--- title: "Red Zones, Northern France: The Lasting Scars of World War I" description: "The lingering effects of war never truly disappear. Those who engage in armed conflict, be it on the winning or losing side, more often than not will have to live with its consequences, long after the fighting is over. Physical wounds, disabilities and post-traumatic stress disorder can remain as permanent stigmata of horrors that can never truly be forgotten.\n\nThe world was introduced to such lasting effects on a scale never experienced before, following the end of the Great War, the supposed war to end all wars. Science and technology applied to mass killing on an industrial scale left the world in shock, and scattered the seeds for an even deadlier conflict 20 years later.\n\nA conflict of such magnitude was bound to leave its scars not only on individuals, but on entire populations, nations and even on territories. The land itself did not escape the constant torture meted out by raining artillery shells, nor the creeping clouds of chemical weapons. And when the fighting was over, the very ground would be contaminated by the toxins seeping out from unspent instruments of death, and even from the dead bodies of an entire generation, trapped in no man's land by schemes they could not comprehend.\n\nThere is an area in North-Eastern France, along the border with Belgium, where the land was martyred and later poisoned to such an extent, that the government realised that no human activity could ever be resumed. Even today, more than a century after the last shot was fired, those once fertile lands have not experienced a single harvest—for all it could be harvested is dormant death, encased in rusted metal shells.\n\nWelcome to the unhealed scars of the Great War.\n\nWelcome to the Red Zones.\n\n## Storm of Steel\n\nThe Red Zones, sometimes simply 'the Red Zone', comprise several patches of land in North Eastern France, along the border with Belgium. They follow a roughly crescent shape, with the western-mostly tip being located near Lille. The crescent then moves southwards, snaking its way past Lens, Arras, Cambrai and Compiegne, before heading eastwards towards Verdun and finally Nancy.\n\nMilitary history enthusiasts may have recognised this area as the one of heaviest fighting on the WWI's Western Front, where the trenches dug by the Imperial German Army faced those manned by France and her allies. From 1914 to 1918, this region was the backdrop to some of the most violent battles experienced by humankind to that day: the Battle of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and especially the Battle of Verdun.\n\nIn 1919, after the end of WWI, the Red Zones covered an area of 1,800 square km, roughly two and a half times the surface of New York City. We will explore later how the red zones were defined and designated.\n\nBy 1927, the areas with a 'red zone designation' had considerably shrunk, to a surface of 490 square km, that's three fifths of New York City.\n\nAs of today, the Red Zones have been further reduced to an 'archipelago' of patches of land, dispersed along the crescent I described earlier. This constellation of off-limits areas adds up to roughly 120 square km, one third of New York City. Or, to keep with a French theme, we are talking of an area slightly larger than the surface of Paris!\n\nSo, throughout the past century, the size of the Red Zones has changed considerably, but not their essence. These are swathes, or patches of land, so destroyed, so contaminated by the incessant shelling and chemical warfare of WWI, that all human activity has ceased to exist. Entire villages were either severely damaged or entirely wiped out off the map. Thousands of residents were relocated. Agriculture was completely abandoned. Even today, access to the remaining Red Zones is severely limited and controlled.\n\nThe theoretical process of transforming the barren landscape of a planet into a new, hospitable Earth is called terraforming.\n\nWhat happened here was the opposite: the very practical process of turning a once productive countryside into a hostile, alien, moon-like landscape, devoid of vegetation and littered with craters.\n\nAllow me to introduce a new term: 'luna-forming'.\n\nTo better understand how this 'luna-forming' process took place, let's take Verdun as an example.\n\nBefore the start of WWI, Verdun was home to a peace-time garrison of 66,000 troops. In addition to the civilian population, these thousands of young men with robust appetites needed to be fed with the best that the French countryside had to offer.\n\nThus, the surrounding region was intensively farmed. The soil was fertile, and local produce sustained the economy of the area.\n\nAt the same time, those 66,000 troops needed to have a tactical advantage against potential invaders. Amongst several other factors, such advantage could be derived from the presence of forests.\n\nThat's right, pre-WWI French military doctrine placed great importance in thickly wooded areas!\n\nAfter the defeat against Prussia in the war of 1870, the Ministry of War, in cooperation with the Water and Forestry Administration created a dedicated forest corps comprising more than 6,000 troops. In 1875 this new corps set about planting trees in the plains around Verdun, creating a new forest intended to protect the road leading from the border to Paris.\n\nThe idea made quite a lot of sense. Dense formations of trees made for very good cover for infantry troops, they could hinder the efforts of artillery spotters and break down the momentum of cavalry charges. More simplistically, a few troops armed with sharp axes could quickly gather enough material to erect fortifications and trenches. In the words of writer Jean-Paul Amat, author of 'The Forests of the Great War':\n\n> 'The forest … had become, in 1914, an element of the defense system, permanent and immediately mobilizable in its structures'\n\nThe concept of trees against invaders may have been sound at the times of 'good-old fashioned warfare', if you allow me the term. You know, the kind were battles were mostly conducted by means of inaccurate artillery and bayonet charges.\n\nBut then came June 1914. An adolescent shot an archduke in Sarajevo and Europe reacted by committing suicide.\n\nIn early August 1914, Germany invaded Belgium and then France. The initial advance was halted, and battle lines stabilised along the Western Front, inaugurating that theatre of horrors known as trench warfare, a spectacle enlivened by those special effects known as artillery barrages, and later, chemical and gas warfare.\n\nMore than 34,300 square km of land were completely devastated in France and Belgium. To put this into context: that's an area larger than the state of Hawaii, or almost twice the size of Wales.\n\nAcross France and Belgium, 5,168 towns and villages, for a total of almost 1 million houses and farms, had to be rebuilt, or were abandoned, after the war.\n\nThis destruction was most evident at the Battle of Verdun, from February to December 1916. Both sides fired a total of 60 million artillery shells, of which 15 million were left on the ground, unexploded. Those that did go off, completely destroyed the top layer in the affected area, carving large shell craters which exposed the limestone bedrock.\n\nBy the end of 1916, some 100 square km once covered by farmed fields, gardens, prairies and woods had been completely erased from existence. As described by historian Christina Holstein:\n\n> 'The ground was just completely churned up. Any trees were smashed, and men took shelter where they could, in shell holes and in holes in the ground'\n\nAuthor Jean-Paul Amat described how the impact of the constant fighting, shelling, machine-gun strafing\n\n> 'compromised or exhausted wood resources, disrupted the grounds.'\n\nTo the point that\n\n> 'The thermal or kinetic energies released … were such that they caused the total mineralization of the environment.'\n\nIn other words, where the fury of the bombardments was fiercest, all that remained of the soil was the mineral layer.\n\nSuch a storm of metal could not but turn the battle into a meat grinder. The French and German armies suffered a total of 300,000 dead and 400,000 wounded—and these are conservative estimates!\n\nDespite all the best efforts of the respective armies, up to one third of the killed in action are believed to still lay on the battlefield, waiting to be found and identified.\n\n## 'Human Life Impossible'\n\nHostilities concluded with the November 11, 1918 armistice. And in early 1919, the newly constituted French Ministry for the Liberated Territories set about to rebuild the regions affected by Verdun and other battles on the Western Front.\n\nThe Ministry divided the areas into three zones:\n\nGreen Zones, which had suffered minimal damage.\n\nYellow Zones, where damage was heavy, but still limited.\n\nAnd the Red Zones, closest to the front lines, where destruction was almost complete. An official post-war report described them as\n\n> 'Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible'\n\nSo, while the Green and Yellow Zones returned to civilian use relatively quickly, the Red Zones were closed off to the general population. On April 17, 1919, a law transferred ownership to the State of such areas, which would be prohibited from human activities.\n\nThe first order of business for the government was to clean the ground from unexploded ordnance, debris and, sadly, human and animal remains. This task was conducted by local labourers, German PoWs, workers imported from as far as China, or even Quaker volunteers.\n\nThe search for ammunition was conducted superficially, due to the lack of metal detection technology at the time. Labourers were able to retrieve only the debris and shells found in the topmost layers of the soil, most of which were dumped into the ocean. Today we know that most unexploded artillery remained untrieved, resting as deep as 15 metres under the surface of the earth.\n\nThis workforce also had the grim task of collecting unidentified human remains, mostly bones, which continued throughout the 1920s. After 1926, the exhumed remains were taken to the National Necropolis at Fleury-devant-Douaumont.\n\nThe construction of this sprawling cemetery began in 1923, not far from one of the villages destroyed and later abandoned following the Battle of Verdun. From August 1925, soldiers buried in smaller cemeteries in the region were exhumed and transferred to this city of the fallen. By the time it was inaugurated, on June 23, 1929, the lawns of Douaumont were lined by 16,142 white graves belonging to Christian, Muslim and Jewish soldiers.\n\nAs mentioned, authorities transported to the necropolis the thousands of dead unearthed within the Red Zones, up to 500 per month. Eventually, the remains of 130,000 French and German soldiers were buried at the monumental Ossuary within the necropolis. About half of them were identified, and their families had their names engraved on the stones of the lower vault.\n\nUnderneath it, another underground pit contains the bones of those who remained nameless.\n\nAnd many, many more, will remain without formal identification, as tens of thousands of bodies are still waiting to be found in the Red Zones.\n\nSince the early 1920s, French authorities realised that these masses of decaying bodies were responsible for the contamination of aquifers and other bodies of water for human consumption. Thus, the authorities had to heavily chlorinate these waters, a process which became known in France as 'Verdun-ization'.\n\nBy the early 1920s, associations of farmers gradually re-took ownership of some of the reclaimed areas. Although, as we shall see later, these were not, nor would never be, entirely cleared.\n\nAs per the most damaged lands, the government realised that their efforts of recovery for agricultural use were futile. The cost would have far outweighed the economic value of the land. But leaving the land to its own devices carried the risk of soil erosion and flash floods in case of heavy rains.\n\nA solution came from the French Agricultural Engineering Corps and the Waters and Forests Service. These authorities proposed to convert the 'luna-formed' zones into heavily forested areas, which would have performed three functions:\n\nFirst, prevent locals from farming the Red Zones, an activity which carried the ever present risk of death by explosion or poisoning.\n\nSecond, stave off erosion.\n\nAnd Third, preserve the memory of the fallen through the very presence of these new woodlands.\n\nThus, almost 36 million trees were planted in the 1920s and 1930s.\n\nWhile the soil may have been contaminated, apparently its top layer, broken by shelling, made it easy for new trees to penetrate into the friable earth. And the experts in charge made the right choice of trees to plant: resilient conifers, such as spruce and black pine.\n\nBy the 1970s, conifers had been gradually and naturally replaced by deciduous trees, such as beech. It appeared that over time, the flora reintroduced by man had taken over its own destiny, and had evolved by itself.\n\n## An Iron Harvest\n\nIt is now time to spell out exactly what is to be found in the areas still designated as Red Zones.\n\nIf you were to take a stroll in those zones—which you absolutely should not—you may be able to spot visual mementoes of the raging battles of the Western Front: shrapnel from artillery, unexploded ordnance, or even shells once used for chemical weapons.\n\nAccording to a 2014 *Le Monde* newspaper article, the areas around Verdun were littered with 200,000 shells belonging to the French and German chemical arsenals.\n\nUnexploded conventional and chemical shells are a constant danger to those who venture in the current Red Zones, or who farm the land in the former Red Zones. That is why, twice a year, during the planting and sowing seasons, local farmers pay extra attention to any bit of metal which may protrude from their fields.\n\nAccording to Joseph Hupy, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire:\n\n> 'I heard several stories of where people were ploughing and a shell went off. They weren't killed, but they had cowbells ringing in their heads from the shell going off.'\n\nNot everybody has been so lucky. Since the end of WWI, at least 900 people have died due to old shells suddenly blowing up. Again, according to Hupy:\n\n> 'The people who die in the munitions removal, they don't really die from the explosive ones. They die from gas shells.'\n\nAny piece of unexploded ordnance is reported to a specialised mine-clearing brigade in Metz, for them to collect it safely. This recurring cycle has eventually given birth to an annual event, known as 'Iron Harvest'—an appropriate title!\n\nDepending on sources, the annual yield of such harvest varies from 30 to 900 tons of ammunition. Two percent of these are chemical warfare shells, still containing mustard gas, phosgene and diphosgene.\n\nThis is the only kind of harvest one would wish to diminish every year, but unfortunately that might not be the case.\n\nAccording to Christian Cléret, head of the mine-clearing brigade, to achieve a complete clean up,\n\n> 'It will still take at least tens of years'\n\nHistorian Christina Holstein is even more pessimistic. According to her, it may take an estimated 300 years before the battlefield of Verdun is completely cleared. And that is only one of the remaining Red Zones!\n\nBesides the visible presence of ammunition, what makes the Red Zones particularly dangerous is the presence of a constant, unseen threat. The contamination caused by cartridges, bullets, bombs, as well as the bacteria resulting from the decomposition of animal and human bodies.\n\nIn 2007, Tobias Bausinger and Johannes Preuss, researchers at Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, followed a paper trail dating back to 1928, looking for a site where French authorities had incinerated unexploded chemical shells, left over from the Battle of Verdun. Their research took them inside an oak forest, north-east of Verdun, where they discovered a vast circle, 70 metres wide, where more than 200,000 chemical shells may have been burned by authorities.\n\nDubbed the 'Gas Square' by the Mainz researchers, this circle was still covered in ash and charcoal, and was surrounded by a sickly vegetation of moss and lichens. Needless to say, the ground underneath and around 'Gas Square' was heavily contaminated.\n\nIn the same year, Bausinger, Preuss and the French National Forestry Office published a more comprehensive analysis of the soil in the Red Zone close to Verdun. They found that the ground was replete with metals such as mercury, copper, zinc and lead, but most of all with arsenic and ammonium perchlorate, a compound used in the detonation devices of artillery shells.\n\nMushrooms, game meat and other food foraged or hunted in current and former Red Zones might be heavily laden with toxins. The livers of wild boars for example, have been found to contain abnormally high levels of lead. Wine-makers are particularly encouraged to verify the provenance of the wood used to make their barrels. If they are made from oak harvested in former Red Zones, they might contaminate the wine with lead!\n\nArsenic concentration is particularly worrying, at 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than average. In some locations, arsenic constitutes up to 17.6% of the soil. The presence of this element can prevent the normal growth of healthy vegetation, if any at all! And it can easily permeate the local aquifers, thus endangering the health of even those who live far removed from the Red Zone.\n\nThe same can be said of ammonium perchlorate. In Autumn of 2012, the drinking water of some 500 towns and villages in north-eastern France was declared as not fit for consumption, due to abnormally high rates of this compound. Local authorities did not specify the origin of the pollution, but in 2014 newspaper *Le Monde* speculated that contamination from old ordnance was responsible.\n\nOne century after the start of the water, civilians still incurred the risk of being poisoned by the lingering ghosts of weapons, silent, but still deadly.\n\n## Nature Resurgent\n\nI realised that the picture I painted so far is extremely apocalyptic. But there is evidence supporting the idea that the once 'luna-formed' areas have bounced back to life, thanks to the afforestation efforts in the 1920s and 1930s, and to the absence of a certain species with enormous potential for good, as well as the tendency to behave like the most toxic parasite, i.e. *homo sapiens*.\n\nIn November 2018, exactly one hundred years after the armistice, the BBC visited nine 'ghost villages' within the Red Zone, referred by the local press as\n\n> 'Morts pour la France'\n\nOr 'Dead for the sake of France'.\n\nWell, to be fair, three out of nine settlements were at least partially rebuilt, which means that six remain technically 'dead'—and they were kept this way on purpose, as an involuntary monument to the sacrifices endured by civilians during the war.\n\nBut what BBC reporter Melissa Banigan could not help but notice, was that these villages were not exactly dead. The houses built by man, and later destroyed by man, had been taken over by the unrelenting march of nature, namely oaks, horse chestnuts and Austrian pines. Interestingly, the latter were donated by Germany's ally, Austria, as part of their war reparations.\n\nOlivier Gérard, director of the Douaumont Ossuary commented:\n\n> 'Nature and life always find a way.'\n\nIndeed, nature had found a way. It appears that over the course of the decades, the millions of planted trees had absorbed enough contaminants from the toxic soil to allow unique species of flora and fauna to thrive.\n\nBack in 2013, the French National Forests Office, commissioned an aerial survey of the forest growing in the Verdun Red Zone. A small plane flew over the area, equipped with a laser emitting constant near-infrared pulses. This methodology, known as 'light detection and ranging', or LIDAR, allowed the Forests Office to map with utmost precision the forest's vegetation, as well as the remnants of the battlefield, such as old trenches, bunkers and shell holes. This initial survey allowed the Forests Office to conduct further research, thus determining that new flora, and even new fauna, had gradually taken over what once was no man's land.\n\nIn particular, researchers found that shell craters had become very popular with wildlife, as they were frequently flooded by rainfall, and made for a protected ecological niche. New settlers in these craters include yellow-bellied toads, several species of newts and even rare orchids—a rare sight indeed amongst the forests of northern France!\n\nUnderground shelters, dug up by both German and French troops, have been conquered instead by 15 different species of bats. The entrances to these dug outs are guarded by plants found nowhere else in France, such as horsetails, ferns and *Sisyrinchium*, or blue-eyed grass.\n\nThe latter is actually a blue flowering plant, normally found in the Americas.\n\nIt is possible that the blue-eyed grass was likely unwittingly brought to France by the 'doughboys', the soldiers of the American expeditionary force who reached the Western Front in 1918.\n\nIt is comforting to know that their unmarked graves away from home—or the graves of any other soldier fallen in the Red Zones—would never be left without flowers.\n\n## From the Hands of an Undeserving Kind\n\nThe metaphorical scars left by conflicts across the world are unpredictable. Sometimes, nations are able to move on surprisingly quickly, and past enemies learn how to cooperate for the future good of the next generations. Far too often, the shockwaves planted decades ago still reverberate around past battlefields, ebbing and flowing in intensity, yet never allowing for old wounds to fully heal.\n\nThe same unpredictability can be applied to the physical scars left upon the innocent and unwitting earth, always the defeated party, regardless of who is the victor. Will the scars of France's Red Zones ever heal? Will those areas ever recover, and return to their past, pre-war state? The simple answer appears to be 'no'. The complex answer would be 'maybe, dependent on three further centuries of concerted clean-up effort'. But one might answer with another question: does it really matter? As we have learned from the previous section, nature appears to have moved on, to have reclaimed a land from the hands of an undeserving kind. Nature has moved on, following an agenda of her own.\n\nI will conclude by quoting again Prof Hupy, the geographer from University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire:\n\n> 'I have done lots of work in the Zone Rouge. I looked at how soils developed in that landscape afterwards. Basically what I wanted to see was 'Did this landscape recover?' The word 'recover' is not the right word.\n>\n> It got set off on a different trajectory of development.'\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- The Red Zones in France are areas heavily damaged by WWI, with lingering contamination from unexploded ordnance and chemical weapons.\n- These zones, initially covering 1,800 square km, have shrunk but remain hazardous, with ongoing 'Iron Harvests' of unexploded shells.\n- Nature has begun to reclaim the Red Zones, with unique flora and fauna thriving in the contaminated soil.\n- The Red Zones are a stark reminder of the enduring impact of war on both people and the environment.\n- Despite efforts to clean and reforest the areas, full recovery may take centuries due to deep contamination.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What are the Red Zones in Northern France?\n\nThe Red Zones are areas in North-Eastern France, along the border with Belgium, that were so severely damaged and contaminated during World War I that they were deemed unfit for human activity. These zones follow a crescent shape and have been reduced over time but still cover roughly 120 square km.\n\n### Why were the Red Zones created?\n\nThe Red Zones were created because the land was so destroyed and contaminated by the incessant shelling and chemical warfare of WWI that all human activity had to cease. The French government designated these areas as off-limits to prevent further harm to civilians.\n\n### What is the 'Iron Harvest'?\n\nThe 'Iron Harvest' refers to the annual collection of unexploded ordnance and other metal debris from the Red Zones. This occurs twice a year during the planting and sowing seasons, with yields varying from 30 to 900 tons of ammunition, including chemical warfare shells.\n\n### How were the Red Zones defined and designated?\n\nIn 1919, the French Ministry for the Liberated Territories divided the affected areas into three zones: Green Zones (minimal damage), Yellow Zones (heavy but limited damage), and Red Zones (almost complete destruction). The Red Zones were closed off to the general population and transferred to state ownership.\n\n### What is the 'Gas Square'?\n\nThe 'Gas Square' is a 70-metre-wide circle in an oak forest north-east of Verdun where French authorities incinerated over 200,000 chemical shells left over from the Battle of Verdun. The area is heavily contaminated with toxins and surrounded by sickly vegetation.\n\n### What is the National Necropolis at Fleury-devant-Douaumont?\n\nThe National Necropolis at Fleury-devant-Douaumont is a large cemetery built to honor the soldiers who died in the Battle of Verdun. It contains the remains of 130,000 French and German soldiers, with about half identified and the rest buried in an underground pit.\n\n### How has nature reclaimed the Red Zones?\n\nDespite the contamination, nature has reclaimed the Red Zones through afforestation efforts and the absence of human interference. Unique species of flora and fauna have thrived, including rare orchids, yellow-bellied toads, and various species of bats.\n\n### What is the significance of the 'blue-eyed grass' found in the Red Zones?\n\nThe 'blue-eyed grass' is a blue flowering plant normally found in the Americas. It is believed to have been unwittingly brought to France by American soldiers during World War I, symbolizing the enduring presence of nature even in the most devastated areas.\n\n### What is the current status of the Red Zones?\n\nThe Red Zones have been reduced to an 'archipelago' of patches of land dispersed along a crescent shape in North-Eastern France. Access is severely limited and controlled, and the areas remain contaminated with unexploded ordnance and toxins.\n\n### What is the 'luna-forming' process mentioned in the article?\n\nThe 'luna-forming' process refers to the transformation of once productive countryside into a hostile, alien, moon-like landscape devoid of vegetation and littered with craters due to the intense shelling and chemical warfare during World War I.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Places video: Red Zones, Northern France: The Lasting Scars of World War I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkZOrTkN8vg)\n- [Hero image source](https://images.rawpixel.com/editor_1024/czNmcy1wcml2YXRlL3Jhd3BpeGVsX2ltYWdlcy93ZWJzaXRlX2NvbnRlbnQvbHIvdXB3azYxNjkzODU2LXdpa2ltZWRpYS1pbWFnZS1rb3dsbDVsMS5qcGc.jpg) by openverse, cc0.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://places.site/article/red-zones-northern-france-lasting-scars-world-war-i.md canonical: https://places.site/article/red-zones-northern-france-lasting-scars-world-war-i datePublished: 2026-07-01 dateModified: 2026-07-01 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://places.site/author/simon-whistler publisher: Places image: "https://media.places.site/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/MkZOrTkN8vg/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 194fb21d59780629e9181354c40443302aaad0bbabe7a07731bd10fac73b45b2 tokens: 6777 summaryUrl: https://places.site/article/red-zones-northern-france-lasting-scars-world-war-i.md.summary.md --- The lingering effects of war never truly disappear. Those who engage in armed conflict, be it on the winning or losing side, more often than not will have to live with its consequences, long after the fighting is over. Physical wounds, disabilities and post-traumatic stress disorder can remain as permanent stigmata of horrors that can never truly be forgotten. The world was introduced to such lasting effects on a scale never experienced before, following the end of the Great War, the supposed war to end all wars. Science and technology applied to mass killing on an industrial scale left the world in shock, and scattered the seeds for an even deadlier conflict 20 years later. A conflict of such magnitude was bound to leave its scars not only on individuals, but on entire populations, nations and even on territories. The land itself did not escape the constant torture meted out by raining artillery shells, nor the creeping clouds of chemical weapons. And when the fighting was over, the very ground would be contaminated by the toxins seeping out from unspent instruments of death, and even from the dead bodies of an entire generation, trapped in no man's land by schemes they could not comprehend. There is an area in North-Eastern France, along the border with Belgium, where the land was martyred and later poisoned to such an extent, that the government realised that no human activity could ever be resumed. Even today, more than a century after the last shot was fired, those once fertile lands have not experienced a single harvest—for all it could be harvested is dormant death, encased in rusted metal shells. Welcome to the unhealed scars of the Great War. Welcome to the Red Zones. ## Storm of Steel The Red Zones, sometimes simply 'the Red Zone', comprise several patches of land in North Eastern France, along the border with Belgium. They follow a roughly crescent shape, with the western-mostly tip being located near Lille. The crescent then moves southwards, snaking its way past Lens, Arras, Cambrai and Compiegne, before heading eastwards towards Verdun and finally Nancy. Military history enthusiasts may have recognised this area as the one of heaviest fighting on the WWI's Western Front, where the trenches dug by the Imperial German Army faced those manned by France and her allies. From 1914 to 1918, this region was the backdrop to some of the most violent battles experienced by humankind to that day: the Battle of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and especially the Battle of Verdun. In 1919, after the end of WWI, the Red Zones covered an area of 1,800 square km, roughly two and a half times the surface of New York City. We will explore later how the red zones were defined and designated. By 1927, the areas with a 'red zone designation' had considerably shrunk, to a surface of 490 square km, that's three fifths of New York City. As of today, the Red Zones have been further reduced to an 'archipelago' of patches of land, dispersed along the crescent I described earlier. This constellation of off-limits areas adds up to roughly 120 square km, one third of New York City. Or, to keep with a French theme, we are talking of an area slightly larger than the surface of Paris! So, throughout the past century, the size of the Red Zones has changed considerably, but not their essence. These are swathes, or patches of land, so destroyed, so contaminated by the incessant shelling and chemical warfare of WWI, that all human activity has ceased to exist. Entire villages were either severely damaged or entirely wiped out off the map. Thousands of residents were relocated. Agriculture was completely abandoned. Even today, access to the remaining Red Zones is severely limited and controlled. The theoretical process of transforming the barren landscape of a planet into a new, hospitable Earth is called terraforming. What happened here was the opposite: the very practical process of turning a once productive countryside into a hostile, alien, moon-like landscape, devoid of vegetation and littered with craters. Allow me to introduce a new term: 'luna-forming'. To better understand how this 'luna-forming' process took place, let's take Verdun as an example. Before the start of WWI, Verdun was home to a peace-time garrison of 66,000 troops. In addition to the civilian population, these thousands of young men with robust appetites needed to be fed with the best that the French countryside had to offer. Thus, the surrounding region was intensively farmed. The soil was fertile, and local produce sustained the economy of the area. At the same time, those 66,000 troops needed to have a tactical advantage against potential invaders. Amongst several other factors, such advantage could be derived from the presence of forests. That's right, pre-WWI French military doctrine placed great importance in thickly wooded areas! After the defeat against Prussia in the war of 1870, the Ministry of War, in cooperation with the Water and Forestry Administration created a dedicated forest corps comprising more than 6,000 troops. In 1875 this new corps set about planting trees in the plains around Verdun, creating a new forest intended to protect the road leading from the border to Paris. The idea made quite a lot of sense. Dense formations of trees made for very good cover for infantry troops, they could hinder the efforts of artillery spotters and break down the momentum of cavalry charges. More simplistically, a few troops armed with sharp axes could quickly gather enough material to erect fortifications and trenches. In the words of writer Jean-Paul Amat, author of 'The Forests of the Great War': > 'The forest … had become, in 1914, an element of the defense system, permanent and immediately mobilizable in its structures' The concept of trees against invaders may have been sound at the times of 'good-old fashioned warfare', if you allow me the term. You know, the kind were battles were mostly conducted by means of inaccurate artillery and bayonet charges. But then came June 1914. An adolescent shot an archduke in Sarajevo and Europe reacted by committing suicide. In early August 1914, Germany invaded Belgium and then France. The initial advance was halted, and battle lines stabilised along the Western Front, inaugurating that theatre of horrors known as trench warfare, a spectacle enlivened by those special effects known as artillery barrages, and later, chemical and gas warfare. More than 34,300 square km of land were completely devastated in France and Belgium. To put this into context: that's an area larger than the state of Hawaii, or almost twice the size of Wales. Across France and Belgium, 5,168 towns and villages, for a total of almost 1 million houses and farms, had to be rebuilt, or were abandoned, after the war. This destruction was most evident at the Battle of Verdun, from February to December 1916. Both sides fired a total of 60 million artillery shells, of which 15 million were left on the ground, unexploded. Those that did go off, completely destroyed the top layer in the affected area, carving large shell craters which exposed the limestone bedrock. By the end of 1916, some 100 square km once covered by farmed fields, gardens, prairies and woods had been completely erased from existence. As described by historian Christina Holstein: > 'The ground was just completely churned up. Any trees were smashed, and men took shelter where they could, in shell holes and in holes in the ground' Author Jean-Paul Amat described how the impact of the constant fighting, shelling, machine-gun strafing > 'compromised or exhausted wood resources, disrupted the grounds.' To the point that > 'The thermal or kinetic energies released … were such that they caused the total mineralization of the environment.' In other words, where the fury of the bombardments was fiercest, all that remained of the soil was the mineral layer. Such a storm of metal could not but turn the battle into a meat grinder. The French and German armies suffered a total of 300,000 dead and 400,000 wounded—and these are conservative estimates! Despite all the best efforts of the respective armies, up to one third of the killed in action are believed to still lay on the battlefield, waiting to be found and identified. ## 'Human Life Impossible' Hostilities concluded with the November 11, 1918 armistice. And in early 1919, the newly constituted French Ministry for the Liberated Territories set about to rebuild the regions affected by Verdun and other battles on the Western Front. The Ministry divided the areas into three zones: Green Zones, which had suffered minimal damage. Yellow Zones, where damage was heavy, but still limited. And the Red Zones, closest to the front lines, where destruction was almost complete. An official post-war report described them as > 'Completely devastated. Damage to properties: 100%. Damage to agriculture: 100%. Impossible to clean. Human life impossible' So, while the Green and Yellow Zones returned to civilian use relatively quickly, the Red Zones were closed off to the general population. On April 17, 1919, a law transferred ownership to the State of such areas, which would be prohibited from human activities. The first order of business for the government was to clean the ground from unexploded ordnance, debris and, sadly, human and animal remains. This task was conducted by local labourers, German PoWs, workers imported from as far as China, or even Quaker volunteers. The search for ammunition was conducted superficially, due to the lack of metal detection technology at the time. Labourers were able to retrieve only the debris and shells found in the topmost layers of the soil, most of which were dumped into the ocean. Today we know that most unexploded artillery remained untrieved, resting as deep as 15 metres under the surface of the earth. This workforce also had the grim task of collecting unidentified human remains, mostly bones, which continued throughout the 1920s. After 1926, the exhumed remains were taken to the National Necropolis at Fleury-devant-Douaumont. The construction of this sprawling cemetery began in 1923, not far from one of the villages destroyed and later abandoned following the Battle of Verdun. From August 1925, soldiers buried in smaller cemeteries in the region were exhumed and transferred to this city of the fallen. By the time it was inaugurated, on June 23, 1929, the lawns of Douaumont were lined by 16,142 white graves belonging to Christian, Muslim and Jewish soldiers. As mentioned, authorities transported to the necropolis the thousands of dead unearthed within the Red Zones, up to 500 per month. Eventually, the remains of 130,000 French and German soldiers were buried at the monumental Ossuary within the necropolis. About half of them were identified, and their families had their names engraved on the stones of the lower vault. Underneath it, another underground pit contains the bones of those who remained nameless. And many, many more, will remain without formal identification, as tens of thousands of bodies are still waiting to be found in the Red Zones. Since the early 1920s, French authorities realised that these masses of decaying bodies were responsible for the contamination of aquifers and other bodies of water for human consumption. Thus, the authorities had to heavily chlorinate these waters, a process which became known in France as 'Verdun-ization'. By the early 1920s, associations of farmers gradually re-took ownership of some of the reclaimed areas. Although, as we shall see later, these were not, nor would never be, entirely cleared. As per the most damaged lands, the government realised that their efforts of recovery for agricultural use were futile. The cost would have far outweighed the economic value of the land. But leaving the land to its own devices carried the risk of soil erosion and flash floods in case of heavy rains. A solution came from the French Agricultural Engineering Corps and the Waters and Forests Service. These authorities proposed to convert the 'luna-formed' zones into heavily forested areas, which would have performed three functions: First, prevent locals from farming the Red Zones, an activity which carried the ever present risk of death by explosion or poisoning. Second, stave off erosion. And Third, preserve the memory of the fallen through the very presence of these new woodlands. Thus, almost 36 million trees were planted in the 1920s and 1930s. While the soil may have been contaminated, apparently its top layer, broken by shelling, made it easy for new trees to penetrate into the friable earth. And the experts in charge made the right choice of trees to plant: resilient conifers, such as spruce and black pine. By the 1970s, conifers had been gradually and naturally replaced by deciduous trees, such as beech. It appeared that over time, the flora reintroduced by man had taken over its own destiny, and had evolved by itself. ## An Iron Harvest It is now time to spell out exactly what is to be found in the areas still designated as Red Zones. If you were to take a stroll in those zones—which you absolutely should not—you may be able to spot visual mementoes of the raging battles of the Western Front: shrapnel from artillery, unexploded ordnance, or even shells once used for chemical weapons. According to a 2014 *Le Monde* newspaper article, the areas around Verdun were littered with 200,000 shells belonging to the French and German chemical arsenals. Unexploded conventional and chemical shells are a constant danger to those who venture in the current Red Zones, or who farm the land in the former Red Zones. That is why, twice a year, during the planting and sowing seasons, local farmers pay extra attention to any bit of metal which may protrude from their fields. According to Joseph Hupy, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire: > 'I heard several stories of where people were ploughing and a shell went off. They weren't killed, but they had cowbells ringing in their heads from the shell going off.' Not everybody has been so lucky. Since the end of WWI, at least 900 people have died due to old shells suddenly blowing up. Again, according to Hupy: > 'The people who die in the munitions removal, they don't really die from the explosive ones. They die from gas shells.' Any piece of unexploded ordnance is reported to a specialised mine-clearing brigade in Metz, for them to collect it safely. This recurring cycle has eventually given birth to an annual event, known as 'Iron Harvest'—an appropriate title! Depending on sources, the annual yield of such harvest varies from 30 to 900 tons of ammunition. Two percent of these are chemical warfare shells, still containing mustard gas, phosgene and diphosgene. This is the only kind of harvest one would wish to diminish every year, but unfortunately that might not be the case. According to Christian Cléret, head of the mine-clearing brigade, to achieve a complete clean up, > 'It will still take at least tens of years' Historian Christina Holstein is even more pessimistic. According to her, it may take an estimated 300 years before the battlefield of Verdun is completely cleared. And that is only one of the remaining Red Zones! Besides the visible presence of ammunition, what makes the Red Zones particularly dangerous is the presence of a constant, unseen threat. The contamination caused by cartridges, bullets, bombs, as well as the bacteria resulting from the decomposition of animal and human bodies. In 2007, Tobias Bausinger and Johannes Preuss, researchers at Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, followed a paper trail dating back to 1928, looking for a site where French authorities had incinerated unexploded chemical shells, left over from the Battle of Verdun. Their research took them inside an oak forest, north-east of Verdun, where they discovered a vast circle, 70 metres wide, where more than 200,000 chemical shells may have been burned by authorities. Dubbed the 'Gas Square' by the Mainz researchers, this circle was still covered in ash and charcoal, and was surrounded by a sickly vegetation of moss and lichens. Needless to say, the ground underneath and around 'Gas Square' was heavily contaminated. In the same year, Bausinger, Preuss and the French National Forestry Office published a more comprehensive analysis of the soil in the Red Zone close to Verdun. They found that the ground was replete with metals such as mercury, copper, zinc and lead, but most of all with arsenic and ammonium perchlorate, a compound used in the detonation devices of artillery shells. Mushrooms, game meat and other food foraged or hunted in current and former Red Zones might be heavily laden with toxins. The livers of wild boars for example, have been found to contain abnormally high levels of lead. Wine-makers are particularly encouraged to verify the provenance of the wood used to make their barrels. If they are made from oak harvested in former Red Zones, they might contaminate the wine with lead! Arsenic concentration is particularly worrying, at 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than average. In some locations, arsenic constitutes up to 17.6% of the soil. The presence of this element can prevent the normal growth of healthy vegetation, if any at all! And it can easily permeate the local aquifers, thus endangering the health of even those who live far removed from the Red Zone. The same can be said of ammonium perchlorate. In Autumn of 2012, the drinking water of some 500 towns and villages in north-eastern France was declared as not fit for consumption, due to abnormally high rates of this compound. Local authorities did not specify the origin of the pollution, but in 2014 newspaper *Le Monde* speculated that contamination from old ordnance was responsible. One century after the start of the water, civilians still incurred the risk of being poisoned by the lingering ghosts of weapons, silent, but still deadly. ## Nature Resurgent I realised that the picture I painted so far is extremely apocalyptic. But there is evidence supporting the idea that the once 'luna-formed' areas have bounced back to life, thanks to the afforestation efforts in the 1920s and 1930s, and to the absence of a certain species with enormous potential for good, as well as the tendency to behave like the most toxic parasite, i.e. *homo sapiens*. In November 2018, exactly one hundred years after the armistice, the BBC visited nine 'ghost villages' within the Red Zone, referred by the local press as > 'Morts pour la France' Or 'Dead for the sake of France'. Well, to be fair, three out of nine settlements were at least partially rebuilt, which means that six remain technically 'dead'—and they were kept this way on purpose, as an involuntary monument to the sacrifices endured by civilians during the war. But what BBC reporter Melissa Banigan could not help but notice, was that these villages were not exactly dead. The houses built by man, and later destroyed by man, had been taken over by the unrelenting march of nature, namely oaks, horse chestnuts and Austrian pines. Interestingly, the latter were donated by Germany's ally, Austria, as part of their war reparations. Olivier Gérard, director of the Douaumont Ossuary commented: > 'Nature and life always find a way.' Indeed, nature had found a way. It appears that over the course of the decades, the millions of planted trees had absorbed enough contaminants from the toxic soil to allow unique species of flora and fauna to thrive. Back in 2013, the French National Forests Office, commissioned an aerial survey of the forest growing in the Verdun Red Zone. A small plane flew over the area, equipped with a laser emitting constant near-infrared pulses. This methodology, known as 'light detection and ranging', or LIDAR, allowed the Forests Office to map with utmost precision the forest's vegetation, as well as the remnants of the battlefield, such as old trenches, bunkers and shell holes. This initial survey allowed the Forests Office to conduct further research, thus determining that new flora, and even new fauna, had gradually taken over what once was no man's land. In particular, researchers found that shell craters had become very popular with wildlife, as they were frequently flooded by rainfall, and made for a protected ecological niche. New settlers in these craters include yellow-bellied toads, several species of newts and even rare orchids—a rare sight indeed amongst the forests of northern France! Underground shelters, dug up by both German and French troops, have been conquered instead by 15 different species of bats. The entrances to these dug outs are guarded by plants found nowhere else in France, such as horsetails, ferns and *Sisyrinchium*, or blue-eyed grass. The latter is actually a blue flowering plant, normally found in the Americas. It is possible that the blue-eyed grass was likely unwittingly brought to France by the 'doughboys', the soldiers of the American expeditionary force who reached the Western Front in 1918. It is comforting to know that their unmarked graves away from home—or the graves of any other soldier fallen in the Red Zones—would never be left without flowers. ## From the Hands of an Undeserving Kind The metaphorical scars left by conflicts across the world are unpredictable. Sometimes, nations are able to move on surprisingly quickly, and past enemies learn how to cooperate for the future good of the next generations. Far too often, the shockwaves planted decades ago still reverberate around past battlefields, ebbing and flowing in intensity, yet never allowing for old wounds to fully heal. The same unpredictability can be applied to the physical scars left upon the innocent and unwitting earth, always the defeated party, regardless of who is the victor. Will the scars of France's Red Zones ever heal? Will those areas ever recover, and return to their past, pre-war state? The simple answer appears to be 'no'. The complex answer would be 'maybe, dependent on three further centuries of concerted clean-up effort'. But one might answer with another question: does it really matter? As we have learned from the previous section, nature appears to have moved on, to have reclaimed a land from the hands of an undeserving kind. Nature has moved on, following an agenda of her own. I will conclude by quoting again Prof Hupy, the geographer from University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire: > 'I have done lots of work in the Zone Rouge. I looked at how soils developed in that landscape afterwards. Basically what I wanted to see was 'Did this landscape recover?' The word 'recover' is not the right word. > > It got set off on a different trajectory of development.' ## Key Takeaways - The Red Zones in France are areas heavily damaged by WWI, with lingering contamination from unexploded ordnance and chemical weapons. - These zones, initially covering 1,800 square km, have shrunk but remain hazardous, with ongoing 'Iron Harvests' of unexploded shells. - Nature has begun to reclaim the Red Zones, with unique flora and fauna thriving in the contaminated soil. - The Red Zones are a stark reminder of the enduring impact of war on both people and the environment. - Despite efforts to clean and reforest the areas, full recovery may take centuries due to deep contamination. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What are the Red Zones in Northern France? The Red Zones are areas in North-Eastern France, along the border with Belgium, that were so severely damaged and contaminated during World War I that they were deemed unfit for human activity. These zones follow a crescent shape and have been reduced over time but still cover roughly 120 square km. ### Why were the Red Zones created? The Red Zones were created because the land was so destroyed and contaminated by the incessant shelling and chemical warfare of WWI that all human activity had to cease. The French government designated these areas as off-limits to prevent further harm to civilians. ### What is the 'Iron Harvest'? The 'Iron Harvest' refers to the annual collection of unexploded ordnance and other metal debris from the Red Zones. This occurs twice a year during the planting and sowing seasons, with yields varying from 30 to 900 tons of ammunition, including chemical warfare shells. ### How were the Red Zones defined and designated? In 1919, the French Ministry for the Liberated Territories divided the affected areas into three zones: Green Zones (minimal damage), Yellow Zones (heavy but limited damage), and Red Zones (almost complete destruction). The Red Zones were closed off to the general population and transferred to state ownership. ### What is the 'Gas Square'? The 'Gas Square' is a 70-metre-wide circle in an oak forest north-east of Verdun where French authorities incinerated over 200,000 chemical shells left over from the Battle of Verdun. The area is heavily contaminated with toxins and surrounded by sickly vegetation. ### What is the National Necropolis at Fleury-devant-Douaumont? The National Necropolis at Fleury-devant-Douaumont is a large cemetery built to honor the soldiers who died in the Battle of Verdun. It contains the remains of 130,000 French and German soldiers, with about half identified and the rest buried in an underground pit. ### How has nature reclaimed the Red Zones? Despite the contamination, nature has reclaimed the Red Zones through afforestation efforts and the absence of human interference. Unique species of flora and fauna have thrived, including rare orchids, yellow-bellied toads, and various species of bats. ### What is the significance of the 'blue-eyed grass' found in the Red Zones? The 'blue-eyed grass' is a blue flowering plant normally found in the Americas. It is believed to have been unwittingly brought to France by American soldiers during World War I, symbolizing the enduring presence of nature even in the most devastated areas. ### What is the current status of the Red Zones? The Red Zones have been reduced to an 'archipelago' of patches of land dispersed along a crescent shape in North-Eastern France. Access is severely limited and controlled, and the areas remain contaminated with unexploded ordnance and toxins. ### What is the 'luna-forming' process mentioned in the article? The 'luna-forming' process refers to the transformation of once productive countryside into a hostile, alien, moon-like landscape devoid of vegetation and littered with craters due to the intense shelling and chemical warfare during World War I. ## Sources - [Original Places video: Red Zones, Northern France: The Lasting Scars of World War I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkZOrTkN8vg) - [Hero image source](https://images.rawpixel.com/editor_1024/czNmcy1wcml2YXRlL3Jhd3BpeGVsX2ltYWdlcy93ZWJzaXRlX2NvbnRlbnQvbHIvdXB3azYxNjkzODU2LXdpa2ltZWRpYS1pbWFnZS1rb3dsbDVsMS5qcGc.jpg) by openverse, cc0. ## Related Coverage