![]() ![]() His comrades expected the same fate as they clung to theĮarth and, Jules Romains wrote, breathed "the smell of a tormented world, a smell like that of a planet in the process of being reduced to ashes." One of the earliest victims was a water carrier who, with his horse and cart, was blown to smithereens by a direct hit from one of the 1,200 German guns. ![]() The barrage could be heard a hundred miles away in the Vosges Mountains, "an incessant rumble of drums, punctuated by theĬlose at hand its impact was tremendous. Then they were engulfed by a tornado of fire and steel. In the dead silence moments before the onslaught, French soldiers of the 56th and 59th Light Infantry Battalions, dug into a bosky hillside north of Verdun known as the Bois des Caures, ![]() Others followed but not until sunrise did the main German bombardment begin. The shell burst in the courtyard of the Bishop's Palace, The camouflage netting of its hiding-place in a wood near Loisin, it gave a full-throated roar and vomited a huge projectile 15 miles into the fortified city. Well before dawn on 21 February 1916, when powdery snow lightened the darkness shrouding the lines of trenches gashed across the face of northern France, a 15-inch Krupp naval gun fired the first shot in the battle of Verdun. ![]()
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