![]() ![]() The battle see-sawed minutely until in late June the Germans, in desperate wild fighting, took Le Mort Homme and Fort Vaux. ![]() ![]() The Germans tried ever more devilish weapons. It assumed its own existence, outside human control. The saturation bombing remodelled the landscape into a pitted wasteland. It is thought 60 million shells may have been fired during the 303-day battle. “The night passes in an inferno of fire,” he lamented. Lieutenant Henri Desagneaux, French 2nd Infantry Regiment, wrote in his diary: “It’s a battle of extermination – men against cannon.” Bombs fell 24/7. When the Germans took some outer trenches and the fort of Douaumont, the French sent General Philippe Petain to defend the town, ordering him to hold Verdun at all costs. The Germans sent over storms of shells, attacked head on the French scraped holes and returned murderous fire. This first day set the pattern for months of fighting at Verdun. The Berthier rifles of the Poilus shot back spiritedly. But as the Germans advanced through the shell-torn terrain and the ruins on the 21st they encountered pockets of Poilus, French Tommies, somehow still alive. With typical pomposity, German planners called the offensive at Verdun “Operation Judgment”. The idea of Erich von Falkenhayn, the German chief of the general staff, was genius in its pure brutality he would “bleed the French army white” in a battle of attrition. “Trommelfeuer”, or drumfire, the Germans dubbed this pulverising of the snow-dressed earth. On the first day alone, the Germans sent 140,000 soldiers into the attack. ![]()
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