To this day, you can still see the remains of craters and trenches.
Posted on 03/19/2016 9:04:58 AM PDT by C19fan
There is no quick route by which one may approach Verdun. No superhighway passes through this sleepy town, nor do any of France’s fabled “Trains de Grande Vitesse” stop here. There is only the local line, and even that humbled creaking route terminates in Verdun. In the end, one can only come to this hallowed ground slowly, by a small four-car train or by narrow two-lane road. This is as it should be. Some 250,000 men died in these few square miles of turf, and one should not rush into a graveyard.
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The U.S. should have stayed out of WWI.
Bunch of dying European empires battling to see who was the toughest.
War of attrition. . .such a sad waste.
My grandfather “went over the top” seven times before he was hit in the hand. While being treated for that injury he was gassed. Survived but had a mangled hand and bad lungs for the rest of his life.
He was with the 30th Division to the 4th British Army under Sir Henry Rowlinson, “The Old Hickory Division.”
He was in the same company with his childhood friend and he saw him get hit. As it is related, my grandfather asked his pal after he saw him fall if he was wounded severely. The friend answered “I guess one of my legs is gone, but I don’t think there’s any danger.” His friend died 6 days later.
Such men. Such brave men. Too few today.
“The U.S. should have stayed out of WWI.”
One school of thought argues that a stalemate without American involvement would have saved everyone from a major world war only 20 years later. The Hapsburg Empire wouldn’t have been dismantled, the disasterous reparations wouldn’t have been saddled on Germany.
They were not vaporized into nothing. Their bodies were shredded into little pieces by repeated artillery shelling.
Every week French farmers from the area bring bones found in their fields to the Monument at Fort Douaumount. Here a French army medical officer determines if the bone fragments are human. If so they are turned over to a French Army Chaplain to be add to the ossuary. There lay the shattered bones of over 130,000 French and German soldiers.
I believe on average a soldier was killed every sixty seconds on the battlefield of Verdun.
Well, there is a World War I museum in Kansas City. And one near St. Petersburg, Russia in Tsarskoye Selohttp://rbth.com/arts/2014/08/24/first_world_war_i_museum_in_russia_opens_near_st_petersburg_39229.html.
We do not understand bravery as they did.
Some slightly more distant relatives fought for Canada...One of them was gassed and died as a result not long after the war ended.
War is hell. Not HELL; but hell.
War is hell. - At end of Civil War, there were dead bodies
littering the countryside all over just waiting to be
buried. - My gr.gr.grandfather was a Confederate soldier at
the battle of Shiloh. - My grandmother once asked him when
she was a child, “What was it like at Shiloh? Did you kill
anybody?” He replied, “Izora, I don’t know if I killed
anybody or not at Shiloh; it was such a terrible mess
in that battle I don’t see how I could have kept from it.”
I grew up with my parents taking me to Shiloh. I’m almost
70 yrs. old. The Bloody Pond was still very deeply
stained dark brown from the blood that had soaked into
the rocks in the pond from men coming there to wash the
blood off their wounded & dying bodies. - My ancestor had
ZERO slaves.
To this day, you can still see the remains of craters and trenches.
Unfortunately you are correct.
Shiloh. Antietam. Cold Harbor. Franklin. Most people have no idea how terrible these battles were.
I think Antietam still holds the record for most American soldiers killed in one day.
Imagine thousands of tons of artillery coming in at a rate of about one per second, for days on end. On both sides. No place to hide.
“For anybody wanting to know more about the battle see “The Price Of Glory,” by Alistair Horne. “
VERY VERY Good Read.
Recommended to everyone interested in this topic. In fact, anything Horne writes is good.
I don’t agree about Haig in comparison to Gen. Falkenhayn.
Falkenhayn was deliberate in his use of attrition to wear down the French.
At the Somme, Haig was expecting that the artillery barrages and mine explosions would blast holes in the German lines that his troops would march through, besides trying to put pressure on the German’s to relieve Verdun.
Haig was ignorant of the job, Falkenhayn was deliberate. And as it was, Haig and his staff learned from the mistakes, added it to the training of new troops, and, by the time Third Ypres and Cambrai came round, the British troops were able to actually make headway against the Germans, not, just attriting them.
Haig was by no means perfect, but, does deserve a closer look than what he usually gets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Haig,_1st_Earl_Haig
“The U.S. should have stayed out of WWI.
Bunch of dying European empires battling to see who was the toughest.”
In his single-volume history of the First World War (New York: Knopf, 1999; ISBN 0-375-40052-4) the late Sir John Keegan - possibly the most accessible military historian of the 20th century - offered the concluding opinion that the causes of WWI remained a mystery.
And he laid the high casualties not at the feet of incompetent generals, but to systemic factors. Industrial advances made increased firepower possible, but equivalent advances in tactical mobility and battlefield communications had not yet occurred. Once the order to attack was given, the clashing forces marched beyond contact with HQ and the generals became as powerless to affect the outcome as the lowliest private under their command.
The United States was founded as a trading nation, just at the right moment to prosper in the Industrial Revolution, and contribute to the increase in production, and ease of difficulties of travel/transshipment that set the stage for the burgeoning of international trade during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The First World War disrupted international trade, destroying three major empires (Imperial Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and Austria-Hungary) and imperiling every other country - except the United States.
America reaped ample profits from trade with the Allies, to which it had been more closely tied than any other nations before 1914. Yet instead of aiding the Allies in gratitude for good fortune, or in the service of strategic interest, the US did all it could to remain aloof, fostering a sense of privilege and predestination, and a self-congratulatory attitude that permitted the country to feel superior and condescend of the rest of the world.
The “Shining City on a Hill” myth seduces many Americans into feeling good about their mulish indifference, but is morally repugnant. It led to the edge of ruin in World War One; as a sentiment transmuted into a policy 20-odd years later, it flirted with disaster in World War Two. In 1939-1945, the Allies were saved only by the greatest luck, some very sordid shenanigans, stalwart resistance, and the inability of Nazi Germany to refrain from attacking the USSR.
Americans need to focus less on the state of their morality, and more on what strategies might salvage the remnants.
I hope that I would not be a lily-livered coward if push
comes to shove & war becomes inevitable. - My dad was a
combat veteran of WWII - N. Africa, Italy, & finally
Germany. - I don’t romanticize war; but in a way, I guess
that’s best as the killing is bloody & it is real.
Sounds like your dad could have been in 7th Army like my father.
” I don’t romanticize war; but in a way, I guess
that’s best as the killing is bloody & it is real.”
“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” Robert E Lee to James Longstreet, on seeing a Union charge repelled at the Battle of Fredericksburg
88th/351st. - Blue Devils
N. Africa, Sicily, Italy, Germany
They’d have ended up in Japan if Truman hadn’t had the guts
to use that bomb because they were hardened combat troops.
Daddy’s worst memory was of a certain battle which he had
flashbacks to the rest of his life - Laiatico, Italy.
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