UXO found in Verdun 100 years after the battle. Over 65 million shells were fired during the 300 days of fighting, resulting in 700,000 casualties and obliterating an entire generation of men.
The devastation of the country side was so horrid that nature, vegetation and life are now completely scarred.
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Nine French villages were literally pounded to dust, wiped off the map. The attacks were so unforgiving that the French government awarded the villages with the Croix De Guerre, declaring how they 'Died for France'.
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Certain parts are still to this day off limits from the high concentration of arsenic, mercury, chlorine and other chemicals used during the fighting.
During the war, an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front. As many as one in every three shells fired did not detonate.
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In the Ypres Salient, an estimated 300 million projectiles that the British and the German forces fired at each other during World War I were duds, and most of them have not been recovered.
#reality #stayzero #zerofoxtrot #ww1 #verdun