Editing Verdun (section)

== Cemetery and memorials ==
There are many French and German cemeteries throughout the battlefield. The largest is the French National Cemetery and [[Douaumont Ossuary]] near Fort Douaumont. Thirteen thousand crosses adorn the field in front of the ossuary, which holds roughly 130,000 unidentified remains brought in from the battlefield. Every year yields more remains, which are often placed inside the ossuary's vaults.

Among many revered memorials on the battlefield is the "[[Bayonet Trench]]", which marks the location where some dozen [[bayonet]]s lined up in a row were discovered projecting out of the ground after the war; below each rifle was the body of a French soldier. It has been assumed that these belonged to a group of soldiers who had rested their rifles against the parapet of the trench they were occupying when they were killed during a bombardment, and the men were buried where they lay in the trench and the rifles left untouched. However, this is probably not historically accurate: experts agree that the bayonets were probably affixed to the rifles after the attack and installed by survivors to memorialize the spot.<ref>Prost, Antoine. Republican Identities in War and Peace: Representations of France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Edited by Jay Winter. Oxford, New York: Berg, 2002. p.54</ref>

Nearby, the World War I Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial is located at [[Romagne-sous-Montfaucon]] to the northwest of Verdun. It is the final resting place for 14,246 American military dead, most of whom died in the [[Meuse-Argonne Offensive]]. The chapel contains a memorial to the 954 American missing whose remains were never recovered or identified.

On 12 September 1916 [[King George V]] awarded the [[Military Cross]] to the City of Verdun, one of only two awards of this British decoration to a municipality during World War I, the other being [[Ypres]].<ref>Abbott, Peter Edward; Tamplin (1981). British Gallantry Awards (2nd ed.). London, UK: Nimrod Dix and Co. {{ISBN|9780902633742}}, page 221</ref> On 5 October 1917, [[Bernardino Machado]], [[President of Portugal|President of the Portuguese Republic]], awarded the City of Verdun the [[Order of the Tower and Sword]], 1st Class (Grand Cross) for its "tenacious resistance, steadfastness in battle, and heroism of its garrison, having filled a brilliant position in the present war and gloriously proving the worth of a nation's valour and patriotism"; the investiture ceremony took place on 10 October 1917, during President Machado's visit to the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]].<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Bernardino |first=Luís Manuel Brás |date=May 2016 |title=A Batalha de Verdun: possíveis consequências e ensinamentos para Portugal |trans-title=The Battle of Verdun: possible consequences and teachings for Portugal |url=https://www.revistamilitar.pt/artigo/1125 |language=pt |magazine=Revista Militar |location=Lisbon |publisher=Europress |access-date=7 May 2020 }}</ref>

<gallery>
File:Verdun 4juni2006 043.jpg|[[Charlemagne]] at the summit of [[List of World War I memorials and cemeteries in Verdun#Monument to the victory at Verdun|Verdun's Victory Monument]]
File:Verdun 5.jpg|A portion of the battlefield today
File:I world war memorial.jpg|World War I memorial at [[Douaumont]]
</gallery>