"The Battle of Verdun was the longest sustained conflict of World War I. The battle, which lasted 300 days and cost more than 300,000 French and German lives in 1916, was also one of the bloodiest of “The Great War.” The intense fighting and shelling near the tiny town of Verdun has permanently altered the region surrounding the Meuse River in northeastern France. The environmental destruction left by the battle led to the creation of the Zone Rouge—the Red Zone. The Zone Rouge is a 42,000-acre territory that, nearly a century after the conflict, has no human residents and only allows limited access. Before World War I, the landscape of Verdun was different. “It was farmland,” says British historian and author Christina Holstein. “There was a very big garrison in Verdun, a peacetime garrison with 66,000 men, so they had to be fed. Verdun was farmed. It was not heavily forested.” That changed with the onset of war in 1914. By 1916, French and German forces had amassed significant munitions in the area—millions of rounds of ammunition and heavy, cannon-size guns. Holstein says the conflict at Verdun was the first of the great artillery battles of the war. “During that time, the shelling never stopped,” she says. “Millions and millions and millions of artillery shells were fired.”"