Panoramic view of almost totally destroyed town; crude sign reads, "this was Forges" (possibly Forges-les-Eaux). The Zone rouge (Red Zone) is the name given to about 460 square miles of land in northeastern France that was physically and environmentally destroyed during the WWI. Because of hundreds of thousands of human and animal corpses and millions of unexploded ordnance that contaminated the land, some activities in the area such as housing, farming or forestry, were temporarily or permanently forbidden after the war by French law. Some towns were never permitted to be rebuilt. Aerial and ground photographs, U.S. Air Service, 1918.
