![]() ![]() The intense shelling had left the roads back to the hospitals impassable for field ambulances, leaving badly injured French soldiers laying everywhere. The endless rows of white crosses that now cover the area are testament to the war’s longest and hardest-fought battle which lasted 10 months, from 21 February 18 December 1916. ![]() In one 15,000-strong French division, 9,000 men were dead, wounded, or simply missing. The might of the German attack pushed the French line back a mile and over the next three days, horrifying losses were sustained as they were forced to retreat further. As this tool of destruction made its battlefield debut, French trenches were burned, with men roasting inside them. Some Germans were armed with a new weapon, the flamethrower. An officer recorded, “We are surrounded by wounded and dying men whom we are totally unable to help.” Once the barrage ceased, German assault troops rose from their trenches and pushed forward. The German artillery crews were instructed that “no enemy line is to remain un-bombarded,” and that “nowhere should the enemy feel safe.” The French were overwhelmed by the relentless onslaught. Rolling barrages destroyed the earth of France and Belgium and the lives of many. On February 21, 1916, more than 1,220 German guns around an eight-mile perimeter fired two million shells at the French in the opening eight-hour bombardment of the battle. World War I was a war of artillery - The Big Guns. His scheme to inflict a relentless slaughter on the enemy and win the war was called Operation Gericht-a term loosely translating as “judgment” or “place of execution.” He planned to lure the French army into a battle of attrition, expecting that his opponent “would be compelled to throw in every man they have.” Falkenhayn anticipated a kill-ratio of five French for every two Germans. Falkenhayn targeted Verdun because of its position on the Allied line and its sentimental value to the French people. In his estimation, this would then force the British to sue for peace. A German artillery barrage of unprecedented volume and intensity began at 0715 and continued until 1600hrs, heralding the attack by three German Corps against the single understrength French XXX Corps, along the twelve kilometre northern and eastern part of the front: two Corps attacking two understrength French Divisions, the 51st and the 72nd. In a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm II in late 1915, Falkenhayn argued that the war would only be won by bleeding France to death and draining its will to fight. 2.5 million shells were available for the artillery and gun trains to fire. The 21st of February, 1916, marks the date in which one of the greatest battles of World War I commenced in the French city of Verdun. The British sector of the Western Front also did not lend itself to offensive operations. 140,000 infantry were readied for the initial attack. Out of reach across the Channel, this great foe could not be assaulted directly. ![]() German General Erich von Falkenhayn regarded the British as the most formidable of the Allied Powers in the Great War. ![]()
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