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Started By
Message
108 years ago today: the nightmare of Verdun began
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:42 pm
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:42 pm
Start: Feb. 21, 1916
End: Dec. 18, 1916
(299 days)
French casualties: 355,000
German casualties: 400,000
(2,859.5 per day for 299 days)
French Fort Douaumont before the battle.
French Fort Douaumont after
German soldiers leaving their trenches to attack Dead Man´s Hill
French soldiers moving into attack
French Anti-aircraft guns mounted on vehicles during the Battle of Verdun, 1916.
French 155mm artillery battery
French soldiers of the 87th Regiment shelter in their trenches at Côte (Hill) 304 at Verdun
End: Dec. 18, 1916
(299 days)
French casualties: 355,000
German casualties: 400,000
(2,859.5 per day for 299 days)
French Fort Douaumont before the battle.
French Fort Douaumont after
German soldiers leaving their trenches to attack Dead Man´s Hill
French soldiers moving into attack
French Anti-aircraft guns mounted on vehicles during the Battle of Verdun, 1916.
French 155mm artillery battery
French soldiers of the 87th Regiment shelter in their trenches at Côte (Hill) 304 at Verdun
12
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:44 pm to Darth_Vader
Wasn’t a lot of fun.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:44 pm to Darth_Vader
I’d pay a hefty sum of money to go back and watch this from the sky
Absolute chaos
Absolute chaos
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:46 pm to Darth_Vader
Thread I did on Verdun with a lot of good links. Including a sound file of the Bombardment.
It's intense
Verdun
It's intense
Verdun
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:46 pm to Darth_Vader
I’ve visited the battlefield. Even today, sections of it are still uninhabitable.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:49 pm to Darth_Vader
The scale and duration of the fighting there is numbing.
The Ossuary is unlike anything you’ll ever see in the US.
Visited there first when my son was about 10 years old and the possibility of losing him in an old man’s battle like hundreds of thousands of fathers lost their sons there became real to me.
Had a chance to go back there with him 15 years later and unbeknownst to him have extreme survivors’ guilt.
The Ossuary is unlike anything you’ll ever see in the US.
Visited there first when my son was about 10 years old and the possibility of losing him in an old man’s battle like hundreds of thousands of fathers lost their sons there became real to me.
Had a chance to go back there with him 15 years later and unbeknownst to him have extreme survivors’ guilt.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:50 pm to TheRouxGuru
quote:
I’d pay a hefty sum of money to go back and watch this from the sky
The battle was in the sky as well. Verdun is considered the first land/air battle in history because it was here for the first time two large opposing air forces fought for control of the skies over a specific battlefield. Arial warfare already existed before Verdun, but this was the first major air campaign.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:50 pm to fr33manator
Thank you for reposting that
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:50 pm to Stonehenge
quote:
I’ve visited the battlefield. Even today, sections of it are still uninhabitable.
Mines?
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:56 pm to Darth_Vader
The Mort pour la France villages are wild, same for the mortar craters that have forever altered the landscape. It’s just hard to imagine what that must have looked like and been like to experience.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:57 pm to TheRouxGuru
quote:
I’ve visited the battlefield. Even today, sections of it are still uninhabitable.
quote:
Mines?
That and unexploded artillery shells. Literally millions were fired over the course of the battle. And a lot of them didn’t detonate. I’ve read accounts of numerous farmers being blown to kingdom come for years after the battle while plowing their fields.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 8:59 pm to Darth_Vader
Interesting factoid: About a year later, in the fall of 1917, American troops were deployed near Verdun and one of the field artillery batteries at that time was commanded by Captain Harry S. Truman.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:01 pm to Darth_Vader
quote:
What I would imagine Hell looks like
This post was edited on 2/21/24 at 9:02 pm
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:08 pm to Darth_Vader
The number one reason I want to go to Europe is to see Verdun and the red zone villages like fleury and douaumont
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:09 pm to soccerfüt
quote:
The scale and duration of the fighting there is numbing.
And the crazy part of it all is that when the battle finally ended, the front had barely changed. And the war continued for almost another two years.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:16 pm to Darth_Vader
When people make fun the French surrendering, they really need to be reminded of the Napoleonic era, and WWI. They lost a ton of men in WWI.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:20 pm to fr33manator
quote:
Including a sound file of the Bombardment.
God almighty that’s horrifying.
WWI soldiers were a different breed for sure. When we think life’s hard, imagine going through that 5 minute sound file on repeat for years. Then if you were lucky enough to survive, you come home and go through the Great Depression. Then you get through that and you have to watch your kids get shipped off to WWII.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:24 pm to 9Fiddy
quote:
WWI soldiers were a different breed for sure. When we think life’s hard, imagine going through that 5 minute sound file on repeat for years. Then if you were lucky enough to survive, you come home and go through the Great Depression. Then you get through that and you have to watch your kids get shipped off to WWII.
Those hard times created hard men that created the good times that our generation and our parents’ generation grew up in.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:26 pm to Nelson Biederman IV
quote:
The Mort pour la France villages
I’m not trying to be a dick, but did you spell this right? I looked on Google Earth and I couldn’t find this.
One of my favorite ways to kill time is to go on Google Earth and look at old battlefields and places where battles happened. If anybody has any favorites, please feel free to share them. I would love to check them out.
Posted on 2/21/24 at 9:28 pm to Darth_Vader
awful, but still not as nightmarish and barbaric as the battle of stalingrad.
almost 2 million people died in that fight:
LINK
that is damn near apocalyptic
almost 2 million people died in that fight:
LINK
that is damn near apocalyptic
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