This vital high ground dominates the surrounding countryside. Two years of Allied offensives failed to take Vimy Ridge, costing tens of thousands of lives. In April 1917, it was the turn of the Canadian Corps, one of the finest combat outfits of the Great War. The Canadians took it in a day, and Vimy has become a symbol of their country’s national identity. The battlefield is well preserved, including restored trench lines, tunnels, and a massive memorial on the heights.

Few battlefields exhibit the efficacy of firepower and the brutality of industrialized war as does Verdun. Massive, shattered forts, overgrown trenches, rusting barbed wire entanglements, and cratered fields are everywhere. The human cost of this ten-month battle is also evident at the enormous ossuary containing the remains of over 130,000 men who perished during the fighting. One of the longest, largest, and bloodiest battles in history, Verdun remains an impactful place almost a century after the guns fell silent.

Not far from Verdun, the tangled Argonne Forest became the scene of the largest American offensive of the war. Beginning in September 1918, hundreds of thousands of Doughboys hurled themselves across difficult terrain into the teeth of strong German defenses. It was a battle still raging when the Armistice came on November 11. The American Expeditionary Force had proved a formidable fighting force, at the cost of over 100,000 men. Today, the region has many excellent state and unit memorials, and the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery – the largest in Europe, where over 14,000 Doughboys rest.

Best known for the magnificent fighting by the US Marines in June 1918, much of the battlefield is preserved. The wood (replanted after the war) still bears many traces of the intense combat: shell craters and trench lines abound, interspersed with monuments and captured German artillery pieces. Nearby is the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.