February 1916. The Great War in Europe has been raging for a year and a half. Now the war has come to the border town of Verdun, straddling both French and German identities. Despite the substantial Fort Douaumont in the foreground, this lone battle will rage on to be one of the longest in human history. After an extensive back and forth, allegiances will be called into question. Heidi Martin, a native German, now married to a Frenchman, is harboring more secrets than one woman can bear. The intervention of Allies makes the war no less difficult when a pressing matter to the north in the Somme pulls the battle sideways. No amount of strategy will prove good enough, the gas won't be deadly enough, the trenches deep enough, the fort strong enough, the men plentiful enough, or the shells effective enough. Heidi will be left to make a crucial decision between following the path that has led her to this point, or choosing to find a new life in a war-torn Europe. After 9 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days, the landscape would be forever changed, but what about the people left in its wake? What was to become of them when villages would be forever removed from the surface of the earth, never to be inhabited again?