The French had won a victory over the Germans at the Battle of Verdun, but both armies had suffered staggering losses from which neither could fully recover. The pile of bodies of German soldiers killed in the trenches was on a hill that was renamed Le Mort Homme.
A wounded French soldier who fought in the Battle of Douaumont in Verdun and arrived in Paris on February 28, 1916, described the battle of Verdun to the New York Times. The German artillery flattened the parapets and trenches of the battlefield to a new plow. All the guns in the world were concentrated at one point on the battlefield. The noise was much louder than at the Battle of Champagne. Some of the German bastard infantrymen were crawling up the narrow canyons and through the forest just ahead. Suddenly, a gray mass surged forward from both armies. There must have been about 5,000 German soldiers in the canyon. From the forest, about 20,000 reached the plateau. Between them, artillery shells burst, sending shrapnel flying in every direction. They were surrounded by a storm of shells, human debris, and clods of earth.
Through the smoke, as if to protect themselves from the rain, the German soldiers advanced. I couldn't see with my head down, my body choking in the canyon, unable to pass the barricades from the trenches. The Germans marched on incessantly until the slaughter became even greater. Truly, the German bastards are barbaric. I couldn't believe that a human being could face such a terrible weapon. The Germans knew they were upset. The wounded were suffocating under the mass of bodies. Their bodies were torn apart by fresh bomb fragments.
One by one, the German columns marched forward, reached the hill where the French fortifications stood, and began to pile up the bodies to protect themselves from the weapons. The Germans were unable to consolidate their own victory. Three days of stalemate ensued as both armies bombarded each other. The shells converged, fragmenting the defenses, hearts beating fast and agitated.
Finally, it was the turn of us French soldiers to join the attack. In spite of the German fire, we were afraid to attack our allies. We dropped our artillery swords on the German soldiers on the battlefield where they had been reduced to bullet holes and nothing. It was a real war. After a while, another procession of Germans and another procession of Germans came. They threw the Germans back up the hillside, captured only the bodies of their allies, and the French took over again. I lay on the battlefield, panting, exhausted, unable to cheer. Suddenly, I was bleeding from a deep puncture wound in my thigh, and my boots were already bloody. (New York Times, February 29, 1919)
