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This was a moving time for me, and really put the current sensationalized media coverage of Iraq in perspective.
The small graveyard in the town of Verdun proper holds 5,000 crosses of men who gave their lives for France.
The larger battlefield burial ground has one hundred and fifty THOUSAND crosses, each marking the grave of a Frenchman whose body was recovered after giving his life to save his country. The names of hundreds of thousands of others whose bodies were never found and are still rotting under the churned French soil poisoned by 4 years of combat, explosive residue, poison gas, steel and lead are inscribed in the stones of the nearby chapel and monument.
I gave a salute to the dead, and as is my habit I lit a candle in the chapel and gave a fervent wish that I would never see war on that scale again.
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