Link: What we leave behind - "Zone Rouge."
- Thread starter TIDE-HSV
- Start date
Fort Douaumont.
During the Battle of Verdun, a French division (about 12,000 men) disappeared on average every three days.
For ten months.
Those wounded could not be rescued, because it normally cost two additional casualties to recover one casualty.
I knew the landscape was still scarred, but had no idea to this extent. Both World Wars shared a lot of that same land.
We're so accustomed to the age of smart ordnance that we forget that "carpet bombing" was close to being a literal expression.
I believe that WWII didn't do the same amount of lasting environmental damage because there weren't the same lines, stuck over literally years, with ordnance pouring in and guys dying. Yes, there were stalls, but the lines moved with lightning speed, compared with WWI. This zone is like a small Chernobyl without the radiation...
My grandfather was a member of the 42nd Rainbow Division and saw action at St. Mihel and was wounded at Chateau Thierry. His favorite movie of all time was Sergeant York
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For curiosity, did he develop scleroderma? Years ago, when I had just started practicing, I had an elderly client who was wounded there. He died of scleroderma and he told me that the doctors had told him that most of the men wounded at Verdun went on to develop it...
Several years ago a friend's family forced their Grandfather to trace his WWII route. There were some areas he could not go in due to this. He told us that they would come across WWI ordinance when digging in back then, and wasn't surprised at all with the areas being blocked off.
Mrs Basket Case and I just returned from a trip to Paris. While there, we went on a tour of The Somme battlefields of WWI.
Among other places, we went to a portion of the area where the trench lines have been preserved. Fascinating how close the British and German trenches were to one another.
We noticed a lot of sheep in an area off limits to tourists, and asked if it was because it was now privately owned farmland. No, we were told. The sheep were how they kept the grass mowed. There were too many shells remaining to allow humans, let alone agricultural mowing equipment.
Thiepval, however, was one of the most sobering monuments I've ever seen. And I've been to the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, the Viet Nam Memorial in DC, and the park in Oklahoma City where the Edward R. Murrah Building once stood.
At Thiepval, there's a huge triple arch with some 72,000 names inscribed. It's the names of British and ANZAC troops who have no known graves. Some are in Unknown Soldier graves. Some are still out in the fields somewhere. Some were blown to bits so small that they were literally vaporized.
Keep in mind, these names are limited to only British / ANZAC, only The Somme, and do not include KIAs with known resting places. Further, the significant majority of them took place in the five months from July to November of 1916.
To put that number in some context, even with all those limitations, that number is still nearly half again as many as all American KIAs for the entirety of the Viet Nam War.
I came away awestruck by the sheer scale of the slaughter, and with a new appreciation for why Britain and France were so pacific just 20 years later.
Among other places, we went to a portion of the area where the trench lines have been preserved. Fascinating how close the British and German trenches were to one another.
We noticed a lot of sheep in an area off limits to tourists, and asked if it was because it was now privately owned farmland. No, we were told. The sheep were how they kept the grass mowed. There were too many shells remaining to allow humans, let alone agricultural mowing equipment.
Thiepval, however, was one of the most sobering monuments I've ever seen. And I've been to the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, the Viet Nam Memorial in DC, and the park in Oklahoma City where the Edward R. Murrah Building once stood.
At Thiepval, there's a huge triple arch with some 72,000 names inscribed. It's the names of British and ANZAC troops who have no known graves. Some are in Unknown Soldier graves. Some are still out in the fields somewhere. Some were blown to bits so small that they were literally vaporized.
Keep in mind, these names are limited to only British / ANZAC, only The Somme, and do not include KIAs with known resting places. Further, the significant majority of them took place in the five months from July to November of 1916.
To put that number in some context, even with all those limitations, that number is still nearly half again as many as all American KIAs for the entirety of the Viet Nam War.
I came away awestruck by the sheer scale of the slaughter, and with a new appreciation for why Britain and France were so pacific just 20 years later.
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On instagram there is a page called hiddenwwi that shares photos from underground cities that were formed during the war. It's been really interesting to follow.
I also had a grandfather in the 42nd. He passed before I was born. My mother said the only story he ever told her of the war was about eating vegetables he and his buddies picked out of a shell-torn field. He did write home to his aunt and uncle during the war. I remember that he wrote once about "having fun" with the Germans and a buddy getting shot in the foot. He also wrote that his grandfather, a Confederate vet, could shoot Germans like he used to shoot yankees if he were over there.
His WWI Victory Medal has battle clasps for Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne and St. Mihiel.
Earle, first I had to look up scleroderma. My grandfather, except for a slight limp from his wound, lived a very healthy life, died in 1982 at age 88.
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