Massiges mountains (Marne), Center for fights 14-18, vomits the lunar soil every step of rusty shells, passionate field of rehabilitation, piece for guests insight into hell in the trenches.
"We had something in memory of the men who fought and died here, are enemies, but they do not share the same suffering that we must prove to the people," said Eric Marshall, a former military history buff, President Club "to Massiges" , the name of this natural fortress crossroads and forests of the region? Argonne contributes with his left hand on the form.
In 2008, Eric Marshall and four other founding of their savings to buy a plot of three acres, the home have returned culture. Because they are to spend their free time with blades grip and takes a network of ditches, trenches and checkpoints in turn by the German and French armies occupied the first year of the First World War to update.
After the battle of the Marne, the Germans have strategic location between September 1914 and 1915 repeatedly lost and regained by standing on the heights Massiges, the two sides eventually. In the hands of the French However, keep Imperialists until a ceasefire in the area known as "head of the snake."
With shrapnel, which only grows in calcareous soil of rusty barbed wire and other Friesian horses peppered, two huge craters attest to the violence of the explosion of mines buried alive fighters.
Then a maze of trenches restored 600 meters? Cement bags and surrounded by a wooden ladder attack murderer viewpoints identical slots, immersed guests of fear. Here and there raised on the shelves or on the floor huts, spare shells, shoes, bottles and gutted sockets look a bit tragic soldier every day.
- "Never Again" -
"Behind every man there is no objection, I know, explode the death of a comrade, the whistling of bullets and, of course, I was a bit it was," said Marshall, a former gunner sergeant who served in the Balkans and in Africa .
"You'll often find pieces of bone, we shed archaeologists Drac (Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs), but if we have a complete skeleton, the prosecution and the police allowed," said the former military ras hair and shoulders seekers.
After the first work is funded entirely by donations from members, nine bodies, six French and three German hastily buried in a pit near the house. Anonymous, when Albert Dadure soldiers exhumed in July 2013 a voluntary association Theo Aubry, 18 archeology student who comes every summer to work on the side.
"I do not read to see a few letters identification tag, is three years older than me, as he was assassinated in February 1915, it was very exciting," said the young man.
"It is important that the memory to keep. Century is not so old, and here we are really saying 'never again'," he added.
The military cemetery in honor of Albert Dadure Minaucourt-le-Mesnil-lès-Hurlus in February to read the last letter to his family six days before his death in public.
"I can not wait until it can get as it all to end., I do not know how you are no longer angry, and how can we resist, malnourished, still cold, drink not even water," he wrote.
Eric Marshall, who has about a year to get the rest of the trenches., In the hope that it will help the government to make tourism a must Massiges memory
