Today, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Paris.
Verdun, a strategic point of defense, was connected to the rest of the French army only by a narrow dirt road, the “RD 1916,” or as the French called it the “ Voie Sacrée” (Sacred Road). Fast-forward to 1916: On February 21, the French defenses were battered by an artillery attack of unprecedented scale – the biggest in history. In a much smaller battle, the Germans – Prussians at the time – had broken through the French line of defense and begun making their way towards Paris, but were eventually stopped in Valmy. They would attack Verdun and, in the words of General Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German General Staff, “bleed the French Army dry.” Why Verdun? It was a symbolic location, as both sides had already fought there in 1792, during the French Revolution. The Germans were planning a major offensive that they believed would be unstoppable. Germany was looking to boost morale among its troops after two years of fighting and losses at the Marne River and the Argonne Forest. Even 105 years later, visitors to Verdun can still feel the horror.īy early 1916, the front line of this industrial war had stabilized. The battle left 400,000 wounded and 300,000 dead – one death every 90 seconds – and in the end, the front line remained virtually unchanged. Beneath that shower of shells, 2.3 million soldiers fought in the hills of the Meuse département in Northeastern France. The numbers are staggering and almost incomprehensible: sixty million shells fired over a period of 300 days and nights. February 21, 1916, marked the beginning of one of the most devastating battles of all time, a paroxysm of suffering, madness, and courage.
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