Duomo, you could not escape from it.

It made you feel quite naked and unprotected.

At the same time, it beckoned with an irresistible magnetism.

Alastair Horn, the Price of Glory.

Verdun, 1916.

Hello and welcome to the Battle of Redun podcast episode three.

Durschbruch and Duomo.

This is coming out a few hours late on a Sunday evening. I tried doing this earlier, but it just wasn't working

out. So when things happen like that, sometimes you just have to walk away and come back and

try again later. So here we are. When we left off the last time at the end of episode two, the German attack on Battle of Dundan had begun after the nine-hour bombardment with 1,200 guns and some 2 million shells being expended during that nine-hour barrage.

After the Germans plastered every French position inside the Verdun salient,

they attacked on the right bank only with four corps worth of infantry.

And last episode, we focused on the defense of the Bois Descartes by Lieutenant Colonel

Emil Dreyant and his two late infantry battalions, the 56th and 59th Chasseur-Apeie.

Dreyant and his men put up a dogged defense until they were overwhelmed on February 22nd. D'Reillant himself

was killed along with many of his men. But he and his men had managed to stall the German

advance in his sector for at least one full day. But the defense of the Bois Descartes, magnificent as it was,

did not take place in a vacuum. Indeed, the wood fell because the French positions to the left

and the right of the Bois de Car and to the rear, for that matter. I had already given way under the right of the Baudet car, and to the rear, for that matter.

I had already given way under the weight of the German assault, and thus they fell as well.

So the main action during the first week of the Battle of Verdun took place between the village of Brabant, on the banks of the River Meuse itself to the

village of Orne some 10 kilometers to the east of the River Meuse.

...