An impressive monument was needed so that nothing was forgotten, from the ten months of the Battle of Verdun and its 360,000 deaths, in 1916, during the First World War.
It was therefore a 30 m high tower, erected on a 15 m overhang of fortress walls.
It is reached by 75 steps in the heart of the city and its shops.
The building “To Victory and the Soldiers of Verdun”, classified as a historic monument in 1989, will soon be a hundred years old: “It was inaugurated in 1929”, recalls Samuel Hazard, the mayor.
The monument is a bridge between the Place de la Libération, on the heights, and the Quai de Londres below, which has become the festive place in summer on the banks of the Meuse.
Two Russian cannons raise their war prize silhouette up there.
Their cast iron necks announce to visitors that here, in this world capital of peace, everything is memorial.
The inhabitants know that the place has since its origins attracted another procession of shadows, those of the unfortunate people who commit suicide there by throwing themselves into the void.
On February 3, a new tragedy awakened this dark liability here, but the fatal fall was not a suicide.
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