Epox!

Hello and welcome back to Epox. Last time, if you remember, we was talking all about the Battle of Verdun, the lead up to Battle of the Battle of Verdun.

And this time we're going to actually jump straight into the full events, how it actually played out.

And if you remember last time as well, I told you, it lasted for a very long time.

In fact, it's the longest battle of World War I. Something like nine months, give or take,

depending exactly how you measure it, exactly when it ended. So it starts in February,

it certainly starts at an exact moment. 4am, exactly on the dot, 4 a.m. on the 21st of February,

1916, is when it opened.

And it starts with a German attack, which lasts something like four months.

And then there's the French counter attack, which lasts something like another four months,

five months. So yeah, it doesn't end until December, basically December of 1916.

Okay, so a couple more things to say before we talk about what happened

at 4 a.m. on the 21st of February is that the Germans managed to build up a giant army and a

giant number of guns, artillery pieces, in almost complete secret. I mean, not 100% secret because that's not really possible.

The French still would have some idea that something was coming, but they had, they, they,

it seems that the French had no idea quite what the Germans had built up. Now on the German

side of the lions, I mean, we're in France, but it's quite

close to the German border, the Germans had multiple railheads, multiple, you know, rail tracks

leading up to the Verdun sector on their side of the lines. So they could get, and did use these

multiple railway lines, what's it, six, seven,

eight of them to get a crazy amount of material to the front lines. Thousands and thousands of

guns, heavy guns, and obviously thousands and tens of thousands of men, and everything that they need,

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