The tide turns at Verdun

The preliminaries of the great Franco-British offensive on the Somme started on June 24 with a weeklong artillery barrage. The general Allied infantry assault began on July 1, and the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties—with 20,000 killed—on the first day alone. On July 11 the Germans made yet another attack on Verdun, assaulting the line from Vaux to Souville with 12 regiments. The advance crumpled up on the slopes of Souville, and another German attack on August 1 failed. The French retook Thiaumont on August 3 and Fleury the following day, with the Germans regaining Thiaumont on August 8. Local fighting continued throughout the month, and the final significant German attack, on September 3, yielded no gains. With that the active period of the Battle of Verdun came to an end.

From February 21 to June 15, the French army had fielded 66 divisions at Verdun; by December 1916, roughly 75 percent of the French army had seen action on the Meuse. From February through July, the Germans had used 43 divisions. French guns at Verdun fired over 10,000,000 rounds with the field artillery, over 1,000,000 medium-calibre rounds, and 600,000 large-calibre rounds. At the conclusion of this enormous expenditure of blood and treasure, the lines were little changed from where they had been in early February.

In September, Gen. Charles Mangin, who had held command of a section of the French defensive line from Fleury to the right bank of the Meuse from June 22, proposed a scheme to liberate the Verdun region. Nivelle approved, and that offensive was initiated on October 21 with an artillery barrage across a broad front. An infantry assault followed on October 24, with three divisions advancing behind a creeping artillery barrage. By that evening the French had retaken Douaumont along with 6,000 German prisoners, and by November 2 the fort at Vaux was once again in French hands. Mangin was a gifted strategist, but he was widely regarded as a spendthrift when it came to the lives of his men, and his commitment to offensive warfare at any cost earned him the nickname “the Butcher.”

In order to exploit his successes, Mangin planned to attack again on December 5 over a 6-mile (10-km) front on the right bank, with the intention of retaking in one blow the whole of the former second French line, which had been lost on February 24. Artillery preparation began on November 29 with a 750-gun barrage. Bad weather intervened, however, delaying the plan and allowing the Germans to learn of its existence, so the value of a surprise was lost. The Germans launched a violent offensive on December 6 in an attempt to preempt the French assault and captured Hill 304. Good weather returned on December 9, and Nivelle recommenced the preparatory barrage. French and German batteries engaged in artillery duels, and above the battlefield pilots contested for supremacy of the skies. At 10 am on December 15, the attack was made. The German counterbarrage started two minutes too late, and four French divisions assailed the German lines. By nightfall they had retaken the whole of Poivre Hill. The line of advance passed in front of Hill 378, stopping 65 feet (20 metres) south of the farm at Chambrettes, and then turned south across the Bois d’Hardaumont and the Bois la Vauche up to the defensive works at Bezonvaux. The French captured and destroyed 115 guns and took 9,000 prisoners. This engagement, which came to be known as the Battle of Louvemont, was completed on December 18 with the recapture of Chambrettes and the capture of over 11,000 German prisoners. This marked the end of the Battle of Verdun.

The aftermath

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Over 10 months in 1916, the two armies at Verdun suffered over 700,000 casualties, including some 300,000 killed. The pastoral landscape surrounding the city had been permanently transformed, and nine villages—Beaumont, Bezonvaux, Cumières, Douaumont, Fleury, Haumont, Louvemont, Ornes, and Vaux—were entirely destroyed. After the war the villages were memorialized as having “died for France” and, although uninhabited, continued to be administered by mayors to preserve their existence as administrative entities. The unknown dead were commemorated at the Douaumont Ossuary, a monument completed in 1932 that contains the remains of 150,000 unidentified French and German soldiers.

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A History of War

An area covering some 65 square miles (170 square km) on the Verdun ridge was declared a Zone Rouge (“Red Zone”) because of the presence of unexploded ordnance, and development within it was prohibited. In the 21st century the French Interior Ministry estimated that over 10 million shells remained in the soil around Verdun, and bomb-clearing units continued to remove some 40 tons of unexploded munitions from the area annually. Especially dangerous were chemical rounds, which were largely indistinguishable from explosive shells; their contents retained their toxicity over time, and they were prone to leak when discovered and handled. It was estimated that at existing rates of clearance, les demineurs (“the deminers”) would be uncovering and disposing of ordnance in the Verdun area for centuries to come.