French soldier standing next to an unexploded 420mm shell that fell on Verdun. March, 1916. It weighed 2,100 pounds empty.
Musée de L'ArméeObus de 420 tombé dans un coin des fossés de VerdunVerdun, Mars 1916Pois: 956 kilogr. vide420 shell fallen into a corner of the Verdun trenchesVerdun, March 1916Weight: 2,107 pounds emptyLogo: ELD
". . . a monster of a shell, the herald of a heavy bombardment, went off outside my door and sent the window glass jangling into my room. With three bounds I was in the cellar, where the other inhabitants also presented themselves in quick time. Since the cellar was half above ground, and was only separated from the garden by a thin wall, we all pressed together into a short tunnel that had been embarked on only a few days previously. With animal instinct, my sheepdog forced his whimpering way between the tight-pressed bodies into the deepest, furthest corner of the shelter. Far in the distance we could hear the dull thud of a series of discharges, then, when we'd counted to thirty or so, the whining approach of the heavy iron lumps, ending in crashing explosions all round our little abode. Each time, there was an unpleasant surge of pressure through the cellar window, and clods of earth and shards came clattering on the tiled roof, while the anxious horses whinnied and stamped in their stables near by. The dog whined throughout, and a fat bandsman screamed as if he were having a tooth pulled each time a whistling bomb approached."
Ensign Ernst Jünger was stationed in Monchy-le-Preux, France, a dozen kilometers east of the city of Arras, facing the British lines. On February 3, 1916 his unit had been relieved, and was resting in Douchy-les-Mines 'following a taxing time at the front.' The shelling Jünger describes took place the next morning, February 4.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 61, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
1916-02-04, 1916, February, Junger,