First World War – Battle of Verdun

Fort Douaumont, lost by the French in February 1916 without a fight, became the symbolic and strategic objective of a vast counter-offensive in the autumn. Under General Mangin's command, French troops launched a massive attack, supported by renewed artillery and new techniques. After several days of fierce fighting and unrelenting bombardment, French soldiers succeeded in retaking the fort on 24 October 1916. This success marked a turning point in the battle of Verdun.

The battle of Fleury-devant-Douaumont is one of the fiercest and most symbolic episodes of Verdun. From 23 June to 18 August 1916, the village of Fleury and its surroundings became the theatre of confrontations of extreme violence: taken and retaken 16 times, Fleury was reduced to a heap of ruins, swept by artillery and infantry assaults. The Germans repeatedly tried to break through toward Verdun itself, using firepower and elite troops, but ran into the stubborn defence of the poilus, supported by artillery and Mangin's counter-attacks. Fighting unfolded in a chaos of debris, dust, and gas. The village of Fleury literally disappeared from the landscape, transformed into a 'village dead for France', of which only memory and a few vestiges remain.

The battle of Fort Vaux is one of the most heroic episodes of Verdun. From 2 to 7 June 1916, the small garrison commanded by Major Raynal resisted, cut off from all supply, against massive German assaults on and inside the fort. After terrifying bombardments, German infantry managed to infiltrate the galleries and fight the defenders with flamethrowers, grenades, and bayonets, in the darkness and stench of the tunnels. The French, encircled, deprived of water, exhausted, continued fighting for six days, communicating by carrier pigeons and improvised signals. Resistance ended only when the garrison, dying of thirst, no longer had the strength to continue: Raynal handed over his sword to General von Guretzky, saluted by the enemy for his bravery. The fort would never fall again during the war and Raynal became a national symbol of French endurance.

Fighting at Thiaumont, centred on a fortified work of the Verdun belt, illustrates attrition warfare pushed to its paroxysm. The Thiaumont redoubt, a strategic position between Fleury and Douaumont, changed hands several times in a deluge of artillery and mud. Conditions were inhuman: destroyed shelters, men buried alive, grenade attacks in craters. Despite successive offensives by both sides, neither managed to hold the sector durably.