“...Trench of Bayonets...”
That was at Verdun, if I remember correctly. Pretty gruesome.
The German Landsers and French Poilus beat the living hell out of each other over that ground.
Read “The Price of Glory” by Alistair Horne several years ago - talks about the Trench of the Bayonets in there.
The most chilling thing, to me, is that he interviewed General Falkenhayn (I think it was during the late 50s of early 60s), the German commander, and the man calmly smoked his pipe as he spoke of the deaths of literally millions of Germans and French, and said that Verdun had no strategic value other than “to bleed the French white”; and the ironic thing is that it also bled the Germans white as well. They lost nearly as many people as the French did.
I read an article in MHQ some years back called “Verdun: The Haunted Woods” or something to that effect. Said that French farmers were STILL getting killed from all the unexploded ordnance in that area - running it over with tractors, plows, etc.
Tragedy for all involved.
When we visited the Verdun battlefield there were many warning signs not to wander off the marked paths becaused of unexploded ordinance. The French Army maintains an EOD team at Verdun.