On Sunday, 28 May, our group visited Samogneux, a ruined village near Verdun. When we say ‘ruined village’, we mean it without qualification. In 1916, Samogneux ceased to exist; one of the first villages attacked during the Germans’ Verdun Offensive of February through December 1916, Samogneux, which sits within a shallow ravine cascading down the side of a tall hill north of Verdun, became a lunar ruin, every house destroyed to its collapsed foundations, every tree obliterated, every blade of grass burned away. It is still within a ‘red zone’ of uninhabitable spaces; no one may live there still, so […]