I would have posted this yesterday but my daughter was married.
100 years ago yesterday Imperial Germany launched what would become the bloodiest and most prolonged campaign of The Great War when they began bombarding the fortress city of Verdun and its surrounding forts and fortresses.
The people who think of the French as soldiers who automatically surrendered at the first shot should read up on Verdun.
Ask not that The Good Man can do for you but what you can do for The Good Man
I would have posted this yesterday but my daughter was married.
You should get your priorities straight.
j/k, hope she had a happy one.
The German intent was to attack a symbol of French nationality that couldn't be ignored. They succeeded in that, but in the process were themselves sucked into a battle of attrition they couldn't win. Verdun became a symbol of French valor, and of the utter uselessness. By December, when the battle finally shuddered to a halt, nearly a million soldiers from both sides had been killed or wounded for approximately 25 square miles of devastated terrain.
shareThe people who think of the French as soldiers who automatically surrendered at the first shot should read up on Verdun.
Agreed, or France's entire lost generation of WWI.
The surrender of France in WWII was merely common sense and logic. They were defeated, the only other option was to continue to die needlessly, and get beaten even worse.
My Brigade of the 82D Airborne Division was attached to the French 6th Light Dragoons during Operation Desert Storm. I found them to be fine Soldiers.
The French make great Soldiers. It's the performance of their commanders that has been less than could be desired.
I've lived upon the edge of chance for 20 years or more...
Del Rio's Song
Wasn't the bloodiest. Butcher Haig's plan to relieve the pressure on Verdun with his offensive on the Somme was the bloodiest.
shareYou mean the fact that the casualties from that one Battle were equal to all British casualties in WW2?
shareIf one counts dead, wounded and prisoners for both sides in 1916 and British only in 1939-45. If one counts only British Empire and Commonwealth fatalities, one finds that about ninety-six thousand died during the Somme campaign compared to five hundred and eighty thousand during the Second World War.
So what?
Viewed in context, the Somme was a necessary operation that not only stopped German 1916 offensive operations, but crippled their ability to resume them in the West until 1918.