Verdun

It's a sophisticated book.

lament for Western civilization by somebody who saw Europe destroy itself at the Battle of the Somme and Verdun.

He wasn't at Verdun, but he was at the Somme and saw what happened in World War II when his kids were in the war.

And Europe is Gondor.

It's an outpost next to Mordor.

France, in particular, was facing a severe demographic collapse.

Their birth rate had plummeted because an entire generation of young men, the men who would have been fathers, had been wiped out at Verdun and the Somme.

An entire generation.

Gone.

Major General Andrew D. Bruce Andrew D. Bruce, a native of Missouri and a graduate of Texas A&M in 1916, was commissioned an Army second lieutenant in June 1917.

His association with the Marine Corps goes back to World War I, when as a member of the 2nd Infantry Division's 5th Machine Gun Battalion, he participated in actions in France in the Trojan Sector near Verdun.

in the ein defensive operation near chateau thierry the ein marne offensive at saisons the fighting at st mihiel and the meuse argonne offensive at blancmond with the rest of the second division he hiked into germany to become part of the occupation force in the interwar period he had a mix of staff command and school assignments at the outbreak of world war two then lieutenant colonel bruce headed the army's tank destroyer school which was first at camp meade md then at camp hood near killeen texas he assumed command of the seventy seventh infantry division in may nineteen forty three the division first saw combat at guam with the third marine division and the first provisional marine brigade and then landed at leyte for the philippines operation General Bruce's 77th once again fought with Marines in the landing on 1 April 1945 on Okinawa.

When the 24 Corps attacked to the south, General Bruce's soldiers and the 1st Marine Division were neighbors in the front lines.

There will be a passage like this.

Save for the gigantic effort of Germany to break through the French lines at Verdun, nothing of importance occurred on the Western Front between September nineteen fifteen and the opening of the Somme offensive in the first of July nineteen sixteen.

And this will be believed, unless men have learned to read history aright by then.

For the river of history is full of waterfalls that attract the day excursionist, such as battles and laws and the deaths of kings, whereas the spirit of the river is not in the waterfalls.

One got the impression that all our grousings and doubtings were completely out of date, that up at the top now was a unity of command that had thought everything out and could afford to wait.

Later on I forgot this impression, but I remember it so well now.

Even through Verdun we could afford to wait.

We had all the cards now.

that was

nearly annihilated in world war one, um, at Verdun.

Um, uh, Fox also fought was in the fusiliers that he worked with the French, uh, on like radio lines around the front line when he was very young.

Um,

The Germans directly occupied the north and the entire Atlantic coast, including Paris.

Alsace and Moselle were effectively annexed, and in the south was the so-called Free Zone, governed from the small town of Vichy by Michel-Philippe Pétain, who was the hero of Verdun, a great hero from the First World War.

Parliament voted him full powers, and he replaced the Third French Republic with the French state in what he called the National Revolution.

Work, family, and fatherland became the new slogan instead of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

At this period of the war, the majority of soldiers, as well as statesmen, were inclined to believe that no one attack, whether made by the Allies or by the Germans, could break through the trench line of the other side.

General Nivelle, while in command at Verdun prior to his appointment to be Commander-in-Chief, had made two surprise attacks on the Germans which, though only on a small scale, had yielded unusual results.

He believed the same system of surprise applied on a large scale would break all the way through.

He had convinced Mr. Lloyd George.

On our side of this line was all of Lithuania and Poland, new nations today mostly made up of what used to be Russia.

We had wiped Romania and Serbia off the map.

We had failed in the first battle of the Marne and at Verdun to put France out.

However, we had caused her army such tremendous losses that we believed it could never regain full strength.