BOIS DES CAURES

Clearly, the Bois des Caures and Driant's name will forever be linked. Located between the villages of Flabas and Ville-devant-Chaumont, the Bois des Caures is considered to be the site of the very first confrontation of the Battle of Verdun, and should therefore be the first stop on any tourist itinerary.

Under the avalanche of fire on February 21, 1916, the 1,300 chasseurs commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Driant would defend the woods to the last man. Considered elite troops, these intrepid fighters proudly wore the hunting horn, which they had carried since the battle of Sidi-Brahm in 1845. In the front-line trenches of the Bois des Caures walked a sixty-year-old officer, a fatherly figure serenely passing among the men who almost worshipped him. It has to be said that a career like Émile Driant's earned him a great deal of respect. Ranked fourth in his class at Saint-Cyr in 1877, he had served in the infantry, then in fortifications, before heading to North Africa, where he won the hand of the daughter of a certain General Boulanger, then Governor of Tunisia.

A man of letters in his spare time, he wrote under the pseudonym "Danrit". Despite his literary successes, his strong right-wing Catholic views earned him attacks from the anticlerical movement in the turbulent years leading up to the law separating Church and State. Having fallen into official disfavor, Driant returned to the colors with the outbreak of war, to defend his country against the invaders. Complaining incessantly about the state of preparation at Verdun, he voiced his concerns as a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, but to no avail. He died, surrounded by his Diables Bleus, on February 22, 1916, ironically one of the very few French officers to have anticipated that the enemy was preparing to strike a major blow at Verdun.

DATAtourisme France