Terror experienced during shelling
The fourth principal dread concerned a fear of somatic mutilation as a result of artillery and mortar fire. Advancing, fleeing, and cowering in place were all equally as dangerous. Shelling could continue incessantly for several days and nights and usually, its cessation meant an impending infantry attack. At Verdun, approximately one shell fell on each square metre of front. The bombardment, when concentrated on known French positions amounted to forty shells a minute, destroying trenches and concrete machine posts, cutting telephone lines and inflicting heavy casualties.
More than two-thirds of all wounds inflicted were caused by artillery fire. The soldier’s own accounts of the First World War emphasise the “impersonal character of mass death,” and a “feeling of overwhelming insignificance on the battlefield.” As the war progressed soldiers became increasingly more proficient at identifying a shells probable point of impact by simply listening to it. This allowed them to take appropriate cover, but sometimes all a soldier could do was simply throw himself to the ground.
While artillery fire posed the most constant threat during the First World War, the machine-gun with its immense firepower proved equally as deadly. Machine-guns were capable of firing up to 600 rounds per minute and at 180-degree angles so that even the most dispersed formations of attacking infantry could rarely escape their fire. But it was shelling that had more of an impact on the soldier’s daily functioning. Moving or eating proved impossible during an “ordinary” barrage. Soldiers had to do without food or water, thirst became one of the “best-remembered tortures of life at the front.”
Bombardments also cut off all tactical links within units by isolating soldiers from their leaders. During such periods where communication was impossible, accidental or “friendly” fire often occurred. The trenches themselves offered little protection against shrapnel exploding in all directions, all a soldier could do in such a situation was to try to take cover as best he could. Soldiers, especially those in deeper trenches, also faced the possibility of being buried alive by a shell blast.
Soldiers considered bodily annihilation as the most awful potential fate. Paul Dubrulle, a priest serving in the French Army summarised his own fear of physical destruction: “To die from a bullet seems to be nothing. The parts of our being remain intact. But to be broken into pieces, torn apart, reduced to pulp, there you see an apprehension that the flesh cannot withstand. That is the worst of what suffering is about during the bombardment.”
In contrast, Jean Bernier considered annihilation by a shell to be a relatively “straightforward and oddly comforting death”: “An enormous shock⦠a beautiful death, annihilating sleep and nothing, forever.” Guy Hallé, who served as a Second Lieutenant during the Battle of Verdun, imagined the moment of his death in more gruesome detail: “There will be a great flame, a cry, next I will be lying there, legs shattered, stomach torn up, all bloody, eyes wide open, and the face completely white!”