"Nature had been murdered. Every sign of Humanity had been swept away. Roads had vanished and forests were fire-blackened stumps. Villages were grey smears where stone walls were tumbled together... only broken, half obliterated links of the tenches were visible". This is the description Edwin Parsons, an American volunteer in the French airforce, gave after flying over the World War I battlefield of Verdun in 1916. Verdun was the longest and, if not the fiercest, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. It has been estimated that over 40 million shells were fired during the battle, with the Germans suffering around 350,000 casualties and the French nearly 400,000. It also led to general Alexander Haig launching the assault at the Somme prematurely with disastrous results for the British and French forces.
Acorns and conkers were collected, some possibly by General Sir John French, the initial commander of the British Expeditionary Force, from surviving trees on the Verdun battlefield and oak and chestnut trees were subsequently planted as war memorials in several sites around England. In 1976 a chestnut tree grown from the original Verdun trees was planted in St Albans, besides Waxhouse Gate passageway, by 87-year-old Gordon Fisher, a local ‘Old Contemptible’, the term used for those in the British Expeditionary Force.
In 2016 St Albans Civic Society, with the support of the St Albans City and District Council, installed an information panel that explains the importance of the Battle of Verdun. The panel, which has translations in both French and German, was unveiled by the Mayor of St Albans on Remembrance Day.
Then in 2018, as part of the centenary commemorations for the end of the Great War on 11th November 1918, the Council fixed a metal bench, near the Verdun Tree, with a black enamelled steel design which
portray on one side of the back panel a group of soldiers, British "Tommies", clambering over barbed wire as they attack the enemy trenches, balanced on the other side by some red poppies, recalling those who had sacrificed their lives.
The area around the bench has become a popular gathering area, with a pleasant garden behind, the Verdun Tree to the north, the Vintry Garden to the south and the bench facing Lussmans' trees in planters.
With the fees from my series of talks for the Cathedral Adult Learning programme, which were donated to Conservation 50, I am proposing matching the centenary bench with a "Peace Bench", designed in the same black enamelled steel but depicting half-a-dozen white doves as symbols of peace. It seems entirely appropriate that next to a bench that reminds us of the tragedy of war there is a symbol of hope and peace.