books. But I’m going to let you talk about what you saw in some of the museums now.
Annie: All right.
American Sites Meuse Argonne
Annie: So one of the first places where I recommend you go is the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery. It’s the largest American military cemetery in Europe, with more than 14,000 graves. It honors the soldiers who fought in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, which was the largest military operation ever undertaken by the US Army.
So the visitor center does a great job explaining the scale of the campaign and the individual stories behind it. So this provides an essential understanding of the American contribution to the final victory of the Allies. So that’s another one.
So if you start there, then 11 kilometers away, you have the Montfaucon American Museum. It stands on top of a hill, and it was captured by American forces in [00:10:00] 1918. So this is a panoramic view sort of thing. It helps visitors understand why having the high ground was so strategically important, and it’s one of the best opportunities you have in the area to visualize the battlefields and appreciate the immense logical challenge of this Meuse-Argonne offensive. And a lot of times, they went forward and then back but that was more Verdun, which is the third place I recommend you go.
Verdun Must See Stops
Annie: The Verdun Memorial. Right around there, you have a lot of things. It’s the finest, I think, military museums and site in France. It represents the Battle of Verdun. There are uniforms, weapons, vehicles, films, personal accounts from both the French and German sides, and I’ll go into more details about that later.
It gives you the context, and I must admit, visiting it is a bit difficult on your emotions if you really read the panels, which I did. It’s hard, emotionally to [00:11:00] process this, but it’s important for us to know that these things did happen.
Douaumont Ossuary
Annie: Then two kilometers away, you have the Douaumont Ossuary. Now, that one you cannot forget. It’s probably the most moving memorial in France.
Elyse: I have a question for you about that, because I was reading about that, I did mention it in my notes. It says that there are 130,000 unknown soldiers’ bones in there. That is 130,000 French soldiers who have never been identified.
Annie: I think so, yes. But if they haven’t been identified, it might not be just French soldiers.
Elyse: What do you see actually?
Annie: You see bones.
Elyse: You see bones.
Annie: You see bones under your feet. I think it’s both French and German. I mean, a body is a body is a body, you know?
Elyse: Right. Right.
Annie: So there are windows, and you can see piles of bones that were collected from the battlefield. It is absolutely graphic and gruesome. It’s not easily forgotten. But really, what this illustrates is the staggering human cost of this warfare that people did, and also the [00:12:00] reconciliation between former enemies, because they both died, okay?
Fort Douaumont
Annie: Then two kilometers away, you have Fort Douaumont. It’s the largest fort in the Verdun defensive system. You can walk through the underground galleries, the barracks, the gun positions. And really, this shows how these modern, ” modern” fortifications functioned.
Elyse: I was reading, I found that very interesting, it said that that fort is still standing because the outside was reinforced with concrete, and it was the only one that was able to withstand all of the artillery attacks. I mean, I suppose it’s been fixed up, but it said that the other forts, which were basically ancient, you know, that they were using, that were there already, but this one, for whatever reason, just before World War I, had been covered with concrete, and that that was one of the few things that saved it.
Annie: So this one shows you how the soldiers lived, sometimes for months at a time.
Elyse: Can’t [00:13:00] imagine.
Fort Vaux
Annie: Fort Vaux is also two kilometers away from there. It’s smaller than Douaumont, but it’s remembered for the heroic defense by Major Raynal and his men during a German assault. So that one is a specific assault that human story of endurance, courage, survival under unimaginable conditions really. You can see the Trench of Bayonets, which is a memorial marking the legendary site where French soldiers were said to have been buried standing in their trench. Their rifles and bayonets protruding from the ground.
Elyse: Yeah. Yeah.
Annie: So historians debate the actual story, but this monument is a big symbol of sacrifice.
Elyse: They were killed standing, and artillery blew earth on top of them, and they just got killed?
Annie: I don’t know. I don’t know enough totell you that detail.
And then a little further away, you have the Butte de Vauquois. That’s another battlefield. Opposing armies fought an underground war, you know, digging [00:14:00] miles of tunnels, and detonating hundreds of mines beneath one another.
Now, that’s also what you see at Vimy. That’s a Canadian site in the Hauts-de-France. We did another episode about that. But it’s really interesting to see that.
Then 80 kilometers away again, you see the Chemin des Dames. The site of the disastrous 1917 Nivelle offensive, and the French army mutinies that followed.
Elyse: Yes.
Annie: You know, strategic failures really affected morale. I mean, it makes it impossible. You feel like you get beaten no matter what you do. And probably there were some massive strategic errors. So this is an important complement to Verdun because you can hear about the mutiny and the stuff that follows.
Then Belleau Wood, we did an episode about it. I think it was one of the 300 episodes, 317 or something. I’ll put a link in the show notes. This is the battlefield where US Marines earned their legendary reputation [00:15:00] during fierce fighting in June 1918.
And nearby you have the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery. Oh, it was episode 256? I had it in my notes. I forgot. I can’t remember the episodes.
Elyse: That’s a lot of episodes to remember, yeah.
Annie: So for many Americans, Belleau Wood represents the emergence of the United States as a major military power on the Western Front.
Elyse: I did watch a YouTube. There’s a couple of places where they have guides who take you through some of the trenches. I was fascinated because there’s this one episode where this guide, he’s in the trench, he’s in one of these reconstructed trenches, and he said that sometimes they were stuck in the trenches so long. You know, they couldn’t stick their head out or their head would get blown off. So in order to pee, they would pee in their helmets, and they would take their helmet and try and use a stick to lift it up high enough to tilt it to throw the pee over the other side outside the tunnel.
He said you can’t even imagine the kinds of conditions that they were [00:16:00] spending these days and nights in, and every so often there would be these kind of walls with an opening so that with a periscope they could lift it up and see if they could see the Germans, who were sometimes 30 meters away. I mean, they were really close by.
He said, “But all you had to do was lift your head up a little too high, and that was the end.”
Annie: Yeah. Yeah.
Planning A Battlefield Road Trip
Annie: So a lot of the places that I’ve discussed, you could see where you base yourself out of, you know? Verdun is a little town. Maybe you want to do this in Verdun. Personally, I would stay in Metz instead, because Metz to Verdun is like a freeway drive. It’s easy. It’s about 54 minutes or 55 minutes or something like that. And I have a preference for staying in a city. And that way also you don’t have to do World War I stuff every day. You could take a break, and you’re in Metz, you can go to an art museum. You can go to a show. You can, you know, do something else.
Elyse: Honestly, if you do that every day, it takes a special kind of person to do this day in and day out for days.
Annie: But you do need [00:17:00] about three days right around Verdun area, and then around Reims as well. There’s plenty of things around Reims, so that would be, you know, a couple days around Reims. And if you want to add the Belgium sites, say you would do Ypres in Belgium for two nights, then you’d go to Arras for two nights.
Elyse: Right. Right.
Annie: Then Reims for two nights, Verdun or Metz for three nights, because that’s where you have most of it. And then for stuff that’s a little bit further south, you could stay in Colmar for two nights or three nights.
So, you know, from the sea to the mountains pretty much, you would see a little bit of everything. And I mean, the Western Front was 700 kilometers long. It’s like, giant.
Elyse: The Battle of Verdun is considered to be one of the bloodiest battles in warfare in the Western world.
Annie: Ever.
Elyse: 303 days. They fought from February to December of 1916. I know that the Battle of Stalingrad was awful, and that even more people were [00:18:00] killed on the Eastern Front, and that was, of course, World War II. But when you read about the number of dead on all sides, and the fact that they were fighting the same battle in the same place for 303 days, it’s really mind-boggling.
Annie: Yeah. Yeah.
Elyse: I mean, our idea of warfare these days, I don’t know if it’s better or worse, because war is awful, is to go up in the sky and drop something on a bunch of people, and there’s nothing to compare with this kind of confrontation, you know?
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Inside the Verdun Memorial Museum
Annie: So to discuss what I saw at the memorial at Verdun, which is a fairly modern museum. You have several different sections of the museum. It starts with an introduction. It’s called Verdun, Au Cœur d’une Grande Guerre qui Déchire l’Europe. So Verdun a the Heart of the Great War Which Tore Apart Europe.
So this sets the stage. 10 million dead in the war, the 1914 alliance system, how it works, how Germany [00:19:00] violated Belgian neutrality, the stalemate. And in February 1916, the German attacks at Verdun that put the war back in motion in the West, okay?
Now, you have the second stage of this visit. You see le 21 février 1916, Déluge d’Acier is what they call it. So, I’m telling these things in French, but there are also signs in English, okay? It’s just that I took photos of the signs in French. It’s easier for me to read.So, 21st of February 1916, A Deluge of ” Acier.” Yeah, it’s artillery.
So this is like the hour-by-hour first day of the battle. I mean, this was unprecedented power, sort of gunpower. They had never seen this before. They hit the French artillery lines, then the city of Verdun and the Episcopal Palace in Verdun are hit.
At 10:00 AM, the Meuse bridges are targeted by 200 German planes. They sent 200 planes. Incredible. They attacked rail stations like Bar-le-Duc, which [00:20:00] was 60 kilometers south.
Between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM, there was a ground offensive that started. And to the surprise of the Germans, the French forces resisted. So it shows you the sort of surprise, the size of the attacks, and the fact that sometimes people resisted.
The third area of the museum talks about a specific soldier. His name was Fernand Marche, and he was born in 1888 and died in 1916. So he was a runner in the 130th Infantry Regiment. He volunteered to carry a message to his colonel near Fort Thiaumont on August 1st, 1916, and he was killed on the way. And the next runner found his body with his arm in the air, fingers still grasping the message. And then he carried it through.
So the memorial to him in Bully-les-Mines, you can see that, and he’s buried at the Douaumont National [00:21:00] Necropolis, grave number 6649. I mean, each dead is a person, okay? This one was particularly striking, I thought. Then the fourth kind of area of the museum was Death at Verdun, and that’s heart-wrenching. You know, there was a soldier that… I cannot read this. Even to this day, it’s terrible. They found a letter of a soldier who wrote, ” Maman, j’ai 20 ans, et je ne veux pas mourir.”
Elyse: Well, unfortunately, I mean, maybe this sounds ridiculously, probably Pollyanna and idealistic, but I think that if more people went to museums like this, maybe, just maybe there would be less war.
Annie: Hopefully.
Elyse: You know?I mean, this is the kind of thing where, as you say, it’s not anonymous. You have real people with names and you can put faces on them. This is an aside, but it makes me think of this because of your reaction.
If you go to the Gers, which is a department to the west of where we are. This is true everywhere in France, but I happened to notice this, and it really had an effect on [00:22:00] me in the Gers one day. We were about, just wandering from little village to village. Not with you. I was with my husband.
And every village in France has a memorial to World War I. I mean, not just to World War II, but specifically to World War I. But in those villages, there were pictures, and… I’m getting goosebumps. It was quite a different reaction to look at a memorial and actually see the faces of all of these young people who were killed.
Annie: Yeah. And in Verdun, about 163,000 French soldiers died.
Elyse: Yep.
Annie: But 143,000 German soldiers also died.
Elyse: Yep.
Annie: And if you laid them head to toe, the dead would stretch 215 kilometers, which is the distance from Paris to Verdun. The bodies were buried hastily in shell holes, and sometimes the bodies were churned up again in a later bombardment. It was not the deadliest battle of the war, but it was one where the living had to put up with being in close contact with the dead for months [00:23:00] at a time.
Elyse: It was not the deadliest. It was the Somme that was the deadliest? Do you know?
Annie: I think it was the Somme. Yes, yes.
Elyse: The Somme, yeah. But, I mean, it was certainly long. That’s a very long battle.
Annie: Yeah.
Artists at Verdun
Annie: So the fifth section is a bit of a relief, emotional relief, because they show you the Artistes en Guerre, Créer à Verdun. So Artists During the War, Creativity in Verdun. So a lot of very famous artists passed through Verdun on both sides. Fernand Léger, Franz Marc, André Derain, Adolf Erbsloh?
Elyse: I can’t say that name.
Annie: E-R-B-S-L-O-H.
Elyse: Don’t know him.
Annie: No. And French painters were assigned to camouflage sections.
Elyse: Really?
Annie: Yes. And in 1916, the French state officially commissioned painters to document the front.
Elyse: And there were many poets, at least those who survived, who wrote about it as well. Yeah.
Annie: And then there was another artist. So this gentleman, [00:24:00] Erbsloh, is also highlighted. He was in the 95th Infantry Regiment staff, and his oil painting shows the north slope of Côte 304. It’s a mangled landscape. It’s kind of a mixture between realism and expressionism.
Elyse: Hmm.
Annie: It’s kind of crazy.
Command Posts and Medals
Annie: Well, one more section is how the front worked, the command posts. So you get to see daily life, you know? They show the command post 200 meters behind the line, where the phone lines were constantly cut by shelling, and you had runners called estafette, carrying messages at the risk of their lives, which is the story of Fernand Marche. You can see decorations. So the Iron Cross was reestablished on the 5th of August, 1914, and 5 million were awarded this.
Elyse: 5 million?
Annie: So the Iron Cross is a German distinction. The French Croix de Guerre was created April 1915, and there’s a Medaille de Verdun as well, which was created [00:25:00] by the city in 1916.
Military Justice and Mutiny
Annie: And then it’s sad again. It’s the military justice. In October 1914 alone, nearly 60 French soldiers were executed pour l’exemple.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: To set an example. There was a law of 27th of April 1916, guaranteed the accused a defense and appeal, but death sentences continued. There were mutinies during the Battle of Verdun. It was isolated, but there were some. And the most feared punishment was being sent back to the front.
There’s a bit there about the postmasters, and one of my grandfathers was a postmaster at Verdun. He survived.
Elyse: What did a postmaster do?
Annie: They ran letters. People wrote lots of letters to each other. Families would write letters…
Elyse: I know a lot of them got lost, you know?
Annie: Right. Right, but you could get mail from your family and send mail to your family through the postman, so probably they were happy to see him coming.
Meuse Devastation
Annie: You see a lot of stuff about and politics. It’s just terrible. [00:26:00] And then it talks about the Department of the Meuse. La Meuse Déchirée, because it was cut in half from late 1940. There were 250 of the 586 communes, city municipalities, were under German occupation, and 30,000 Muséens were under the Kommandantur, and about 500,000 soldiers stationed on each side of the front line. So at the end of the war, 70% of the municipalities of the Meuse were damaged.
70% were damaged, and one commune in three had no civilian inhabitants left. So it was devastating for the people of that department.
Soldier Life and Faith
Annie: And then there’s a whole section about the daily life of soldiers, so L’artisanat, L’industrie, the rest and entertainment. They were trying to entertain the soldiers. They talk about the food, the rolling kitchens, the one-dish menus. So there’s some [00:27:00] information about the wine that they drank and this stuff.
There’s a section about chaplains and religion. There were about 20,000 priests, and 500 were Protestant, and 50 Jewish chaplains served in the French army.
Muslim colonial soldiers had no official chaplains, but there were Muslim colonial soldiers. My grandfather was not a Muslim, but he was one of the colonial soldiers. And at the time, France was deeply split between the anti-clerical and the Catholics because of the 1905 Separation Law of Church and State. So it was complicated, but they had chaplains and people like that.
Mail Censorship and Kids
Annie: The Germans exchanged about 28 billion letters and parcels over the four years, and the French postal service carried three to four million letters daily at the time. French soldiers wrote nearly two million letters per day. And soldiers self-censored to spare their families. You know, most of the letters are like, ” I’m okay. [00:28:00] The people in my group are nice to me.”
Elyse: I bet they weren’t allowed to tell where they were anyway, you know?
Annie: Probably not.
And it shows the path of a French letter that was sent on June 1916. So it’s a trilingual display that traces a letter from Marie to a soldier via the secret secteur postal numero 82. So they had a whole system of sending mail and receiving mail, and how censorship marked the letters. There were thick black strikeouts. There were German unpatriotisch stamps that you can see.
The French had control postal stamps on the envelopes, but they could also escape censorship sometimes. They used codes, you know, like you could mention something that meant something else to somebody you knew.
And there’s a display about children and the war, because school was obligatory until 13 or 14. Children learned patriotism and admiration for soldiers. The Kaiser, so [00:29:00] Wilhelm II, gave German school children a holiday for the capture of Douaumont on the 25th of February 1916.
And over a million orphans in France and Germany.
Elyse: Pupilles de l’état.
Annie: Yes. And French law of the 27th of July 1917 created state care, the Pupille de la Nation. It’s almost the same thing.
Then this stuff about did the censors read everything, the postcards, the path of a German letter. I was really interested in the mail stuff because of course I had a family member.
Women and War Work
Annie: And there was also a display about the women. 850,000 French women took over running family matters, family farms.
Elyse: They went to work.They drove ambulances.
Annie: And they were paid about 40% less than men, but they did the work during the war.
Elyse: There are really wonderful stories about some of the women who drove ambulances, and then of course did not want to go back to just this plain old domestic life [00:30:00] afterwards. There were women who took charge. There were certainly lots of nurses anyway. But again, it’s interesting that war, it does make a shift in the relationships between men and women as well. Yeah.
Annie: It truly did. World War I changed so much in French.
Field Medicine Innovations
Annie: There’s a whole section about medicine and the foreign volunteer ambulance sections. They were British and American associations that donated automobile ambulance, and they had 25 vehicles. They were often driven by young donors themselves, and the American Field Service earned an immense reputation at Verdun, which is wonderful because they were very, very needed.
The Autochir, can you guess what that is?
Elyse: No.
Annie: It was a complete mobile surgical hospital. It was packed into five trucks. There were five surgeons, four anesthesia students, one radiologist, and 15 nurses. There was a heated 70 square meter operating room. It could be set up in three to four [00:31:00] hours, and four Autochir were at Verdun from the start to the battle, and each team totaled on average 31 major casualties per 24 hours.
Elyse: I’m sure there were lots of amputations, unfortunately.
Annie: Oh, yeah. So this is like a MASH.
Elyse: Well, I guess it’s really a resume, even though it centers around Verdun, it’s a resume of everything that you can think about in relation to the war.
Annie: Yeah.
Gueules Cassées Wounds
Annie: And you mentioned at the beginning that there were a lot of soldiers that were horribly injured during the war.
Elyse: Yes.
Annie: Including a group called Les Gueules Cassées.
Elyse: Yep.
Annie: Nearly 15% of French wounded were hit in the face. So about 15,000 grands blesses de la face by 1918. Maxillofacial surgery developed in 20 French centers, and the wounded founded the Union des Blessés de la Face in 1921. So that’s the union of the facial injured.
Elyse: Is [00:32:00] that because of the artillery? I’ve always wondered about it.
Annie: They got shot in the face.
Elyse: They got shot in the face, but you see first of all, because there are some fictional movies that reproduce it, but also I’ve seen a documentary films. I mean, these were people, some of whom had to wear partial masks, like the Man in the Iron Mask. I mean, they had their noses off or a cheekbone gone. This is not getting a little bit burnt. It’s kind of strange in a way, that thereare all these Gueules Cassées.
Annie: And there’s some famous art. Some artists painted the Gueules Cassées as well. I should have looked it up.
Elyse: Yeah, I don’t know. This was a war that used nerve gas.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: And so a lot of the injured and maimed were maimed and injured in horrible ways.
Air War and Aces
Annie: Another section of the museum has to do with the air war, which was borne in autumn 1914, and it was absolutely indispensable by 1915. The displays include glass negatives of the aerial photography that they were taking. It’s really interesting.
They were [00:33:00] Americans flying in French planes at the time. The escadrille that became famous later as Lafayette American Volunteer Pilots, they were grouped in one squadron in April 1916, and they were sent to Bar-le-Duc in May 1916. There were 146 combatants and 13 victories over the Verdun front, and its insignia was a Sioux head. How do you say that? A Sioux.
Elyse: The Native American?
Annie: Yes, yes.
Elyse: Sioux. It’s interesting, too, because of course that is how aviation started.
Annie: Yes.
Elyse: It started as warfare, and then became civil aviation after World War I. And when you see some of these planes, they look like they were flying matchsticks.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: I mean, it’s just like they take five pieces of balsa wood and put them together, and this is what they were using.
Annie: Yeah. There’s some displays about the fighter tactics. The Germans created two or three plane hunting units, and the French answered that with group combat. So there [00:34:00] were weird flying conditions, like 160 kilometers per hour, so that’s 4,000 to 5,000 meters in altitude, and that’s down to minus 30 degrees.
Elyse: And it was open air.
Annie: Yes, and they were in the open.
Elyse: It was open air.
Annie: Yeah. And of course, like you mentioned, it was the birth of an industry, French aeronautical production multiplied by 40 between 1914 and 1918.
Elyse: Yep.
Annie: There was 47,000 French planes and 52,000 German planes.
Elyse: Yes, they were quite inadvanced, actually.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Museum Objects and Belgium Sites
Annie: And then the last section is objects and games. They show things that people used for everyday life, and the games that they played to pass the time, because at times they were just waiting. There was nothing else to do.
And then there’s a section about the history of the monument, of the museum itself. Honestly, this museum is a must-see, but it’s very difficult to see it.
Places to go in Belgium
Annie: Briefly, I want to go through the places in Belgium where you should go.
You [00:35:00] have the Menin Gate in Ypres. You have the In Flanders Fields Museum. They have the Tyne Cot Cemetery. You have the Langemark German Cemetery. Something called Essex Farm. I don’t know anything about this, but this is particularly meaningful to Canadians, apparently. And you have the Sanctuary Wood or Hill 62, and there’s something called the Dodengang, the Trench of Death. Oh my God.
Elyse: This is mostly the English.
Annie: So this is Canadian, English, New Zealand. The Commonwealth. And there’s so much. I mean, like you said, it was covered in battlefields. This whole area was covered in battlefields.
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Films and Books We Recommend About WW1
Annie: Let’s close with the movies that discuss all of this.
Elyse: Movies and a couple of books. Movies, there are endless ones. If you are a real cinema buff, and you have the courage, you might be able to dig up some silent [00:36:00] movies, because incredible as it may seem, this war inspired cinema. And so I scrolled through what looked like several hundred movies, starting, believe it or not, in actually in 1918. And there were a couple that were silent movies, but I decided that I was just going to mention the ones that I have seen that are not silent movies, because there are just too many.
But there are a couple, and one of the people who did a movie about it is a very famous French filmmaker for silent movies named Abel Gance, and he did a silent one. But if you have no taste for silent movies, let’s begin with these. Combination of both English-speaking and French-speaking movies. One of the most famous is actually from just before World War II, and that is La Grande Illusion, by Jean Renoir. Jean Renoir, who is the son of the painter Renoir, and who made a really incredible career as a filmmaker, and this is considered to be his masterpiece. And it’s really a movie about the class struggle of the soldiers and [00:37:00] the officers, and the illusion of war.
Another movie that is more recent that I have seen several times, I’ve read the book also, that is by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and that is Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles. And that is a wonderful, wonderful movie that talks about the aftermath of World War I, the number of thousands of missing soldiers, and the story of this one young woman who goes in search of her fiancé, who she doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead, but she really wants to find him. It’s a wonderful movie with Audrey Tautou. I recommend it to absolutely everyone.
Movies that are definitively and absolutely anti-war, Stanley Kubrick, who was a brilliant filmmaker, did a film called The Paths of Glory with Kirk Douglas. I think it was from the 1950s or ’60s. It’s still an incredible movie about war, about World War I. Joseph Losey, who was British, did a very good movie called King and Country about the British soldiers entering World War I.
Annie: Steven Spielberg, [00:38:00] did Cheval de Guerre. This is a recent movie about the horses that were used. Oh, yeah, the horses, the dogs.
Elyse: And Sam Mendes, who is British, did a movie very recently that was also excellent, called 1917, and that is just a tiny sampling, but see these, and it will give you a really good idea about World War I.
And just to mention a couple of books, and these are in English, okay? And just three, because these are three that I have read. One of them is very disturbing, so you just need to be warned, but it’s considered a classic. It’s called Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, who was a blacklisted filmmaker and writer. He was blacklisted in the ’50s, in the McCarthy period, and went to England. And this is about someone who is extremely… let’s put it this way, handicapped as a result of World War I. There’s The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne about the Battle of Verdun.
And a classic of historical writing by Barbara Tuchman, who was a great historian, the Guns of [00:39:00] August, which is about the Battle of the Somme. And this is just a small sampling, butif you’re someone like me, the visuals really make a difference. It helps you enter into a subject, and so I certainly recommend these.
Annie: And All Quiet On the Western Front.
Elyse: And All Quiet on the Western Front, which was by Erich Maria Remarque.
Annie: Remarque, yeah. I read it in French, À L’ouest Rien de Nouveau.
Elyse: Yeah, right.
Annie: Years ago. I read it in high school. Like, this is a classic that you read in high school in France.
Elyse: It’s a classic, yeah, which of course is also an anti-war book.
Annie: Very much so.
Elyse: From the German point of view.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Lessons for Europe Today
Elyse: I guess anything that’s about war is hard, but it is, I think, interesting and very important to learn more about World War I because theoretically we should learn some lessons from it.
Annie: Oh, there’s so much, so many lessons to be learned from it. Particularly don’t do it again. And also so much has changed in Europe since the European Union. We used to have regular wars between the French and the English, and the French and the Germans, and the French and the Spanish.
Elyse: [00:40:00] And the French and the Spanish.
Annie: French and the Italians. We had so many wars in Europe, and well, now the one between Russia and Ukraine is on European soil for sure. It’s not like there’s been zero since. We had the Balkan War as well, but it’s been much quieter.
Elyse: It’s quieter, and when you work with young people, under the age of 30, 35, and I mean, at this point, I guess the number of young becomes a higher number each time. But having taught university level a lot, most young people believe in Europe. The frontiers are a lot of bullshit for them. Let’s put it that way.You can be French culturally and still not worry about where the frontier ends between your country and another country, and I think that’s wonderful.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: And I think cooperation is what it’s all about, you know? Instead of fighting over everything all the time.
Annie: Agreed. Merci beaucoup, Elyse.
Elyse: Thank you, Annie.
Annie: Au revoir.
Elyse: Au revoir.
[00:41:00]
Thank you, patrons
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, David Palachek, Megan McKay, Helena Sweeney, and Lisa He. I would love it if you would join them, too. You can do it for as little as $3 a month, which would erase all the ads for you. But if you can afford it, you can pledge more so you have access to more of the rewards.
And to support Elyse, of course, go to patreon.com/elysart.
I have just returned from a trip to the Dordogne and the Quercy, where I made a point to visit only places I hadn’t seen before. I was reminded again how many beautiful places there are in the southwest. [00:42:00] I am updating my day trip offering as a result, and if you want to see that, you can go to joinusinfrance.com/day-trip.
Midterms Message to Americans
Annie: A quick word to my American listeners about the midterms. First, kudos to everyone who voted, especially those of you voting from France or elsewhere overseas.
Voting takes effort, and it’s so good to see the people claim their right to vote. And I want to say something personal, too. I’m French by birth and American by choice. I lived in the US for 16 years, but before I became a citizen, I was an immigrant there with all the paperwork, the waiting, and the uncertainty that comes with it.
America welcomed me, and I have never forgotten that. So it’s been painful to watch the last couple of years. I’ve been sorry to see so much turmoil and to see ordinary people squeezed by high prices on just about everything, and it’s hurt me personally to see how immigrants have been treated. I [00:43:00] was one of them.
Most are just people trying to work, raise their families, and build a life like I was, and the Iran craziness has affected every country in the world with high energy prices. I know my listeners don’t all see things the same way, and that’s of course fine. I’m not here to tell anyone how to vote, but I wanted you to know where I stand and that I care deeply about both of my countries.
Statue of Liberty at Orsay
Annie: If you’re in Paris this fall or winter, the Musée d’Orsay has an exhibition about the Statue of Liberty running until January 31st, 2027. It makes sense to do this in Paris because that’s where the statue was designed and built. Most people know the statue, of course, but far fewer know the name of the man who created it, the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi.
Francois Blanchetiere, the museum’s chief curator for sculpture and architecture, puts it simply, ” Its French origin has been largely forgotten,” and we’re not going to let you do that. [00:44:00] So here’s the short version.
The Statue of Liberty was a French project finished in 1886. The French people paid for the statue, the Americans built the pedestal, and it was given to the United States. It quickly became a symbol of New York and of the American idea of freedom.
The part I found most interesting is the virtual reality experience that walks you through the construction. The statue was made in workshops near the Parc Monceau, starting with plaster molds. But a copper statue that size needs a solid skeleton, so Bartholdi and the Franco-American Union turned to an engineer named Gustave Eiffel.
His job was to design an internal structure strong enough to stand up to the sea winds in the New York Harbor. This was a few years before Eiffel built the Eiffel Tower that made him famous. The VR experience even recreates conversations between Eiffel and Bartholdi. If you can’t make it to Paris, Bartholdi also has a museum in his [00:45:00] hometown of Colmar in the Alsace, and director Juliette Chauvet contributed to this exhibition.
France Goes Electric
Annie: One thing that has changed very fast in France this year is the kind of car people buy. Fuel prices have climbed sharply again, and at the end of September, diesel averaged 2.37 a liter in France, so that would be roughly 10 US dollars per gallon. And regular unleaded was around 2.21 a liter, about 9.40 a gallon.
So compared to late February, that’s roughly 44% higher price for diesel and 29% higher for gasoline. And French buyers are reacting. In September, fully electric cars made up about 42% of all new car registrations in France. That’s a record. Hybrids took another 43%. Plain gasoline cars were down to about 10%, and diesel about to 2%.
October looked [00:46:00] almost the same, 41% electric, 44% hybrid, diesel down to just 1% of new car sales. The increase in the number of people choosing a car with a plug is just staggering in France. Since January, France has registered about 449,000 new electric cars.
That’s roughly one new car in three. Some of this is driven by government incentives, especially the return of the social leasing program. But price matters enormously, and that’s where Renault has done well. Renault is still the number one car brand in France. In the first nine months of 2026, it sold about 500,000 cars more or less, just over 17% of the entire market.
Peugeot was second. So despite Tesla, BYD, and other newcomers, French buyers are still buying a lot of French-branded cars. Renault seems to [00:47:00] understand that the switch to electric only works if ordinary people can afford it.
Renault Models and Pricing
Annie: The Renault 5, Renault Cinq, has been a big success. I love this car. It’s so cute, especially the yellow ones. It’s the best-selling French electric car this year, second only to Tesla Model Y for families and people who need a big car. Renault also has the electric Scenic, but it’s a bit overpriced compared to the Tesla. The Renault 4, also too pricey compared to the Tesla. And now the new electric Twingo.
So the Twingo is interesting. First of all, it sold like hotcakes in September. It’s a small, affordable city car. The list price is 19,490, so that’s about $22,000. With the standard government incentive, it drops to about 15,870 euros, and lower income households can get it for less.
Renault is not giving up on hybrids either. In the first half of 2026, two out [00:48:00] of three Renault passenger cars sold in Europe were electrified. About 27% were fully electric, and most of the rest were hybrids. Renault’s goal for 2030 is a 50/50 split in Europe, half electric, half hybrid.
There’s something very French about all of this. French people have always been attached to Renault, Peugeot, and Citroën. They’re happy to buy French, but the car has to make economic sense, and French people, I’ve said this a million times, are very price sensitive. Right now, with diesel at around 10 bucks a gallon, a reasonably priced Renault 5, Twingo, or a Clio hybrid makes a lot more sense than it did a few years ago.
So maybe it isn’t that French people suddenly fell in love with electric cars. I wish they would, but maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s that once the price, the incentives, and the running costs line up, we’re happy to go electric, even more so when there’s a familiar French badge on the [00:49:00] front of the car.
Living With an EV and Solar
Annie: Personally, after more than four years in an EV, there’s no way I’d go back to gas or diesel. EVs are better cars all around and much, much cheaper to run day to day. I have a private driveway with a dedicated plug, and charging has never added more than about 40 euros a month to my electric bill, and that’s with me driving about 50% more than the average French driver.
Now, we’ve decided to put solar panels on the roof. We both work from home, and so when it’s sunny, I’ll plug in and drive on sunshine. That is going to be so nice. Solar panels are not free, yeah, I know that, but they’ve gotten much cheaper in the last few years, and they keep producing for 20 to 25 years.
That’s a lot of driving on sunshine. And as you know, the sun does not have to go through the Strait of Hormuz.
Newsletter and Next Episode
Annie: One more thing before I let you go. If you like the podcast, the newsletter is pretty good. It’s short. It comes out around each episode, and it’s the place that I actually talk about what’s [00:50:00] going on behind the scenes. You can sign up at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan.
Next week on the podcast
Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode with Yann Darmond about growing up in Paris and some of his favorite parts of the city, Ménilmontant and Belleville, not parts of the City of Light that we’ve talked about enough on the podcast. So we’ll do some of that next Sunday.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[00:51:00] [00:52:00]
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Episode PageCategories: Alsace and Lorraine, French History