One World

8) Nationalism

Posted 20th February 2016

Tomorrow it will be 100 years since the start of one of the largest battles of World War One between the German and French armies on the Western Front, The Battle of Verdun:-

"The battle took place in the hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north eastern France, and lasted until 18th December 1916. The German 5th army attacked the defences of the Région Fortifiée de Verdun (RFV) and those of the Second Army garrisons on the right bank of the Meuse, intending to rapidly capture the Meuse Heights, from which the town of Verdun could be overlooked and bombarded with observed artillery fire. The German strategy aimed to provoke the French to attack to drive the Germans off the heights. The Germans made some important gains in the early phases of the battle but the French were able to recapture much of the lost territory towards the end of the year, despite the demands of the Battle of the Somme (1st July-18th November) in Picardy to the north-west...

...The concentration of so much fighting in such a small area devastated the land, resulting in miserable conditions for troops on both sides. Rain combined with the constant tearing up of the ground turned the clay of the area to a wasteland of mud full of human remains. Shell craters became filled with a liquid ooze, becoming so slippery that troops who fell into them or took cover in them could drown. Forests were reduced to tangled piles of wood by constant artillery-fire and eventually obliterated. The effect on soldiers in the battle was devastating, many broke down with shell-shock and some French soldiers attempted to desert to Spain, those caught being Court-martialled and shot. On 20 March, French deserters disclosed details of the French defences to the Germans, who were able to surround 2,000 men and force them to surrender. Many troops at the battle never saw an enemy soldier, experiencing nothing but artillery fire. Troops on both sides called Verdun "Hell".

A French lieutenant at Verdun who was later killed by a shell, wrote in his diary on 23 May 1916, "Humanity is mad. It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!" Discontent began to spread among French troops at Verdun during the summer of 1916. Following the promotion of General Pétain from the Second Army on 1 June and his replacement by General Nivelle, five infantry regiments were affected by episodes of "collective indiscipline". Two French Lieutenants, Henri Herduin and Pierre Millant, were summarily shot on 11 June; Nivelle then published an Order of the Day forbidding French troops to surrender. In 1926, after an inquiry into the cause célèbre, Herduin and Millant were exonerated and their military records expunged....

...At 303 days long with an estimated 714,231 casualties it became the longest and one of the most costly battles in human history." -extract from Wikipedia entry for "The Battle of Verdun".

Growing up

When I was a boy I used to do dangerous things: climbing bridge piers, exploring barns and warehouses, walking rooftops etc. I used to imagine how exciting it would be if a war like the First World War broke out and I was called up to fight in the trenches alongside my friends.

In the Summer of 2003 I visited the two forts of Verdun, Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux. It was an eerie experience. I remember seeing a thick steel plate which protected a gun opening, it had three or four large deep bullet holes in it. The energy of the bullets must have been immense - a sign of a ferocious firefight. There was a concrete wall behind which a group of soldiers had been killed and the area walled up as a grave. On the fort roof, there were the fractured remains of huge pieces of steel that had been part of a thick gun turret, obliterated by an explosive. Again, physical testament to the violent energy being unleashed during the battle.