Verdun the ones who have suffered the most are the wounded and, along
with them, the stretcher-bearers who transport them. Some of the
bearers carry them from the front lines all the way to our post (1.5
kilometers); other ones take them in order to carry them off to Fleury
and, having arrived there, the wounded have almost another 2 kilometers
to go by stretcher before they can be transported by car. Imagine such
a trip under the shells which hardly ever stop, through a landscape
full of shell holes, tree trunks, and wrecked wire, through deep mud
and, in certain areas, through clay where the stretcher-bearers sink
down all the way to their waists, being forced to call for help to get
themselves out of difficulty..."
A letter from a soldier of the 4th Infantry Regiment, November 1916.
Antoine Detrus was born on the 14th of September 1876 in Lyon.
He was a member of the 9e Cie of the 110e Regiment d’Infanterie Territoriale.
citation for his Croix de Guerre (left) reads:
soldier who served at the front since October 1914. He always showed much
courage and devotion. He died gloriously on the field of battle at Verdun while helping
evacuate the wounded on the night of the 8-9th of June 1916”
Territorial regiment arrived at Verdun in Mid
May of 1916 and left for the Argonne in mid
regiment was quartered in the town itself and was not used as a fighting unit.
This does not mean that they were not in the thick of the fighting.
On the 22nd
of May the regiment suffered 70 casualties as they supported the French attempt
to retake Douaumont. The men of the regiment spend long and dangerous nights as
they crossed through German artillery fire bringing rations and ammunition
forward, and returning with the wounded. They were also sent forward to work on
The fate of
the wounded on a battlefield which was constantly under artillery fire can only
be imagined in our day and age.
Captain Albert Garnier, a French officer
in the 52 I.D. wrote of the fate of those who lay waiting for evacuation...
“On my reconnaissance today I found four poor wretches with smashed legs. For
two days they had been laying there wasting away, wracked with fever. They lay
a few meters from each other, talking back and forth, keeping each others
morale up, all hoping to be brought back to safety.
They begged me to arrange transport for them and I solemnly promised to send
the stretcher bearers to come pick them up. I did not have the heart to tell
them that the stretcher bearers were 20 meters away, dead. I had promised to
report their position which I did as soon as I had the chance. I have no idea if they
The standard Medaille Militaire award document for soldiers killed in action
Germans pushed southwards from Douaumont in the last days of May the men of the
110th were sent forward to help build positions in and around Fort Souville
losses were competitively small, but constant. Every night the 10-20 men would die
or get wounded on the way through the valleys to the front.
Fort Vaux had fallen on the 7th of
June and a French counter attack had failed to retake it. As the fighting raged
on the men of the 110e. R.I.T. crossed through the barrages to
evacuate the wounded.
took a terrible toll, a French doctor wrote…
bloody bandages are dropped on the floor, we have no time to dispose of them.
They form a carpet which is ankle high.
artilleryman is brought in, he is in terrible condition. His wounds are
horrible, he has bled a lot, his face like white marble. Both his legs are
smashed, attached with just a few strands of meat and sinew, he is still
While he is
being given a morphine injection a doctor examines him.
splintered bones stick in all directions, the wound is full of strands of flesh
along with remains of his trousers and underwear. Carefully we try and bandage
the wounds. This means moving the leg, causing a fountain of blood to shoot
out, soaking the doctor.
man lets out a low moan and dies, it happens so fast we are not prepared for
it, we almost don't notice.
screaming at the entrance, this time a wounded man with a chest full of bullet
holes, all bleeding badly. He is quickly bandaged and gets a morphine injection.
he is sent into a deep sleep with ether...then he is then carried out...
patches on the ground mark the places where the stretchers stand before the
wounded are carried into the surgery. Leaning against the wall are the empty
stretchers, their canvas covers are stained black with crusts of blood.
stand around with haggard faces, tortured looks, as if sentenced to death.
barn the sight is terrible. Wounded who had died on the way or during bandaging
have been pushed aside to make way for those who are still living.
lay, piled up one upon each other, open torsos, missing limbs, it is terrible
to see. The faces carry grimaces of anger, pain or desperation and the bodies
lay in grotesque positions.
On a ground
lay the remains of a captain, just three ribs and half a face wrapped in a
Next to it
lays a similar package with a paper name tag.
The pile of
bloody corpses is the stuff nightmares are made of. At night the rats add to
the horror, eating away the faces and eyes, leaving bloody skulls staring out
of empty sockets.
There are simply too many! We have to
live amongst them, eat amongst them and sleep amongst them...."
On the 9th
of June 1916 Armand Antoine Detrus joined the ranks of the dead. On that day
the regiment lost 2 men killed and 4 wounded.
soldiers killed by artillery somewhere on the slopes and in the ravines near Verdun , his body was
never found. Studying the events and the sector were he was listed as being
killed in, it seems they were taking wounded from the Fort Vaux
sector, down the slopes to Eix or Belrupt. It was while returning from the
front lines with the wounded that they were hit bay German artillery.
Left: A letter of sympathy from the major of Lyon
A document confirming his name is engraved on a stone in the Ossuaire at Verdun.
Right: The document for the Verdun medal
The engraved stone with Armand Detrus's name in the monument for the dead at Verdun.