By Kevin Seabrooke
The German capture of Fort Douaumont overlooking Verdun was a major blow to French morale in February of 1916. Situated on the River Meuse in the northeast near the German border, it had been the last stronghold to fall in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War and was considered a sacred symbol of healing for the people of France.
It was a place carefully chosen by General Erich von Falkenhayn in an effort to keep the French army away from the coming conflict with the British in the west (the Battle of the Somme) while inflicting mass casualties from a mostly defensive position. In late 1915, Falkenhayn reportedly argued in a memo to Emperor William II that the French army could best be destroyed by capturing something that “for the retention of which the French would be compelled to throw in every man they have.”
That would include the dark-skinned Tirailleurs Sénégalais “riflemen” or “skirmishers” from Senegal—though over time they were likely to come from many parts of West Africa (French colonial areas that would later become the countries of Benin, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mauritania). Some 140,000 of them would take part in the war at the Western Front (30,000 were killed) and though they would earn praise for their bravery, their presence on the field of a European battle was a source of international controversy.
From February to December of 1916, the Tirailleurs were involved in countless assaults and counterattacks in the Great War’s longest conflict, a brutal war of attrition in a hellish landscape of constant bombardment—some 40 million artillery shells were fired during the battle for Verdun. Over the 10 months, the two armies would suffer a combined 700,000 casualties and some 300,000 killed. Gen. Erich Ludendorff, the de facto leader of the German military from 1916 onward, wrote in his memoirs that Verdun was “a gaping wound which was gnawing away at our forces.”
NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED
Read this article now for Free!
Enter your email address and a password to finish reading this article now.
— OR —
Subscribe Now!
Subscribe now to All Access Digital for only $3.99 a month and finish reading this article. Unlimited Website Access, Thousands of Searchable Articles, Warfare Newsletter, and more.
Join The Conversation
Comments