[Crea, Julie. "Walking in No Man's Land," in A Woman's Europe. Marybeth Bond, ed. San Francisco: Traveler's Tales, 2004, pp. 200-205.]

 

“Verdun?” I look up the steps at the bus driver, intimidated. My French is not up to snuff.

 

“Oui,” he waves me on with a jolly smile.

 

I climb the steps. The bus is nearly empty, a few women sit in the back. The driver gestures to the seat behind him and I sit.

 

He drives with his round body hunched over, his elbows resting on the steering wheel. Underneath his cap I catch a glimpse of thinning, gray hair. He maneuvers the bus smoothly through the narrow, busy causeways, leaving bustling Metz behind.

 

“Woher kommen sie?” He turns his head, but keeps his eyes on the road.

 

German. Good. I am better at German than French. “Ich komme aus den USA.”

 

“Ah,” he laughs, “I thought you German,” he struggles with a thick accent.

 

“No, but my German is better than my French.”

 

The driver shakes his head, not understanding so I repeat it in German, adding that his German is very precise.

 

“I went to German school.” He turns back to the front, suddenly quiet.

 

Verdant hills speed by the picture windows. The sky is gray. I hope my trip to the battlefield will not be a wet one.

 

“Do you know Alsace-Lorraine?” the driver asks, without turning.

 

I did. Metz is part of the border provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, a territorial sore-spot of nineteenth and twentieth century European history. Alsace-Lorraine was the knot in the middle of a tug-of-war rope between France and Germany, resulting in one of the most devastating battles in history, Verdun. Two times (1870-1918 and 1940-1944) the German Empire annexed the province only to lose it back to France at the end of World War I and World War II. But, both annexations lasted for a combined total of fifty years, leaving a distinct German mark on the French provinces.

 

“You visit Verdun?”

 

“Oui, je visite Verdun aujourd’hui.”

 

The driver nods grimly, satisfied. “You will see what Germans have done.”

 

In a conversation, broken into bits of French, German and English, the driver proceeds to tell his story -- the likes of which I may never encounter again.

 

“I live all my life in Metz.” He was born French, but before he finished grade school he would be declared a German citizen, his town, a German burg.

 

Nazi Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine in September of 1939. The new government declared High German to be the only permissible language. Children spoke German at school, used German textbooks, and learned Nazi propaganda and theory. The Nazis drafted one-hundred-and-forty-thousand Frenchmen and forced them to fight for the Fatherland on the eastern front.

 

“Malgre-nous,” the bus driver speaks quickly now. His words come, urgent, important. “My brother was sixteen. He fought Russians for Nazis. He never came back. Malgre-nous - Against Our Will.” He strikes his fist on the steering wheel and withdraws into silence.

 

I want to ask questions, but this is not the impersonal, cold search for information in a history book. It is a personal tragedy, with real feelings, memories and nightmares. What can I say? I say nothing, but keep my eyes on him. I will listen, if he will talk.

 

“My grandson studies to be a doctor. How old are you?” He glances in the rearview mirror at me, a slight smile on his face.

 

I laugh and point to my engagement ring.

 

“You know the battle Verdun is outside city? Ten kilometers.”

 

I didn’t, and find out when we arrive in the city of Verdun, that there is no public transportation out to the Memorial. I meet the bus driver back at the station, unsure of what to do. I really want to see the Memorial.

“I drop you off. You must walk back. Be back on road at 3:00. I be there to pick you up.” He looks at me sternly and shakes his finger, “Be on time! I can’t wait.”

 

I want to hug him, but don’t. He drops me at the entrance of the park and points up the lonely road, “You walk. But be back here at 3:00.” He taps the three on his watch, to make sure that I understand.

 

I wave and begin up the road. It winds through a pine forest, black-laden branches shading the barren ground below. The road is quiet and long. I begin to wonder if I will reach somewhere, or if the road is a twilight zone. I notice the silence, only the shuffle of my feet along the gravel shoulder. No birds. No squirrels rustling in the dead needles below the trees. No whistling mortars. No wounded, moaning from their injuries. No hearts pounding in fear.

 

Ranks of rich brown pine trunks line both sides of the road, like old souls waiting, waiting. And then I see a darkened crevice in the shade below the old souls. It skirts about, in and around, as if ambivalent to show itself. A trench. An approaching car startles me out of my trance. It is mildly comforting, but I cannot shake the feeling of thousands of eyes watching me, mourning and lonely.

 

I’ve heard stories about Verdun. The air laden with the weight of the near-two-hundred- thousand lives lost in the ten month battle. The eyes. The utter sorrow blanketed to earth by heavy clouds, unable to accept, unable to move on. I didn’t believe it. It was just some emotional sap’s reaction to encountering the reality of history. And now here I was, growing more disturbed with each step at this unwelcome sixth sense. Is it true? Or am I becoming an emotional sap myself?

 

I finally round a bend to see the missile-like tower of the Verdun Memorial, L’Ossuaire, in the distance. I am almost five kilometers into my walk. I pick up my step, energized by the knowledge that there is an end to this road.

 

The trees fall back to reveal a barren waste. The ground swells and dips like ashen-green waves in a turbulent ocean. The pits in between the swells are filled with water. The derelict wall of a bunker gapes from underneath a mound of wild vine. It is unlike anything I have ever seen before. They are shell scars of the most brutal battle of World War I.

 

The Memorial building sits aside, meticulously groomed with formal rows of what I think are arborvitae - the tree of life. A lush green carpet spreads before the Memorial, covered with thousands of white crosses, each with its own bush of blazing red roses.

 

I enter the Memorial Hall. Orange stained-glass windows and glowing candles remind me of a cathedral. Engraved names of MIA’s adorn the walls and ceiling. Their unidentified bones are entombed below. I see them. There is a row of windows at the rear of the Memorial through which I can see. Skulls, femurs, ribs strewn in no order. I feel the sheer waste and disrespect of life then. I also feel like an intruder.

 

I walk down the cross-strewn lawn back to the road. I follow it towards Fort Douaumont. A trench runs right up to the road and continues on the other side. It marches back into the trees, not shy or proud. Just there. The hard-packed path winds around a rise out of view, at one time muddy, swampy, full of stench, the sleepless, the frightened, the dead. I feel the pull to jump down and follow it. And then a shudder quakes my entire body. No.

 

What once was a state-of-the-art fortress, protected by eight feet of concrete, three feet of dirt, retractable gun turrets, a moat and barbed wire now appears as a monstrous cave. Fort Douaumont is dark, cold and damp. It was dark, cold and damp for them too. A huge underground cavern. A city. Stalactites stab like bayonets hung from the ceiling. Its corridors and rooms are empty but for the skeletons of machine guns, stoves, beds. The rusty brown color bleeds into everything. The bed frames grow into the ground. Earth to earth. It is hard to believe that anything but nature herself created this place.

 

I emerge, squinting in the cloudy light. I walk on top of the Fort. Green hills undulate all around. They are inviting, but guarded by a sign. “Terrain Interdit.” Shells, thousands of them, unexploded, volatile, buried in mud. Forever barring visitors to this land. It is ironic, I think. We did it. We fought over the land. We killed thousands of men for the land. And now, we must leave it be. The land itself is forbidden territory. For the French. For the Germans. For everyone.

 

I look at my watch. I have to walk back to make the bus. I walk a little faster this time, for I know there is another end to the road. Ten months of fighting. Almost one million casualties. Two-hundred thousand dead. German and French. For nothing. Neither France or Germany made any strategic gain. I can feel the eyes, the sorrow of lost youth and sanity, the appalling tragedy, the weight of my heart. For all that, it isn’t frightening. It is an unsettling feeling for a place such as this.

 

It is peace.

 

I emerge from the trees just in time to see the bus hurtling towards me. My friend stops and waves me on. It is starting to rain. The gray clouds have finally caught up with me.

 

The bus driver smiles, glances at me in the rear view mirror and says, “How long you be in Metz? I want you to meet my grandson.”