I was in Verdun last week for a couple of days at the two ends of a trip down to Alsace-Sorraine to look at the Second World War battlefields there, including the Maginot Line for sure,

one of those places where the First World War meets the second.

It's almost 40 years since I first went to Verdun,

and I've been back more times than I can remember,

but I never, ever tire of visiting that ground, which in so many ways defined aspects

of the Great War, the year 1916, especially, of course, for France and Germany, but I think

in a wider way as well. Forrested after the conflict, the evidence of battle at Verdun

is everywhere beneath the canopy of trees

that cover that former battlefield.

And this time I noticed in quite a few areas

there's been a lot of tree felling on a large scale,

something I've seen there in the past.

Then it was often intrusive and damaging to that

landscape of the Great War, trenches and shellholes pulverized by logging vehicles

and the removal of trees and the destruction and scattering of archaeology and even human

remains was everywhere, something I

once saw on a terrible scale at Coat 304 on the west bank of the Verdun battlefield quite vividly.

But this time they seem to have approached it differently, the removal of trees. It's a different

approach, I think, because while trees have been

removed what we see is the opening up of the ground exposing it enabling us to see that landscape

of the First World War and around the bois de corps I noticed this in particular where Colonel

Dreyont was killed in February

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