Posted on 08/07/2018 4:43:59 PM PDT by robowombat
First World War battlefield in Verdun still a danger with thousands of exploded shells 100 years on
Nearly 100 years since the end of the First World War and there are still areas of France unsafe to be visited because of unexploded shells.
Some 300,000 soldiers were killed in the Battle of Verdun between France and Germany from February to December 1916.
During the onslaught, around six million shells - including many containing mustard gas - were fired by the opposing sides. One million of those failed to explode. Dozens of unexploded shells are unearthed every day.
At the end of The Great War, France bought the battlefield land from villagers and designated it a "red zone", and since then it has been inaccessible to the public.
For years, bomb disposal experts have slowly been removing the ordinances, finding dozens of shells a day, but experts fear the work may yet require another century to be completed.
The Battle of Verdun cost 300,000 lives. The land on which Verdun was fought was originally agricultural land, fields upon fields.
But except for shell removal squads, nobody has set foot there since the war's end, and the area now resembles a forest.
Pierre Moreno, one of the bomb experts, told ITV News he thinks it will take years to clear the land.
"There are still tonnes and tonnes," he said.
"There will be decades, centuries, of work for us, because the ammunition is buried and every year it is rising naturally to the surface."
Experts believe it may take another 100 years to clear the forest. This year alone, some 500 tonnes of shells have been removed from the ground, and are currently being stored until they are disposed of by way of controlled explosion.
Experts fear that the land make never be able to be used again - certainly not for agricultural purposes.
While those who died in the Battle of Verdun are remembered 100 years on, the legacy it inflicted upon the land on which it was fought continues to be felt too.
There were multiple small towns and villages (around a dozen) that were wiped off the face of the earth in the Germans’ opening bombardment. One postwar account was of seeing a sign, nailed to either a post or a shattered tree trunk and surrounded by desolation, with the simple message, in French, “Here was Fleury”...one of the obliterated villages.
Hadn’t thought about that. Good point. It was an incredible wet, soupy mess. The most horrid possible “living” conditions.
And the longer it lays there the more unstable it becomes. In another ten or twenty years from now all of this stuff will eventually degrade and decay to the point of it no longer being dangerous. Still, until that time the stuff is still a hazard.
LOl! Yeah, right?
He certainly had no compunction when it came to America lives. I’ve known a number of WW2 vets who hated that man.
And where exactly in WW2 did America use mustard gas?
Only thing remotely close I can think of was the aftermath of the air raid on Bari in ww2 where the liberty ship SS John Harvey had mustard gas munitions onboard, and got sunk.
The results were pretty bad.
Made worse by bureaucratic tape and the cargo being “secret” at the time.
We’d shipped over the mustard gas “just in case” the third reich decided to use poison gas
Ultimately we didn’t need it.
But at the time command was worried about it.
The do have metal detectors on drones now. Although I imagine the forested areas will be more difficult.
Far more dead than you mentioned:
The Soviet Union:
WWII Combat deaths: 26,400,000 - Sokolov (source)
WWII Civilian deaths: 24,000,000 - Korol (source)
Nasty stuff all around.
My great grandfather lost a relative to mustard gas.
Only, it took three months to kill him.
Great grandpa hated Germans from that point on.
Banned the family from speaking it as well.
I don’t blame him.
Those numbers were the reason Stalin annexed all the countries behind the Iron curtain. His thought was quite simple.
Never again will we allow Mother Russia to be attacked from the west. The annexed territories were a buffer zone to kill the enemy before they ever reached the Russian border
Thanks!
Genetically, Europe has still not recovered. Pacifist Europe lacks the will to resist the Islamic invasion.
A black Islamic Europe will be a direct threat to an America with sympathetic black ruled cities
Read WWI history!
Read “Myths of the Great War”:
From my memory of reading the book, in combat effectiveness the author ranks the participants
1. Germans - No surprise! In most cases continued to show tactical superiority up until the end. Best in training, leadership (from nocom to junior officer to senior officer!) & equipment. Also superb use of artillery in defense and offense.
2. French - A surprise! Good nocoms, junior to midlevel officers started off horrible but learned! Senior officers & equipment bad to average. For the most part ineffective artillery, tactically they used the famous French 75, way too light and often out ranged by the Germans.
3. UK-Empire - Excellent training, excellent equipment, excellent nocoms. All squandered by incompetent leadership (at almost all levels!) who seemed incapable of learning.
4. Russians & Austro-Hungarians - Bad Bad Bad!
5. Italians - Don't remember his evaluation on them but go read about the 12 battles along the Ilonzo River. Courage was there even if skill & ability wasn't!
The US according to the author ended up at least as good as the French often better but not in league with the Germans, for the most part good equipment & leadership. Not in the war long enough for a full evaluation. Also note the AEF was trained for trench warfare by the French, French infantry doctrines remained the basis of US Infantry doctrine until WWII.
Also these relationships are not linear, for example the Russian & A-H'ers are way way worse then the British. The gap between the British and the French is less then the gap between the Germans & the French.
The Germans lost WWI strategically & logistically not due to bad soldiering. The French probably haven't had good political and military leadership since Napoleon!
No, "Mustard gas" is not chlorine. Chlorine is chlorine (one of the chemical elements), and the Germans did use it as a poison gas in WWI. "Sulfur Mustard" and "Nitrogen Mustard" are organic compounds containing chlorine and sulfur or nitrogen in their molecular structure in place of the usual carbon.
Sulfur Mustard molecular structure:
Nitrogen Mustard:
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