Nevertheless our French territorial troops carried on and got the job done. One can imagine the difficulty of working under constant bombardment and often in the middle of clouds of gas being sent over from the German lines. At dawn troops returned to their barracks. Every evening guides from those companies arrived to pick up the battalions coming from Verdun and led them to the working site. Every evening the officers of the pioneer companies came up to the line to prepare the work for the following day. The engineers of the army corps had two companies of pioneers and several battalions of territorials that were in charge of this second position. A second position was being created between Froideterre*and the slopes at the back of Fort Souville. The front line of trenches were dug by the divisional troops when there was a lull in the battle. General Caloni commanded the engineers of the Mangin Army group from June till December 1916 that is to say the eastern part of the battlefield.Īnd I finish with the creation and maintenance of the main artery feeding the battle field, the road going from Bar le Duc to Verdun now known to all as the 'Voie Sacrée'. They are taken from a lecture given by General de Division (major general) Jean François Caloni from the engineer corps on the 25th December 1925 at the Sorbonne University. Both showing the work of the engineer corps. I have chosen two lesser known stories to illustrate this battle. German Field marshal Hindenburg recognised this fact in his memoirs 'this battle exhausted our forces like a wound that wouldn’t heal'. Statistics differ as usual but we can reckon for both sides on at least a total of 714,000 losses (killed, wounded and missing). The whole battle was an unprecedented slaughter. The battle can be divided into four phases. Verdun was the longest battle of the First World War running from February to December 1916 – a total of 10 months. This made Verdun an almost ideal target even more so because the trenches there were in a poor state or in some cases non-existent. GHQ had decided after the rapid fall of the Belgian forts in 1914 and the great need of artillery for the French army in the field that forts were of no great use. In 1916 the fortress of Verdun was stripped of its guns and the forts manned only by token crews. The city lies on both banks of the River Meuse in North-eastern France. Most people know the battle of Verdun started on the 21st February 1916. The following article is based on the recollections of General Caloni and recollections of the authors’ grandfather’s experience of Verdun.
The Cotton-Mill Worker, the Stockbroker and the Flammenwerfer: The 8th Battalion Rifle Brigade at Hooge.
Every man for himself: The Loss of HMS Formidable 1 January 1915.Forever Friends: Laurie Denison and Clifford Thompson.FILM REVIEW : All Quiet on the Western Front.Tolkien’s “bitter winnowing” and the War Memorial at St.Addison Barnes Perrott Hadden MC - South Irish Horse in the First World War.Sussex Women at War: Iva Mary Harland and Fanny Amelia Kennaird.A bloody war or a sickly season: The East Yorkshire Regiment’s Regular Officers of August 1914 and the Great War.Hobkirk DSO as GOC 14 Australian Brigade, July 1916 Through a Glass Darkly: The Appointment of T/Lieutenant-Colonel C.J.'The Grave by the Roadside' : Remembering 2/Lt.A Cockney Soldier and the Great War: Corporal William Charles Blumsom MM.
0 kommentar(er)
