Le Linge Trenches, Vestige of World War I France
Seeing French Battlefields Makes the First World War Experience Real
Jun 30, 2009
In 2014, only five years away, the world will pause to recall the centennial of what may be the most senseless war ever fought. Millions died because of the territorial greed of absolute monarchy in its death throes. The battlefields of that war are still pock-marked and some, such as Verdun, remain as monuments to those who died for their countries.
Voges Mountains in Alsace-Lorraine
One of the lesser-known but critical battlefields is at Le Linge, a mountaintop in the Voges, one of the most beautiful places in France. Today, as before World War I, the mountains are covered in green forests with views of velvet fields, grazing cattle and villages clustered below. Once that war began they became scarred with miles of trenches, blockhouses and bomb craters. The forests were destroyed and farms and villages ruined.
Le Linge was a part of the miles of trenches from which French and German armies faced each other in Alsace-Lorraine, a vast area between France and Germany, stretching northward from Switzerland to Luxembourg. Seized from France by Germany in 1870, the peaks had been fortified by 1914. Miles of stone-lined trenches, gun emplacements and blockhouses had been erected to prevent the French from retaking the region – and the Rhine.
German and French Armies in the Trenches
Soon after the war began in 1914, the French faced the German army along this border, digging trenches in the downhill slopes only tens of yards from the German positions. From 1914 until 1916, repeated violent attempts were made to dislodge the German forces, and at one point French forces made it to the German second line of defense. By 1917, each side had so damaged the other that neither had the strength to move forward, until the war dragged to a close in 1918.
Le Linge battlefields lie entirely within France today, miles from the German border, and are now a monument to the tens of thousands from both sides who died in these trenches. A museum housed in a new building reminiscent of a blockhouse of that era, houses an outstanding collection of artifacts and memorabilia of the battle and of the war. In well-displayed exhibits, visitors can see and compare uniforms, equipment and weapons from this first of modern wars. One exhibit displays exploded bombs, mortar rounds and artillery shells and their fragments. Gas masks – some of them extremely primitive – are reminders that this weapon was used here.
Visiting the World War I Trenches
But the most mind-focusing sights are the trenches themselves, in remarkable condition after almost a century. Visitors can walk inside the zig-zag of German trenches, get sight lines from gun emplacements and examine blockhouses. The barbed wire from the battle still lies in coils between the French and German lines and signs warn of unexploded munitions in off-limits zones. Large white and black crosses mark the location of remains of soldiers who fell here in 1915 and 1916, some not found until the 1990s. It is the proximity of the French and German trenches that is so unbelievable. At the farthest they are less than 100 feet apart, at the closest – the French 1915 line – only a few feet.
As World War I – the “War to End All Wars”– approaches its centennial, the battlefield of Le Linge is a place that should be visited to understand the war’s human tragedy. It is fitting that, as fellow members of a peacefully created European community, France and Germany both honor the courage, bravery and sacrifice of both sides who fought and died here.
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