Review: The Road To Verdun: France, Nationalism And The First World War By Ian Ousby Essay, Research Paper
Shipwreck of a nation The Road to Verdun: France, Nationalism and the First World War by Ian Ousby 324pp, Jonathan Cape Reviewing a book on a subject about which one has written oneself is difficult. When the author of the work has died shortly before publication, the difficulty is doubled. Fortunately, this is an outstanding book, rich in its insights, and written with verve and style. My main regret is that its author is no longer here to be congratulated. The Road to Verdun follows a well-tried formula: Mandalay, Morocco and Wigan Pier have all had their approaching highways celebrated. But Ousby’s title is no old trick to hook the random reader. What is now Route Nationale 35 was the one road connecting Verdun with the rest of France during the great battle that outdid the Somme for length and ferocity in the first world war’s middle year, 1916. Verdun’s umbilical cord, it became known as la Voie Sacrée, the Sacred Way; a name it still bears, as evidenced by the kilometre stones so inscribed marking the road between Bar-le-Duc, capital of the department of the Meuse, and Verdun itself. However, this was not the equivalent of Rome’s Via Sacra. Rather, it was the Via Dolorosa of Christ’s journey to the cross. For the men who trod or were transported up the Sacred Way to Verdun were destined for a Calvary, and they knew it. The mud-caked figures who came back down, more corpses than living men, were those who had somehow avoided crucifixion. Thus this historic road is arguably a potent metaphor of the whole sacrificial encounter. Yet this book travels another road to Verdun. In a piece of bold craftsmanship, the author launches his narrative of the battle, then spools back to explore the psychological and cultural journey that brought France from her nadir in 1815, following the defeat of Napoleon, to her life-and-death struggle in the killing fields of Lorraine 101 years later. Any sense that this is an annoying interruption of a gripping yarn soon yields to the understanding that this section is effectively the heart of the book. For, as it seems to me, Ousby’s real subject is not so much France’s greatest battle as France herself. Powerfully, he quotes Charles de Gaulle’s ringing affirmatio
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