Garrie Hall
It is strange that although the scars of war are healing in our countryside, a place previously untouched by the horrors of the trenches has developed a horror of its own.
The mud sea and trenches that were once the front line of Verdun are now teeming with wildlife and the grass and poppies grow in abundance. But not five miles away there is a small community that has been devastated.
There are but a few houses and two farms that now stand deserted in a remote knoll five miles from Verdun, but few people go there. The majority of Verdun's people do not even know of its existence and now it has become actively shunned.
It is a place of death and desolation. Those who once lived there died slowly and painfully and it is said that at night the whole area glows with a deathly brimstone light. The cause is unknown, the problem confined to the remote area. But can we ignore it?
Something laid waste to fertile ground. In just three years a whole community has died out, killed by something unknown. Just because it does not affect our own, well ordered, lives do we not owe the relatives of the dead an explanation?
French translation from JOURNAL DE VERDUN
1 The small community is the victim of a strange, cancerous meteorite similar to the one in The Colour Out of Space by H P Lovecraft.
2 The knoll on which the community stands was once behind German lines, and its houses used by the German Army as a makeshift headquarters. The entire area was used as a dump for chemical and gas weapons and a large amount of phosphorous. As they were beaten back the chemicals were buried in preparation for a counterattack which never came.
Over the years the containers have corroded, contaminating the knoll with phosphors and a deadly mixture of poisons, causing the yellow glow. Once in the food chain it killed vegetation, animals and eventually humans.
3 The story is very inaccurate. There is no 'deathly brimstone light' and no evidence of a plague on the land. The war years left the land in great neglect, the population suffered under the German Occupation and both have left what was once rich fertile land avirtual wilderness.
Copyright (c) 1990 Garrie Hall