Vaux-devant-Damloup

This is one of the destroyed villages from WWI that were not rebuilt

The village of Vaux-Devant-Damloup lies in the heart of the Verdun battlefield. The Fort de Vaux bears his name. This village was completely destroyed during the Battle of Verdun in 1916.

The year was 1924… The name Vaux-Devant-Damloup was to be removed from the map of France and the area of the commune, definitively classified in the “red zone”, had already been purchased by the state. The love for the native soil, the cult of memory, the reputation of the graves would soon bring together a bundle of good will and only the construction of a moral city, a city of souls, a harbinger of material reconstruction, modestly made this possible

Already an artery had breathed some semblance of life into the deserted valley: an economic railway line had been restored; A small train station was built. To house the station's employees, modest houses had been built along the railway line. A school functioned in a barracks while waiting for something better. Under the energetic drive of its new mayor, the municipality launched various projects and immediately worked to realize them.

An amount of 150,000 francs was allocated in successive installments for the creation of a new road network. The construction of a town hall school in 1928 inaugurated the rebirth of the town. A water supply was carried out and an electrical line was built.

As the outskirts of the city became more hospitable, consideration was given to building a chapel, a memorial temple where the former residents and the families of the village's eighteen children who died on the Field of Honor would gather.

To assert the legal personality of the new agglomeration, the municipality bought 30 hectares of land, while the mayor, his deputy and some other residents made the same gesture for their personal accounts: 200 hectares were thus deducted from the red zone.

Today Vaux-Devant-Damloup is the only village rebuilt in the area of the battlefield, about 500 meters from the destroyed village. There are approximately thirty houses and 72 residents.

Source: vauxdevantdamloup.fr/la-reconstruction_fr.html