Todesschlucht, the "Death Ravine" .... there were many at Verdun....


Pionier Max Stark was awarded the Bavarian Silver Bravery medal for digging comrades out of a collapsed bunker during an enemy bombardment.


An unknown Bavarian Soldier who served in the same division as Stark described  the conditions in the ravines during the week during which Stark won his medal.


"On the 20th of May 1916 we paraded past our Commanding General. We were a lusty, lively column marching in the spring sunshine. A few days later half of the men were either dead or rolling in pain and blood on the terrible battlefield at Verdun. The other half? Well, the next few weeks of hell would take care of them, melting, shrinking their numbers to almost nothing. 

Above: A wartime postcard showing Pioniers attempting to dig survivors out of a collapsed bunker during a savage bombardment

"Verdun! The grave of thousands of our best men! The symbol for the most terrible war. Yet before her altar I go down on bended knees because I love her with all my old soldiers heart...

Why? Because there, in the ravines of the dead, while the furious battle raged, we knew a total inner silence, a silence we have never known since, the silence men know when they prepare to die.... when all things puerile and ugly fall away and a man becomes a child of his God. Verdun, what a overpowering and violent experience! We had never felt closer to God and we asked him not to save us, but for much more! We asked that he give us an inner strength to do our heavy and arduous duty....

I page through my diary from those times. On each page the horror stares out
at me, the horror that grabbed our throats like a wild animal trying to steal our breath, our sanity. I hear the ceaseless explosions of the shells, the whizz and whistle of shrapnel, the drone of shells passing overhead. I see the unending fire, smoke and haze that filled the Chauffour and Albain ravines, see the companies as they advance through the ravines of death, sense the waves of destruction rolling over us, smell the rotting bodies, the stink of explosives and gas, feel the horror in the throat as the explosions cover us in earth and shredded flesh, see the drawn, hard, dirty faces of the living and the pale, unmoving forms of the legions of dead.
Stammering, calls, the whimpering of the wounded "Take me back, don't let me
die here!" and I see us, exhausted, near collapsing as we carry the wounded
back...

Leiber, Jäger, Southerners, Northerners, Flamethrower troops, Pioneers, ... they ran through the Ravines with us, attacking, being thrown back, attacking again...."

A rare Bavarian silver bravery medal award document to Pionier May Stark. The citation was as follows: Stark, Max Pionier in the 3rd field company, 1st Bavarian Pioneer Battalion. In peacetime a worker in Munich. Born on the 30th of December 1893 in Eichstatt, Mittelfranken. Pionier Stark of the 3. bayerische Feld Pionier Kompagnie showed excellent conduct on the 26th of May 1916 when he voluntarily braved the heavy enemy artillery fire to dig out two comrades out of a collapsed position. He managed to free them, one of them still alive. Stark was wounded in the action."