![]() One hundred years ago, this land was probably flat. The undulating landscape is not natural but made by artillery shells. This moonscape of shell holes, still visible a century later, is located at Froideterre on the Verdun battlefield. Trees stand where the village of Fleury once stood, near Verdun, on March 5, 2014. After the failure at Verdun, Falkenhayn was removed from his position ![]() The German defenses collapsed in December and those surviving were taken prisoners. Eventually, the collapse of the southern front in Russia and the power of the Anglo-French attack on the Somme, reduced the German armies to holding their positions as best they could. By then the war had dragged for so long that a victory at Verdun became a matter of German prestige as much as it was for the French. By July, the increased counter attack from the French army forced the Germans to go into defensive. Everywhere you look the brutal scars of war are visible in the many over lapping craters.Īs for the war, Falkenhayn had seriously underestimated the French, for whom victory at all costs was the only way to justify the sacrifices already made. Millions of unexploded shells still litter the region. Only the most toughest plants managed to survive. Even today the soil is contaminated with heavy metals such as copper, lead and zinc, and poisonous chemicals such as arsenic and ammonium perchlorate, which were used in detonator shells. Forests were reduced to tangled piles of wood. The massive amount of artillery tore up the ground turning it into a wasteland of mud pools when the rain came. Many troops at the battle never saw an enemy soldier, experiencing nothing but artillery fire. So many shells were fired that the top of one particular hill vanished. Over the course of the next eleven months, the two armies fired an estimated 65 million artillery shells at one another that not only decimated both armies but completely devastated the land. Supported by 1,200 artillery guns, they blasted hundreds of thousands of shells at the Verdun region. On the first day alone, the Germans sent 140,000 soldiers to attack the French town. The battlefield of Verdun scarred with shell craters. His plan was not to capture the city, but simply to kill as many Frenchmen as possible, or to quote him, “bleed the French army white”. Falkenhayn believed that France would fight for this piece of land to the last man, and by doing so would lose so many men that the battle would change the course of the war. Falkenhayn knew that the French simply could not allow these forts to fall into the hands of the enemy because of the national humiliation that would follow. The area around Verdun contained twenty major forts and forty smaller ones that had historically protected the eastern border of France for centuries. Verdun wasn’t strategically important to the Germans, but had a historic sentiment for the French. ![]() The attack on Verdun came about because of a cunning plan by the German Chief of General Staff, von Falkenhayn. The Battle of Verdun lasted over 300 days from 21 February 1916 until 19 December 1916 and caused an estimated casualty of over 700,000 dead, wounded and missing. Above all we have helped the French immensely by relieving the pressure on Verdun’.One of the longest and deadliest battle of the First World War was fought over a small parcel of land in north-eastern France, near the commune and town of Verdun. will smash him in his deep dug outs… Anyhow we have shown the Bosche that we can rush his line on a wide front and I think we shall penetrate the second line if the ammunition holds out. We are going to beat the Germans by heavy howitzers and trench mortars as they. I was promised 200 of these but have only received 25. We are not too well off for ammunition for our heavy howitzers and we require more heavy trench mortars, which have performed invaluable service to the French in this attack. It speaks well of the courage of the New Armies, but had they had more time to devote to training they would have been able to hold on to many points from which they were driven by a few enterprising German machine-gunners. 29 Brigades (about 100,000 men) were taking part in the first assault the percentage is not so high… I cannot speak too highly of the spirit and self-sacrifice of the rank and file. ‘The casualties have of course been heavy and the figures look large, but when one considers that. ![]()
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