Verdun
Introduction
The battle of Verdun was the longest running battle of the First World War. It took place between February 21st and December 18th 1916 and was the only major German offensive undertaken on the Western Front between November 1914 and March 1918. It was also one of the bloodiest battles where, in places, 'a thousand soldiers had died per square metre'. In 'The Unknown Soldier' (from which the statistic was taken) Neil Hanson writes:
"In August of that year, Maria was given fresh cause for concern when Paul's regiment was moved south to `Robbers' Castle' near Verdun - 'the place of judgement' in its German codename. Knowing the ancient citadel's huge symbolic importance as 'the heart of France' the German Chief of Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, had vowed to 'bleed France white' there in the First Battle of Verdun in 1916, drawing ever more French troops into a defence that would end with their annihilation. In fact both sides found themselves sucked into a brutal war of attrition in which German losses were almost as great as those of the French - 377,000 Frenchmen and 337,000 Germans were killed, wounded or missing in action. 'We all had on us the stench of dead bodies. The bread we ate, the stagnant water we drank, everything we touched had a rotten smell, the earth around us was literally stuffed with corpses... Fourteen million shells were fired there - 200 for every casualty - and the intensity of the artillery bombardment often made Verdun glow like a furnace..."
Like with many human catastrophes on this scale, the actual numbers of casualties are not known. Some set the figures higher with 542,000 French killed, missing or wounded, and 434,000 Germans. Either way they are all unimaginable numbers.
The German offensive began on February 21st with a shot from a Krupp 380mm naval gun that hit the cathedral in Verdun almost 32km (20 miles) away. Then, after a nine-hour artillery barrage which buried many French soldiers alive in their trenches, a total of 140,000 Germans began their advance. Despite strong resistance, the Germans reached Douaumont, the largest of the forts surrounding the city; it fell without a single shot being fired in its defence.
The loss of Douaumont was a disaster for the French. They could have withdrawn from the city to a more defensible line, but the much respected general, Pétain, appointed on the night of the 25th to organise Verdun's defence set about keeping the city out of German hands. The French army poured men, artillery and aircraft into the area as a spring thaw set in turning the area in a quagmire, adding to the misery of the soldiers on both sides. On March 3rd, the German expressionist painter Franz Marc wrote:
"For days I have seen nothing but the most terrible things that can be painted from a human mind."
The next day he was dead.
A French soldier, Albert Joubaire wrote:
"What a bloodbath, what horrid images, what a slaughter. I just cannot find the words to express my feelings. Hell cannot be this dreadful."
By the end of the 10 month bloodbath, with almost a million casualties suffered between both sides, the Germans had advanced just 8km (5 miles) along a 32km (20 mile) front.
Bibliography
World War I - H.P. Willmott, Dorling-Kindersley Limited ISBN 978-1-4053-1263-9
The Unknown Soldier - Neil Hanson, Corgi Books ISBN 978-0-5521-4976-1