Fantômes de Guerre

This has been a very difficult post for me to write. Usually I get an idea and I can bust out a few paragraphs in no time. I'm posting this after over a year of it sitting in my drafts. That's not to say that this will be the best post of all time, but hopefully someone will get something out of my muddled thoughts.

  

There are many different war memorials and museums that I visited on my trip. This was to be expected, of course; many of the battles fought in both world wars took place in France, a country where we spent a lot of our time. I came to notice something that I haven't observed as much in the US. The land seemed scarred. Countrysides that had been marred by artillery shells, trenches that had been sliced through the earth, villages left as just a little more than heaps of rubble. All of these wounds of war were just left there. They were ghosts of warfare that happened nearly a century ago.

After visiting Verdun, France, and Fort De Douaumont, my party and I came to the conclusion that perhaps the French people left things as they were because it was a part of their past.  Instead of covering up the scars, or putting everything on display, they left it.  War history is so engrossed in their past, it's something that defines the country.

There's a lot that I wish I could say about these photos.  I wish I could write my thoughts eloquently as to why these were some of my favorite pictures from the trip.  But a picture has a thousand words, so I'll let them do the talking.