So the Battle of Verdun began on February 21st 1916.
And the French had been pulling men and resources out of the Verdun area to reinforce their other sectors of the front.
They also hadn't been doing a lot to build basic fortifications: barbed wire, concrete bunkers, entrenchments, that sort of thing.
And there was one guy in particular who was really a whistleblower that this was a problem.
That was a guy named Émile Driant. He had been in the French military
... 20 years before the war. He had been an assistant to Minister of War, General Boulanger.
Boulanger was forced out for political reasons, and that kind of tainted Driant's career.
So he eventually resigned his commission when it was made very clear
that he wasn't going to be promoted very far, or any farther.
And instead he ran for the National Assembly, you know, the legislative government of France.
He won a position there and was in the National Assembly when war was declared.
So, like pretty much all former army officers, he re-enlisted and he was ... put
... in command of about 1,300 Chasseur infantry troops out here at Verdun,
which was at the time an out of the way sector. Like you're not gonna get in anyone's way,
we don't care about your politics, we don't have to deal with you out here.
He was very concerned that there weren't enough defences being put up at Verdun,
that it was a weak point in the French lines, and it was ripe for German attack.
And it turned out that, obviously, he would be right.
Well, because he was in the National Assembly he was able to leapfrog the regular military chain of command
and take his concerns directly to the civilian government.
Who investigated it, found that they agreed with him about the potential weakness of the front out here,
and they forced Joffre to start doing at least a little bit to reinforce this sector.
This obviously ... didn't make Driant popular with Joffre,
but it would turn out to be a pretty prophetic recognition on Driant's part.
Because February 21st the Germans launch a major offensive at Verdun,
like a huge offensive, one of the biggest of the war.
And Driant's men and Driant himself are on the very front lines of that attack.
This is Émile Driant's command post in the Bois de Caures at Verdun. You can see over here there's
the remnants of a big shell that took out a corner of the bunker.
Driant and his men would fight here on the 21st. By the end of the 21st they held their position,
but Driant's 1,300 men had been reduced to 180 still combat effective.
On the 22nd they continued to fight and Driant was unfortunately killed by a rifle shot
while bandaging one of his men, trying to help evacuate one of his men.
So he would go on to be a basically a French martyr of Verdun,
one of the few guys who recognised what was going to happen and did his best to prevent it.
So it's hard for me to show you the inside of the bunker here.
This was a command post, so there's just one long open building.
However, if we go back and look at this section under that collapsed portion of the wall,
you can see, just barely see, the roof has caved in and there's a big ol' chunk missing out of the floor.
So something fairly traumatic happened back at this end of the bunker.
I believe it's been reinforced since, because this is open as a place that people can visit,
and they didn't want the roof collapsing on tourists.
Now if we head over a few hundred yards from the bunker we will get to the place where ... Driant has been buried.
Even today, a hundred years later, this landscape is basically nothing but trenches
and shell holes. You can see the remnants of the old trench lines.
You can see all of the craters even after a hundred years of erosion.
This is in the heart of what the French would designate as the "Red Zone" after the war.
The area that was too contaminated by unexploded ordnance, and gas contamination,
and all the other detritus of war. It was too contaminated to be able to rehabilitate,
and so this area was reforested and left without agriculture and without people.
Unfortunately, this is the road down to the tomb, it's actually barricaded off right now.
But you can see the monument stone right there at the end of this little road.
This is only a couple hundred yards away from the command post.
And then there is a more substantial monument to Driant right across on the other side of the street.
Driant was originally found and buried with military honours by the Germans, largely because of his rank.
His family was informed of his death through Switzerland actually, through a Swiss emissary.
When the French retook this ground they exhumed his German grave and they reburied him in their own way
as, basically, one of the hero martyrs of the Battle of Verdun.
One of the guys who tried to prevent the tragedy that was coming.
He certainly did his best, both before the battle and during it.