6/10/2023 0 Comments The battle of verdunThe recovery of such bodies was often too dangerous to be attempted or if the body was of an enemy soldier the inclination to do it may not have been there. It was just the start of adapting old weapons to work in a new way, or re-introducing old weapons from earlier siege wars.įrench Camouflage: Using The Battlefield Deadīattlefields of the Great War were often littered with unburied dead killed on patrols in No Man’s Land or in the last attack. New uniforms also meant new weapons and stuck in trenches unable to emerge and fire their weapons, both sides turned to using the periscope rifle, also seen in this illustration in this case enabling the Poilu to fire his 8mm Lebel rifle remotely and safely using the periscope fitted to the frame. The French also discarded the dark blue serge and red trousers and adopted the Horizon Blue uniform, also seen here it was felt the blue would blend in with the skyline when French soldiers attacked, rather than attempt to develop a uniform colour that would blend in with the shattered landscape. Then an officer called August-Louis Adrian adapted the design of the Paris fire helmet to produce the M15 Adrain helmet, worn by the men in this illustration, which became the standard French helmet for the rest of the war. The French Army was the first to introduce a steel helmet a first this was a light steel skull cap worn under the issue Kepi. In 1914 alone France had lost over 300,000 Poilus killed in action and despite going to war locked in the mentality of the Franco-Prussian the French Army proved remarkably quick to adapt to the war when it went into stalemate during the winter of 1914/15. The experience of 1914 taught the French Army that to be conspicuous on the battlefield meant certain death especially on the modern battlefield with massed machine-guns and artillery. The pocked landscape that surrounds it reminds us of what once the whole Western Front landscape was like. Today Fort Vaux has been left in its wartime state and has an excellent museum. Fort Vaux fell on 7th June but it was a hollow victory for the Germans who casualties were verging on catastrophic for a battle in which they had hoped to ‘bleed France white’. Raynal signalled his fate in a pigeon message delivered by the pigeon Valiant, which fell dead at the feet of the staff officers in the Verdun citadel once its mission was complete. Surrounded, the besieged garrison under Commandant Raynal held on until food, water and ammunition all ran out. Fort Vaux was a more heroic story, at least in 1916. Here both nations bled in 1916 with more than 770,000 casualties.įort Vaux was one of many static fortifications that came to characterise the battle nearby Fort Douaumont fell to a handful of Germans but costs the lives of thousands of Poilus to retake. The so-called ‘French front’ had many of its own landmarks but for France and Germany one of its greatest symbols would be Verdun. Sometimes it is easy to forget the sacrifice of the French Army who held more than 300 miles of the front, or the more obvious fact the mighty German Imperial Army was holding all 450 miles on its side of the lines. The Western Front was more than 450 miles long and the British Army at one point occupied just over a hundred miles of it.
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