The battle of Verdun from 1916 to 1918
The fortress of Verdun
the forts
the weapons used in Verdun
bibliography of hte first world war
Back to the Tunnel website

 

With 143 000 Germans and 163 000 French killed, the battle of Verdun was not the most murderous confrontation of World War I. But it's still in minds because of the atrocious conditions in which Germans and French were faced themselves on a battlefield of 15 miles on 3. Verdun is the symbol of burial, of the unceasing steal storm, of very expensive human lives infantry assaults just for a few yards of land taken to the adversary and immediately reconquered by an enemy counterattack. Verdun, it is also fights for forts Douaumont and Vaux and the heroic resistance of fort Souville...

Years have passed. The ossuary, burial of 130 000 French and Germans soldiers dead during the fights dominate a battlefield where the nature has took its rights. Vegetation now re-covers major part of this ground which has been plowed on ten meters deep by millions shells of all calibers. Scars still visible : shells craters, half filled trenches and barbed wires hardly permit to imagine that this place now so quiet was hell many years before.

Let's remember...

 


Summary