![]() It seems quite impossible that he should escape in the rain of shell, which exceeds anything imaginable there has never been such a bombardment in war. A man gets out at once for repairs, crawling along on his stomach through all this place of bursting mines and shells. With a tremendous thud a giant shell bursts quite close to our observation post, breaking the telephone wire and interrupting all communication with our batteries. From time to time an aerial torpedo passes, making a noise like a gigantic motor car. Thousands of projectiles are flying in all directions, some whistling, others howling, others moaning low, and all uniting in one infernal roar. One French staff officer recalled the routine bravery of one soldier, a communications officer responsible for repairing the telephone line to the French artillery batteries (eventually most communications had to go by messengers, who predictably suffered a very high mortality rate): The survivors lived through sheer terror, as death rained down around them on all sides. It was impossible to conceive how human beings could live through that fire.īut as the Germans were about to discover, some French soldiers of the beleaguered 72 nd and 51 st Reserve Divisions did in fact manage to survive, thanks to well-sited dugouts but also sheer luck. Each time it was as if an unusually gigantic wave had broken there on the cliff. Several stories high smoke, earth, and debris shot into the air where the biggest shells exploded. The roar of the battle was at times heard 200 kilometers or about 124 miles. Hour after hour, day and night, the thunder of the big guns in what was perhaps the greatest artillery duel in the history of the world, rolled in from around Verdun like the ponderous roaring of gigantic waves continuously breaking on some rockbound shore. On the other side Karl von Wiegand recorded a German officer’s eyewitness account: It was very difficult to walk about, because the ground was so broken up with the holes made by the shells… The communication trenches no longer existed.” The observers on aeroplanes or balloons who saw the volcano burst into flame declared that they could not mark on their maps all the batteries that were in action… The commander of a company of light infantry who was wounded in the foot in Caures Wood, stated: “The intensity of the firing was such that when we came out into the open we no longer recognised the country which we had known for four months. Henry Bordeaux, a French novelist who interviewed a number of officers and soldiers about the beginning of the battle and was present for the later phases, wrote: Witnesses struggled to describe what they saw. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |