Phil - I can't think of any gun turrets destroyed in 1917. There's an interesting series of articles on the 1917 fighting at Verdun that details, among other things, the sites of the French heavy guns used in August 1917 in the current edition of 'Les Cahiers de la Grande Guerre', which is the bulletin of the Association Nationale du Souvenir de la Bataille de Verdun. He's also produced a wonderful guide book to the German side of the front in Flanders and northern France. His books - in German only - on Hill 304 and the Mort-Homme are excellent. Markus Klauer is still a serving captain in the German army. It was clearly intense.Īs an edit, I would point out that the three million shell bombardment in the ten days prior to launching the assault at Verdun in August 1917 is beginning to approach, in weight and intensity, the artillery programme deployed by the British in their Flanders offensive in July 1917. Overshadowed by the events in Champagne and Artois in the spring, and by the Flanders fighting later that year, this fighting at Verdun in the summer of 1917 is worthy of more study. I remember visiting the battlefield with Christina Holstein and Tony Noyes in October 2006, and it was apparent that the huge metal casings of the gun turrets in one or two of the forts had been smashed not, as I had supposed, in the main 1916 battle but in the subsequent 1917 fighting. In their August 1917 offensive in the Morte Homme/ Cote 304 sectors the French fired three million shells in a ten day bombardment prior to the attack of August 20th, and, significantly, one third of these were rounds from heavy guns. In late June of that year the Germans launched a fierce attack in the Cote 304 vicinity which disrupted French plans for their forthcoming offensive there. This 1917 fighting at Verdun appears to have been underated. I must have read that before but it failed to register. It seems then that there was an action by the French in the Verdun area in late summer- Autumn of 1917. I quote, " That Petain himself was sincere in the opinion he expressed is proved by the fact that although the trench warfare in the Verdun area became intensified from the 20th August onwards, it was not, as will be seen, until the 23rd October that he dared to use his troops for an offensive, and then only on a comparatively minor scale." In discussing the battle of III Ypres, he mentions the morale problems of the French Army after Chemin des Dames. Post Script: By a strange co-incidence, I have just come across a short passage in Duff Cooper's Haig. I think you will find very little reference to fighting in the area of Hill 304 in 1917 outside unit diaries. 1917 was noteworthy for Chemin des Dames for the French and even further away for the British. Almost all the accounts of the fighting in this area concentrate on the main battle which was February to June, 1916 and tailing off over the rest of the year until winter put an end to campaigning.
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