The Great Days of Verdun

The Verdun I saw in April, 1913, was an out-of-the-way provincial city
of little importance outside of its situation as the nucleus of a great
fortress. There were two cities--an old one, la ville des évêques, on a
kind of acropolis rising from the left bank of the Meuse, and a newer
one built on the meadows of the river. Round the acropolis Vauban had
built a citadel whose steep, green-black walls struck root in the mean
streets and narrow lanes on the slopes. Sunless by-ways, ill-paved and
sour with the odor of surface drainage, led to it. Always picturesque,
the old town now and then took on a real beauty. There were fine,
shield-bearing doorways of the Renaissance to be seen, Gothic windows in
greasy walls, and here and there at a street corner a huddle of
half-timbered houses in a high contrast of invading sunlight and
retreating shade. From the cathedral parapet, there was a view of the
distant forts, and a horizontal sweep of the unharvested, buff-brown
moorlands.

"Un peu morte," say the French who knew Verdun before the war. The new
town was without distinction. It was out of date. It had none of the
glories that the province copies from Paris, no boulevards, no grandes
aertères. Such life as there was, was military. Rue Mazel was bright
with the gold braid and scarlet of the fournisseurs militaires, and in
the late afternoon chic young officers enlivened the provincial
dinginess with a brave show of handsome uniforms. All day long squads of
soldiers went flick! flack! up and down the street and bugle-calls
sounded piercingly from the citadel. The soldiery submerged the civil
population.