The area was later designated a “red zone” meaning that any construction or digging was prohibited, since the ground had been left filled with tons of leftover shells and ammunition, as well as bodies of those who died.Īfter the war, it was decided that the villages should not be rebuilt, and most have remained without any inhabitants. The bombings sculpted the landscape, pockmarking the ground with craters. Most houses were completely destroyed their former locations are now marked only by signs. People say that each square meter of the battlefield was hit by a shell and the village of Fleury alone was struck by 90,000 tons of bombs in one day, according to its mayor. It is very hard when you arrive in the area now to have any idea of what the countryside looked like before the war. An estimated 300,000 French and German soldiers were killed and over 450,000 were injured. German troops did not come through, but nine villages had been utterly wiped out. Ten months of fighting saw German and French troops being pushed back and forwards, and by December 1916 the French had retaken almost all the territory that had been lost. A charity named “The Western Front Association” writes that during the initial stage of the Battle of Verdun, Germany fired more than a million shells.

On Februthey started the assault with a huge bombardment. The city was fringed by hills – hills in which a network of forts were built to protect the border.ĭuring the First World War, the Germans wanted to make a massive attack on a target that had great historic significance for the French, and they thought that weakening France around Verdun could change the face of the war. It was also one of the most murderous.Īfter the 1870-71 war between France and Prussia, which ended with the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the Germans, Verdun was at the eastern edge of France. The Battle of Verdun in northeastern France was the longest battle of the so-called Great War, lasting some ten months from February to December 1916. It is a time of local elections, and it is also the hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War. The year 2014 brings together the past and the future for France. 'It is very hard when you arrive in the area now to have any idea of what the countryside looked like before the war.'

Verdun battlefield