Péronne has a large, internationally respected, most excellent museum of the Great War. It has thousands of original artefacts, documents, works of art, moving and still images arranged thematically; a movie theatre.
However when we were there today, the klaxon sounded and we all filed dutifully out into the rain whilst the staff rushed round to find the offending bit of hardware/software that had triggered the evacuation. I was most impressed with the Evacuation armbands in red and dark blue. The punters stayed remarkably calm. There was no panic buying of fuel oil, bread ....
We were looking for visual images which 'said it all' and of course they don't exist. The most feared weapon faced by individual combatants was surely the machine guns into whose hail of fire at the rate of 500 rounds a minute the men were expected to walk.
On the way out was a poignant trestle table of ruined stuff from the Chemin des Dames battlefield.
It doesn't resolve that JMB 'O' level history question of 1964 "What were the causes of the First World War?" I don't think there ever was a list, or someone just lost it.
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