RI GH T: A French World War I trench in the forest near
Les Esparges in the Lorraine region of France.
B E L O W : Explosives expert Jean-Michel Fournier holding
a German 155-millimeter high-explosive artillery shell.
The vast area around the French city of Verdun remains
suspended in the year 1916. During the First World War,
these hills and gorges were cratered by a continuous ten-month-long artillery bombardment more intense than any
before and any since. The mature beech forests that cover the
hills were home to some of the Great War’s most bitter >ghting;
as many as 150 shells fell for every square meter of this battle-
>eld. As well as being the longest battle of the Great War, the
Battle of Verdun also has the ignominy of being the >rst test of
modern industrialized slaughter. Not for nothing was the battle-
>eld known as “The Mincer.”
“There’s nothing like Verdun. This is a place where the
world changed,” says Christina Holstein, a British historian.
Over 60 million shells were >red into this area between
February 21 and December 18, 1916, killing 305,440 men out
of 708,777 casualties.
In the forest, in among the ruin, unexploded bombs lie everywhere. I walk inexpertly on uneven soil, the edge of one crater
intersecting another, snagging my boots on what at >rst I
assume are brambles but quickly recognize as copious strands of
needle-sharp barbed wire camou?aged by sprigs of new growth.
I’m being led by a small band of démineurs from the
Département du Déminage through territory honeycombed with
a myriad of trenches, tunnels, and mines. The French Interior
Ministry estimates that at least 12 million unexploded shells
reside in the hills and forests that rise above Verdun.
