For nearly a year straight in 1916, French and German forces fought over a few square miles of hills and forts outside the city of Verdun. Today, the battlefield is a forest, and the Mémorial de Verdun – Champ de bataille watches over it, preserving the Mémorial, Fort Douaumont, and Fort Vaux, and carrying out historical research on the battle and its place in the Great War.
This year marks the battle’s 110th anniversary – to honor it, the Mémorial created the temporary exhibition Des mondes dans la bataille : Verdun 1916 (Worlds Within the Battle), on view through December 31, 2026, shedding light on the lesser-known stories of those around the world who whose destinies intertwined at Verdun, many ending there. We spoke with Eve de Pazzis, Deputy Director of Finance, Human Resources, and Administration, about the meaning behind the exhibition over a century later, and special stories of the American within it.
A memorial built on testimony
“The Mémorial de Verdun was inaugurated in 1967, born of the will of the veterans themselves to have a place to pass on how they had lived the Battle of Verdun,” Eve explains. “That’s why it’s called a memorial and not a museum. Because the most important thing here is passing on the testimony and the journeys of the combatants.”
This focus on individuals runs through all of its work. “The figures of the Battle of Verdun are staggering: 300 days, 300 nights, two million French and German soldiers who passed through,” she says. “These figures sometimes make us forget that behind them, there are men, and women too, behind the front lines.”
Developed by the Mémorial’s historian, Nicolas Czubak, and his co-curator, Edith Desrousseaux de Medrano, the exhibition sheds new light on the many nationalities, geographic origins, and sometimes exceptional personal journeys found in both the French and German armies. Some reflect collective experiences, like soldiers from France’s former African colonies; others are entirely singular, like a Peruvian, a Swiss, and a Japanese volunteer. On the German side, it explores rarely researched stories, from Danes and Poles conscripted into the imperial army to Russian and Belgian prisoners mobilized behind the lines.
Each story required meticulous research. “It’s moving,” Eve says. “And that’s the strength of telling these individual journeys: they speak much more to visitors. That’s when you realize they were young, when we tend to picture veterans as elderly. It humanizes this history again. We put the human back at the heart of it.”
Americans before 1917
The exhibition is laid out as a series of “islands” in an open hall, each representing a nationality or origin. The United States holds one of the most prominent, reflecting a group second only to France’s former colonies in the number of people involved.
“Americans themselves, individually, very largely out of their love for France, enlisted alongside France, many in the Foreign Legion,” Eve says, long before the United States entered the war in April 1917.
Pilot Raoul Lufbery, who scored the first of his 17 confirmed victories over Verdun on July 30, 1916, with the Lafayette Escadrille, is represented by a book of prints opened to a scene of his attack on a German plane, while a model of his Nieuport 17 hangs above the island. Nurse Kate Normann Derr, who described the flood of wounded from Verdun in her wartime book, is represented by a watercolor of a first-aid post and an envelope, on loan from the Musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt.
For Eve, these stories are inseparable from the long friendship between the two countries. “If so many Americans enlisted alongside France at the time of the Battle of Verdun… it was truly out of French-American friendship, before their country was even at war,” she says. The squadron’s name was no accident: it honored Lafayette, whose support for American independence was then 140 years old.
Leading up to 2028
The Mémorial already devotes two display cases in its permanent exhibition to American involvement, including an American uniform and identification tags. About 25 minutes away lie two American military cemeteries: Meuse-Argonne, the largest American military cemetery in Europe, and St. Mihiel.
In 2028, the Mémorial will open a major temporary exhibition dedicated entirely to the Americans engaged in Meuse and Lorraine during WWI, especially in 1918, when they fought under their own flag. “It’s almost a little foretaste of what we’ll be exhibit in two years, exclusively on the Americans at Verdun,” Eve says.
How U.S. donors can help
With Friends of Fondation de France, U.S. donors can support the Mémorial de Verdun – Champ de bataille through tax-deductible donations, helping bring the 2028 exhibition to life, sustain cultural programs like its aviation weekend featuring replica WWI aircraft, and restore Fort Douaumont, so that the individuals of Verdun remain visible to generations to come.
Featured Photo ©Mémorial de Verdun
