Military History | Fleury-devant-Douaumont — A Commune With a Council and No Inhabitants

Fleury had 422 people in 1913, an inn, a few artisans, and fields. The prefecture evacuated them to Bras-sur-Meuse and Verdun after the German offensive opened on 21 February 1916. Shelling closed over the village once Fort Vaux fell on 7 June. German infantry entered on 23 June, and between then and 18 August the village changed hands sixteen times. By the time the French held it for good there was nothing left standing to hold.

France classified it a destroyed village in 1919 and drew the Red Zone around it. What France did not do was dissolve the commune. Fleury-devant-Douaumont still exists in law, with an official population of zero and a municipal council of three appointed by the prefect rather than elected. Five neighbours are kept the same way: Beaumont-en-Verdunois, Bezonvaux, Cumières-le-Mort-Homme, Haumont-près-Samogneux and Louvemont-Côte-du-Poivre.

Former residents came back in 1934 to build a shelter-chapel on the site of their church. A statue of Notre-Dame de l'Europe was added to its front in 1979. The Mémorial de Verdun opened in 1967 where the railway station had been, which is why this is the destroyed village most people actually see.

It is a wood now. Low white posts stand where houses stood and small signs name streets that carry nothing, and the ground between them still rises and falls in the shape the shelling left. The paths are marked, and there is a reason to keep to them: this ground has never been cleared of what was fired into it.

📸 Cover: markers on the site of the streets and houses of Fleury, by TCY, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the village site around 1920, unidentified photographer, George Eastman House collection, public domain.