Fleury-devant-Douaumont is one of nine French villages obliterated in the 1916 battle and never reoccupied. Walking the paths through what is now beech and pine forest, you see small white signs marking the locations of the destroyed buildings — the bakery, the school, the inn, the houses by family name. The ground is still pocked with shell craters.
A small chapel, the Chapelle Notre-Dame de l'Europe, marks the centre. The village's status as one of France's "dead for France" communes is legally maintained — a mayor is appointed by the prefect to administer ground that holds no living residents. Allow 30 minutes; it is the most haunting place on the battlefield.