One hundred and ten years ago this month, on the banks of the River Meuse in north-east France, the longest battle of the First World War was just beginning. In an ambitious bid to bring the allies to their knees, Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, launched a tremendous assault on the fortress city of Verdun. The battle plan incorporated intense artillery bombardment – more than 1,200 guns were massed along an eight-mile front, firing two million shells on the first day alone – supported by units of fast-moving shock troops. The aim was to draw the French reserves into the area and inflict catastrophic losses on them – in a phrase that later became infamous, to ‘bleed them white’. The loss of Verdun was intended to inflict both a major strategic defeat and a crippling blow to French national morale.
What ensued was a ten-month siege in which more than 300,000 German and an even larger number of French soldiers lost their lives. The land was so churned up and poisoned that, after the war, it was impossible to return it to agricultural use. Whole villages were obliterated. Today the site is dominated by a 151ft-high, shell-shaped ossuary containing unidentified remains. Sloping away from the monument is France’s largest military cemetery, containing some 16,000 graves.
The ‘Mill on the Meuse’ was the equivalent for France of the Somme for Great Britain. How did Verdun survive the prolonged ordeal of February December 1916? This article explores the French defence, which transformed its mastermind, Philippe Pétain, from a little-known field commander to a national icon.
‘Hippy’ archaeologists