Tranchée des Baïonnettes

Concrete monument over a WWI trench with bayonet tips emerging from the soil

The Bayonet Trench is one of Verdun's most-visited and most-misunderstood monuments. A long concrete canopy, funded by American banker George Rand, shelters a section of trench from which the rusted tips of rifle bayonets still protrude, marking the line where French soldiers of the 137th Infantry Regiment died in June 1916.

The site is short — fifteen minutes — and most powerful when combined with a walk in the surrounding forest, where shell craters and the outlines of communication trenches are still visible everywhere under the trees.

things to do monument
A story
The legend, much disputed by historians, is that a French unit was buried alive by a German bombardment in 1916 while standing in their trench, with only the tips of their bayonets remaining above the ground. The reality is probably simpler — the bayonets were left as grave-markers by men who buried the dead afterwards — but the monument was built in 1920 on the strength of the story.

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