The Somme battlefields | The Chemin des Dames | The Armistice Clearing

The Aisne is a département a short drive to the east, where French troops manned the trenches. British and Commonwealth troops also fought in various offensives in the Aisne although the numbers involved cannot compare with those in the Somme. In Britain, everyone has heard and knows something about the Somme, but the suffering and heroism of the French sector is little known to us. Perhaps we should quote here from what Robin Neillands has written in The Times (06.11.99):

The Aisne in northeast France is so beautiful that it is all too easy to forget what happened along the ridgeway known as Le Chemin des Dames 80 years ago. But this area is to the French what the Somme and Passchendaele are to the British, a place where the best of a generation was thrown away.
Even so, the Aisne does not seem like a battlefield. The villages are small and full of flowers, the hilltop town of Laon resembles somewhere in Provence, the rivers wind gently through the valleys and - as a bonus - there are hardly any tourists...
Given time, you can wander in the surrounding countryside amidst many half-hidden or slowly fading reminders of the Great War. It is one of the undiscovered corners of France, tucked away in the southern half of Picardy, a place people hurry past on their way to Paris or Champagne."

The Chemin des Dames ridge had for centuries been keenly fought for. Today, it is a peaceful route, along which you can walk, cycle or drive, with beautiful views over the surrounding green and often wooded countryside. Stone was quarried here for the massive cathedrals of both Picardie and even Paris. During WW1, German defences were set up in the resulting caverns and corridors, providing strategic dominance as well as troop protection. Gunfire spat as if from the mouth of a dragon. Hence, the name of the largest and best known of the caverns - the Caverne du Dragon - where astonishingly enough both French and German troops eventually shared the same shelter, with the thinnest of stone walls separating the two.

The Caverne du Dragon reopened in 2000 as one of the principal WW1 museums in France. Quite different in style to the Historial or to the Shelters Museum in Albert, its approach is minimalist, leaving much to the imagination. But it is no less a poignant record of the horror of life in the shelter and hence the even greater horror of the front line.