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Title: The Last Days of Fort Vaux, March 9-June 7, 1916

Author: Henry Bordeaux

Translator: Paul V. Cohn

Release date: March 19, 2015 [eBook #48532]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Brian Coe, Charlie Howard, and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST DAYS OF FORT VAUX, MARCH 9-JUNE 7, 1916 ***

    THE LAST DAYS OF
    FORT VAUX




    THE LAST DAYS OF
    FORT VAUX

    MARCH 9-JUNE 7, 1916

    BY
    HENRY BORDEAUX

    AUTHOR OF ‘LA CROISÉE DES CHEMINS,’
    ‘LES ROQUEVILLARD,’ ETC.


    TRANSLATED BY PAUL V. COHN, B.A.


    THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
    _London, Edinburgh, and New York_




    AUX

    SOLDATS

    DE

    VERDUN




The Author of “THE LAST DAYS OF FORT VAUX,” M. Henry Bordeaux, is
a native of Savoy who has distinguished himself in more than one
department of letters before performing his duty manfully in the
field, and then as official historian of the Great War. Apart from
his reputation in France, M. Bordeaux has probably more readers in
this country than any other French novelist of the day. Born in 1870
at Thonon-les-Bains, in Haute-Savoie, he began his career, like so
many literary men, by reading law at Paris. He was called to the bar,
and duly performed his military service. Then he attracted attention
by a series of admirable critical essays, speedily republished in a
book, and by an historical romance. He did not, however, forsake law
altogether on this first success; but, after the death of his father
in 1896, took his place for four years as a practising barrister in
his native town, where he also held various municipal posts. Then he
could no longer resist the call of art, and from the publication of his
novel, _Le Pays Natal_, in 1900 to the outbreak of war, he has divided
his life between Paris and Savoy, devoting himself entirely to writing.
Besides novels such as _La Peur de vivre_, _Les Roquevillard_, _La Robe
de laine_, _La Neige sur les pas_, which bid fair to attain classic
rank, M. Bordeaux has worked as a dramatic critic and one of the most
sensitive and discerning judges of literature in the leading French
reviews.

M. Bordeaux is one of those who keep evergreen by a life of physical
as well as mental activity. He is a cyclist and a motorist; one of
his favourite sports is fencing; and he is a devotee of that special
recreation of the intellectual, Alpine climbing.

Being an impassioned lover of his own beautiful country of Savoy, he
is one of the many modern novelists who have identified themselves
with a particular region, and invested their books with local colour.
At the same time he is a brilliant chronicler of Parisian life. Above
all, M. Bordeaux belongs to the school of writers who have raised the
tone of French fiction, and freed it from the old reproach of cynicism,
frivolity, and immorality. A keen analyst of the modern spirit, he
represents all the sterling qualities that have placed France in the
front rank among civilized nations. Says one of his countrymen, “Henry
Bordeaux has the soul of a poet, a thinker, and a soldier, a soul
ardently in love with beautiful rhythms and with noble efforts, a
soul firm as a rock and luxuriant as the valleys of its birthplace.”
His writings are of peculiar interest at the present moment, when
France, in her glorious struggle against a brutal invader, is showing
the world how sorely her enemies, and even some of her friends, had
misjudged her, when they thought she was a prey to decadence. He
typifies the reaction from the morbid introspection and ferocious
egotism that have marred the work of so many poets and dramatists. A
passage in _Les Roquevillard_ strikes the keynote of his philosophy.
“There is no fine individual destiny. There is no greatness but in
service. We serve our family, our country, science, an ideal, God.
Shame to those who only serve themselves.” This is the teaching of his
novel, _La Peur de vivre_, which illustrates the healing influence
of self-sacrifice carried to a well-nigh superhuman extreme; of that
powerful study of family solidarity, _The Roquevillards_, and of his
tragedy of forgiveness, _La Neige sur les pas_. Another touching story
of Dauphiné, _La Croisée des Chemins_, resumes the theme of _Les
Roquevillard_, and _La Robe de laine_ portrays the mind of a simple
girl whose personality cannot be crushed by the juggernaut of modern
society or fall a victim to worldly success. These are but a few of the
novels and short stories in which M. Bordeaux has painted lofty ideals
in the colours of life, and not only touched us with their beauty, but
also convinced us of their truth.

In August 1914, as a captain in the reserves, M. Bordeaux at once left
for the front in command of a company of territorial infantry, and in
due course took part in the desperate fighting of which this book is a
record.

In the Battle of Verdun, which broke the back of the German invasion
and completed the work that the victories of the Marne and the Yser had
begun, two out of the thirty forts which defended the fortress were
lost: Fort Douaumont on the evening of February 25, 1916, and Fort Vaux
on the morning of June 7.

On October 24, however, Fort Douaumont was regained by the French
troops, acting with irresistible dash; and on November 2, All Saints’
Day, the enemy was compelled to abandon Fort Vaux. Thus, by the
recapture of these two forts, the Battle of Verdun was turned into a
victory.

The present work deals with the admirable defence of Fort Vaux from
March 9 to June 7, 1916. This defence gave the world an opportunity of
gauging the stamina of the French soldier and his powers of resistance.
Yet it must not lead us to forget that a little later our troops
re-entered the fort as victors.

M. Henry Bordeaux, the novelist of _Les Roquevillard_ and _Les Yeux qui
s’ouvrent_, was peculiarly entitled to write _The Last Days of Fort
Vaux_. He followed the Battle of Verdun as a captain on the Staff, and
was mentioned in dispatches in the following terms: “An officer who
under all circumstances has displayed the highest military qualities.
He volunteered on March 9, 1916, to perform, in our first line, an
exceptionally dangerous mission, and carried it out under a furious
bombardment.”

M. Bordeaux afterwards went on the staff of General Nivelle, now
commander-in-chief of the French armies. On September 23, 1916, he was
decorated with the Legion of Honour and the War Cross. He has also
filled a post in the Press section of the great General Staff, and was,
in February 1917, attached to the Historical Archives department of the
French War Office. In _The Last Days of Fort Vaux_ we thus enjoy the
advantage of reading the account of one who is a master both in the art
of letters and in the technicalities of war. The successive phases of
the heroic defence are presented with a carefulness of detail that must
satisfy the military expert and a dramatic force that must impress the
general reader. The book is a worthy chronicle of a great episode in
the greatest epic of modern days.




PREFACE


_Verdun_--those two syllables that have already become historic ring
out to-day like the brazen tones of a trumpet. In France, no one can
hear them without a thrill of pride. In England, in America, if any
speaker utters them, the whole audience rises as one man....

Of the battle, of the victory of Verdun, here is a single episode: that
of Fort Vaux, beleaguered for three months and lost for a brief space
on June 7.

Its defence takes us back past centuries emblazoned with military
renown, and recalls our heroic poems of the Middle Ages. It is a Song
of Roland in which the protagonist, unseen yet ever present, is the
honour of France.

Even as Roland, blowing his horn, recounted from afar the drama of
Roncevaux to Charlemagne as he went back across the mountains, so the
fort, up to the last moment, kept the supreme command informed of its
life and its death-throes by means of signals and carrier-pigeons.

I was able to realize the wounds it had suffered and its powers of
resistance in the month of March, before the final conflicts of the
early days of June. I examined its defenders at almost every shift. I
heard its appeals for help and its last words. Hence I have sought to
set down the records of its glory.

In spite of my studious efforts, which chance has favoured, I have been
unable to collect all these records. Moreover, they lack that essential
element which is the secret of the supreme command and without which
one can present merely a pale shadow of history, not history itself.
The war through which we are living is like the endless roll of the
sea; we catch the rhythm, but we cannot count the waves. I crave
forgiveness from all those forgotten heroes whose deeds I have been
unable to rescue from the night of oblivion.

I have had the opportunity of following the various phases of the
Verdun battle. I have snatched every spare moment--and they were
none too many--to put together these fragmentary notes, which I have
received sanction to publish. How can we resist the demon who drives
us to write when such a theme lies ready to our hand? In the ordinary
course of things I should have needed more time for doing it justice.
But to-day time is doled out to each of us in scanty measure!

In point of fact, no episode of this war can be regarded as standing
apart from the rest. A close brotherhood in arms links the warriors of
Verdun with those of the Bukovina, of Galicia, of the Trentino, and of
the Somme. What happened at Vaux was not a matter of indifference to
any of the belligerents, or even to any nation on earth.

Whenever we speak of the victory of the Marne, our hearts swell with
joy, and a hymn of deliverance rises inevitably to our lips. The
departures for Champagne and the Somme have all the blitheness of a
summer morning. The beauty of Verdun is more grim and austere. It is
a struggle of patience and sacrifice, one in which the watchword is
“Hold and keep.” The question here is not merely one of barring the
road to a foe who may pierce our line, but also of pinning him down to
the spot while the Allies draw up and carry out their plan of a general
offensive. That is why the resistance of Fort Vaux serves a higher
purpose than the defence of a mere scrap of territory. It is bound up
with a victory, it forms part of a victory, if victory be measured by
the thwarting of the enemy’s will and design.

There is beauty in that victory, a beauty born of necessity and
endurance. May a reflection of it illumine the epic of Fort Vaux!




CONTENTS


    BOOK I

                                                    PAGE
       I. THE FORT                                     1

      II. WHAT THE FORT SAW                            4


    BOOK II

    THE BATTLE

       I. THE FLIGHT OF THE RAVENS                    15

      II. THE ROAD                                    27

     III. THE MASTER OF THE HOUR                      47

      IV. THE FIRST FIGHTS ROUND VAUX                 50

       V. ROUND THE WASHING-PLACE                     62

      VI. REFLECTIONS ON DEATH                        77

     VII. THE ENEMY’S EVIDENCE                        82

    VIII. FROM MARCH 30 TO MAY 31                     95


    BOOK III

    THE STRANGLEHOLD

       I. STONES AND MEN                             113

      II. THE STRANGLEHOLD TIGHTENS IN THE WEST      120

     III. THE STRANGLEHOLD TIGHTENS IN THE EAST      141


    BOOK IV

    THE LAST WEEK

       I. THE BATTLE AT THE FORT                     153

      II. THE FORT APPEALS                           164

     III. THE SORTIE                                 179

      IV. SOME ONE RE-ENTERS THE FORT                188

       V. THE LAST WORDS                             192


    BOOK V

    THE DÉNOUEMENT

       I. THE GERMAN ACCOUNT                         201

      II. THE FINAL EFFORT                           215

     III. THE HARVEST OF THE FUTURE                  224




THE LAST DAYS OF FORT VAUX




BOOK I




I

THE FORT


In the great squadron of forts which shield Verdun from a distance,
like a fleet marshalled on the open sea in front of a harbour, Fort
Vaux might claim the rank of a cruiser. More modern than Souville and
Tavannes, which are caponier forts, not so vast or so fully equipped as
Douaumont, whose girdle contains a vast quantity of turrets, cupolas,
casemates, barracks, and strongholds, it plants its levelled walls more
firmly in the soil.

Built of masonry about 1880, it was reconstructed in concrete after
the invention of the torpedo-shaped shell (1885), then in reinforced
concrete, and was not finished till 1911.

To the north of the main road from Verdun to Metz, _via_ Étain, it
mounts guard over the fortress, facing Thionville. At one end of a
tableland which is framed by the Douaumont range and the wooded knolls
of La Laufée, and is sundered from them by narrow dales, it seems to
emerge from the mouth of a river fringed with hills, to cleave with
its prow the Woevre plain. The sea of Woevre washes its north-eastern
slopes, these being at first precipitous and making dead ground, then
they change to a gentle gradient up to the ditch bordered by its
transverse galleries.

Two villages built along the bottom, Vaux-devant-Damloup in the north
and Damloup in the south, escort it as merchantmen escort a great
battleship.

Accordingly, Vaux-devant-Damloup commands the entrance to a valley:
this valley is the ravine of Le Bazil, which a little farther on passes
by a pool preceded by a dyke--the pool of Vaux. The road (from Verdun
to Vaux) and the railway (from Fleury to Vaux) follow the course of
this ravine. It receives as tributaries, from the tableland on which
the fort is situated, the ravine of Les Fontaines, which cuts across
the Vaux-Chapître forest in the direction of Souville; and from the
Douaumont range the ravines of La Caillette and La Fausse-Côte, which
pierce the forests of La Caillette and Hardaumont. These are the
natural trenches, the routes of approach which lead from one break in
the ground to another. A soil so well-wooded and so uneven is eminently
suited to a war of surprises, of traps, of ambuscades, of bold
strokes, of slow and treacherous penetration. It lends itself admirably
to the ebb and flow of hand-grenade duels. The forests of La Caillette
and Hardaumont, the ravines of La Caillette, of La Fausse-Côte, of Le
Bazil--those dark, half-savage retreats where the summer holiday-maker
once loved to lose himself, although now they have been drawn from
their obscurity and are bathed in a blood-red splendour--the destiny of
that fort whose advanced works they form is linked with their lot.




II

WHAT THE FORT SAW

(BEFORE FEBRUARY 21, 1916)


From the earliest days of that blazing month of August, 1914, when the
clash of nations began, Fort Vaux, plying with its questions the Woevre
plain on the Thionville and Metz side, was awaiting on tenter-hooks the
results of the first collision. At night it saw the long glittering
arms of the Verdun searchlights rake the skies above its head, scanning
the stars for Zeppelins or Taubes. Several regiments, marching past it,
had taken up their station farther eastward, in front of Jeandelize or
Conflans. The hours of waiting dragged on. It heard the firing of guns,
but not from the quarter where it was keeping vigil. The sound was
coming from Longwy, or perhaps from Longuyon. The storm, whirling along
the Lorraine border, seemed to be swooping down upon the Ardennes.

On August 20 and 21 the fort saw troops defiling past it, with laughter
and song on their lips. They were marching towards Longuyon by the
Ornes road. They knew nothing as yet of the rigours of this new war.
With light hearts they went to it, as lovers go to a trysting-place.
The Third Army, massed at Verdun, was making for Virton. On the 22nd it
had already come to grips with the Crown Prince’s Army.

On the 25th, the garrison was cheered by a stroke of good fortune of
which it was at once informed. A German motor-car, which was carrying
the General Staff orders, while running along the Étain road, went
astray over the distances, and on the evening of the 24th came into our
lines and was there captured. Our command, into whose hands the enemy’s
plans had so luckily fallen, gave orders for a surprise assault on the
left flank of the 35th Division of the Landwehr and of the 16th Corps,
which formed the left wing of the Crown Prince’s Army. The former,
throwing down their rifles, fled as far as St. Privat, and the latter
beat a hasty retreat to Bouvillers. It is possible that this Étain
fight, a little-known episode of the first battles, checkmated a rush
attack upon Verdun.

Nevertheless it was necessary to give up the pursuit on the night
of August 25-26, in order to remain in close co-ordination with the
movements of the neighbouring army and to pass along the left bank of
the Meuse, leaving reserve divisions to guard the right bank on the
line Ornes-Fromezey-Herméville.

What Fort Vaux then saw go by at the foot of its slopes is a sight
which those who witnessed it will never forget. In after years they
will tell it to their children and their children’s children, that the
memory may be kept green in each generation.

Along the road from Étain to Verdun, seeking a haven of refuge in
the old fortress which, more than once in the course of centuries,
must have sheltered the inhabitants of the Meuse valley against the
onrush of Germanic hordes, came a hurried throng of two-wheeled and
four-wheeled vehicles, of cyclists wheeling the machines which they had
no room to mount, of wheelbarrows, of pushcarts, of pedestrians, of
dogs, of cattle. Each took with him his most treasured possessions or
what he had hastily snatched up in his house. On the carriages many had
piled mattresses, trunks, quilts, provisions, furniture, and on the top
of all these were the old people, the sick, and the children. Yet these
three classes could not always find room on the vehicles. Among those
who trudged on foot were the blind and the halt, women carrying their
babies, little ones with a doll or a bird-cage in their hands. Some of
them, their legs being shaky or not long enough, were too weary to drag
themselves along. Behind these terror-stricken fugitives, the villages
were in flames. They turned night into day over the whole countryside.
Little by little the fire drew nearer. Now it is Rouvre that flares up,
now Étain.

A woman stops by the roadside and sits down; she has bared her breast
to suckle a round, rosy baby which already has crisp curls and looks
like those infant Jesuses of wax that are placed in mangers at
Christmastide. Around her is a group of three youngsters. A soldier
comes up and questions her. He is already well on in years, a
Territorial. The rapt look in his eyes, as he gazes at the children, is
so tender that one feels he must have left a similar brood of his own
at home.

“Where do you come from, my poor woman?”

“From Rouvres; they have set fire to it.”

“How pretty they are!” His “they” and hers are not the same, but his
meaning is not lost on her.

“One is missing,” says the woman. And she begins to cry.

“What has happened to it?”

“They killed her. She was eight years old. They fired on her as she
was running in the street. This one also they tried to take from me. I
pressed him to me hard enough to drive him into my flesh. One of them
was going to plunge his bayonet into the poor mite, but one of his
comrades turned it aside.”

The child has had its fill. The group goes on again.

This is the new war, the war of frightfulness preached by Bernhardi.
There was an epoch when truces were patched up for burying the dead
and picking up the wounded. There was an epoch when a certain war-time
chivalry held sway, to protect the weak and the innocent. That period
was the barbarous Middle Ages. But civilization and culture came into
being, and we now have war without pity, without quarter. One of
the two opponents, tearing up the scraps of paper which regulate the
treaties and the duties of nations, turning its plighted word into a
sham, and crushing the innocent and the weak, has compelled the other
to put him into a strait-waistcoat, as if he were a madman. It is a war
that opens unbridgeable gulfs and leaves behind it indelible memories.
It is a war of Hell, which demands the sanction of God.

Fort Vaux, from its hilltop, saw all this. It felt that its own stones
were less hard than the hearts of the men who had flooded the earth
with this torrent of suffering.

At last the procession came to an end. The road now resembled one
of those ancient river-beds which leave a white track amid the pale
foliage of the willows.

The fort, on its lonely perch, was ruminating. “My turn will come. I
bide my time. That mighty Douaumont that overlooks me, will it defend
itself longer than I? It has a greater need of shells. As to Souville
and Tavannes, if the enemy comes from the north, I am in front of them,
I shall screen them.”

An important personage, no less than the Governor of Verdun himself,
came to examine its resources, to look into its physical and moral
condition, to test its strength.

“Are your eyes well guarded, and can they see far enough? Are your arms
and your shields tough? Have you enough ammunition, food, drink? Do
you know all your instructions, above all the one that is common to all
the forts: to die rather than surrender?”

With such questions as these he visited the observing stations, the
transverse galleries, the casemates, the turret, the armoury, the
provision stores, the cisterns, and inspected the garrison.

He had already come once before, at the beginning of August. This
second visit foreboded an early attack. The enemy was not far
off: he was known to be at Étain, at Billy-sous-Mangiennes, at
Romagne-sous-les-Côtes, not in great masses but in small detachments.
From the north, he was passing above Verdun and turning off to the
Argonne. Verdun, well defended, served the French Army as a pivotal
point for the immortal struggle of the Marne.

One of the neutral historians of the war, Gottlov Egelhaaf (quoted by
M. Hanotaux), has written: “If the Crown Princes of Bavaria and Prussia
had been in a position to seize Verdun in August-September 1914, and
accordingly to force the line of the Meuse, the German armies would
have burst upon Paris at one fell swoop. The two Princes, however, were
held up at Verdun, and thus the German supreme command was forced to
take the decision of leading back the right wing of their army. Verdun
could not be captured, and for this reason it seemed essential to
change the plan of campaign.” A very lame explanation of our victory
on the Marne, but one that at least emphasizes the importance of the
part played by Verdun in September 1914. Fate decreed that Verdun
should twice attract and twice wear out or shatter the German forces.

Only by hearing the roar of the guns could Fort Vaux follow the battle
fought on the left bank of the Meuse, before Rambercourt-aux-Pots,
Beauzée, La Vaux-Marie. From the roar of the guns it could convince
itself of the enemy’s retreat, of his withdrawal to the north.

Suddenly, however, on September 17, it hears the guns farther to the
south. The enemy hurls himself at Hattonchâtel and the Meuse Heights,
bombards the Roman camp above St. Mihiel, fights in the barracks of
Chauvoncourt. He has not yet abandoned the quarry that he covets. After
trying to invest Verdun on the left bank, he returns by way of the
right bank, but the front is fixed at Spada, Lamorville, and Combres.

It is fixed at three and a half to five miles in front of Fort Vaux on
the line Trésauvaux-Boinville-Fromezey-Ornes-Caures Wood. On February
18, 1915, a red-letter day, the fort is pounded with 420 mm. shells.
Douaumont has been favoured with some on the 15th and 17th, and it was
only right that Vaux should follow Douaumont. The fort examines its
wounds and is happy.

“The engineers have worked well. Only my superstructure has suffered.
My casemates are of good material.”

And it will rejoice exceedingly to learn next day that the range of
that famous 420 mm. battery has been found, that it has been shelled
in its turn and destroyed. The giants have been silenced, and that
promptly.

April and May were months of hope. Would they bring victory with the
spring? The guns thundered daily at Marcheville and at Les Éparges,
which had been gained. The Woevre was smoking as if weeds had been
heaped up there for burning. Then the cannonade slackened off.
Decidedly the war would be a long one against an enemy who stuck to
our countryside like a leech. It needed patience, staying-power, will,
organization, munitions. All these would be forthcoming.

So the troops got accustomed to war as well as to garrison life.
The Territorials billeted in the villages of Vaux and Damloup, when
they were off duty, played games of chance in the street or used the
cemetery as a place for sleeping. They helped the countryfolk in their
haymaking. They looked for mushrooms or strawberries in the woods of
Vaux-Chapître and Hardaumont, after first looking for lilies of the
valley. In the trenches their life, so full of thrills the previous
winter, glided along in a calm that was no doubt relative--but what is
there that is not relative?--and in monotony. On the summer evenings,
on the escarp of the fort, the little garrison sat down with legs
dangling, and watched night rising from the Woevre plain. Now and then
a distant rocket would end in a shower of stars.

All this went on till one day, at the end of August 1915, the fort was
sharply taken to task:

“You are not so important as you make out--or rather the whole land of
France is as important as you. Did she not open out lines from one end
of the country to another to shelter her defenders? It can no longer be
denied that the enemy may be made to respect us at any point whatsoever
of the national soil. Berry-au-Bac is an isolated salient on the right
bank of the Aisne, and Berry-au-Bac has not yielded. It can no longer
be denied that with artillery and determination one can capture any
redoubt. Les Éparges formed a natural fortress, and we have taken Les
Éparges. The fortified places have been unlucky during this war. They
offer too easy a target for the big howitzers. Antwerp, Maubeuge,
Warsaw, Lemberg, Przemysl, surrendered with their war material, their
magazines, their troops. Verdun will no longer be a fortified place.
Verdun will offer no resources, no booty to the enemy. Verdun will be
nothing but a pivotal point for an army. You will no longer be anything
but a look-out post and a shelter....”

“That may be,” the fort admitted. “In any case, I am only a soldier,
and it is my business to obey. But my loins are strong. It will need
much steel to crush them. You will see what I am capable of, if ever I
am attacked.”

The fort, now shrunken, became enveloped in the mists of winter. It
heard less and less of the guns. Its diminished garrison grew bored
in the almost deserted corridors. The news which came from the rear
contained mysterious hints of a great Allied offensive which was slowly
preparing and would develop when the time was ripe, perhaps not before
the summer of 1916: England would methodically complete her gigantic
new military machine, and Russia would need time to heal the wounds
inflicted on her during the 1915 campaign. It is flattering, when one
lives on the border of the Woevre, to have such distant and important
friends, even if they need a certain amount of time for settling their
affairs.

In January and February 1916 the fort felt certain qualms:

“I don’t like being left so quiet as this. We know nothing here, but we
have intuitions. Things are moving on the other side. Surely something
is brewing.”

Things were moving indeed in the forest of Spincourt and in that
of Mangiennes. Our aviators must have some inkling of it, for they
make more and more frequent flights. But the soil is ill-fitted for
observation, with its countless dips and its undergrowth. Even where
there are no leaves, the brushwood defends itself against aerial
photographers.

Information comes that the railway of Spincourt, Muzeray,
Billy-sous-Mangiennes, is working in unaccustomed fashion. It seems
that the big calibre guns have been detrained.

We are assured that new German corps have been brought into the
district, among them the 3rd, which is returning from Serbia.

Finally, the belfries of Rouvres, Mangiennes, Grémilly, Foameix--how
had they been spared till then?--were overthrown by the Germans: no
doubt they might have served as guiding marks for our artillery!

Whence come these vague rumours and these definite reports? There
is no chance of finding out for certain. The soldiers who come
back from Verdun bring them back and retail them. Silence is not a
French virtue. There is uneasiness in the air. Yet the weather is
so appalling--squalls of wind and snowstorms--that the attack seems
unlikely, or at any rate postponed.

“To-morrow,” thinks the fort, which has faith in the strength of its
walls. “Or the day after.”

On February 20 the weather takes a turn for the better. On the 21st, at
seven o’clock in the morning, the first shell falls on Verdun, near the
cathedral. The greatest battle of the greatest war is beginning.




BOOK II

THE BATTLE




I

THE FLIGHT OF THE RAVENS


THE observers on aeroplanes or balloons who saw the volcano burst into
flame declared that they could not mark on their maps all the batteries
that were in action. The woods of Consenvoye, Moirey, Hingry, and
Grémilly, the forests of Spincourt and Mangiennes, the hillsides of
Romagne and Mormont, breathed fire like myriads of monstrous dragons.

The commander of a company of light infantry, who was wounded in the
foot in Caures Wood, stated: “The intensity of the firing was such that
when we came out into the open we no longer recognised the country
which we had known for four months. There was scarcely a tree left
standing. It was very difficult to walk about, because the ground was
so broken up with the holes made by the shells. The defences were very
much damaged, but there was such an entangled mass of barbed wire and
broken branches that the whole still formed a serious obstacle to
the offensive. The communication trenches no longer existed. The main
trenches, on the other hand, had been badly knocked about, but were
still serviceable; they were instantly manned.”

“They were instantly manned”--this remark proves the superiority of the
human will to all the mechanical forces that science can let loose.
The supreme command drew from it this deduction: “What the artillery
achieves is the weakening of the material resources of the defence and
the wearing down of its morale, not its complete overthrow.”

Of this hurricane of fire the fort received its full share.

“Those are 150 mm. shells. Here come some 210 mm. Ah, these are surely
380 mm. My vaults are ringing. My vaults are still sound. How are my
transverse galleries? They’re resisting. And my turret? It is still
standing. The observing stations? One has been touched. I can see quite
well with one eye. Besides, the damage can perhaps still be made good.
A breach in the counterscarp? They’ll make it firmer when they stop it
up. My big neighbour, Douaumont, has come off even worse than I. He
attracts the lightning like some stately oak on a hilltop. I should
like to know what is going on. My telephones are no longer working. I
am cut off from the rest of the world. Such a storm cannot last. Let us
wait for the end.”

The end does not come, the storm continues to roar and rumble, but bad
news comes up the hillsides, no one knows how. On both banks of the
Meuse villages are burning, forests crackling, stones crumbling.

The nearer one is to things that are happening, the less information
one can glean about them. The ration fatigue parties are still the best
source of news. But these cooks certainly draw the long bow; they tell
some alarming tales.

“Caures Wood was lost the second day.”

“Caures Wood? Impossible! Driant is there!--unless Driant is dead.”

“They don’t know what has become of him. And if it were only Caures
Wood that was lost!”

If they are to be believed, Herbebois and Chaume Wood, the village
of Ornes and, in the Woevre, Fromezay and Herméville--the last two
abandoned intentionally, in order to gain support on the Meuse
Heights--are in the enemy’s hands. Confound those croakers! They are
trying to sow the seeds of panic. Their work is certainly carried on
under great difficulties. There is no job like it, except that of the
scouts. And even the scouts have no load to bear: they jump lightly
from shell-hole to shell-hole; they lie down, burrow themselves in,
disappear, get up again, dart off like arrows, and again lay themselves
out flat when the hail of bullets cuts off their road. You cannot get
along very fast with twenty bowls on your back and water-bottles slung
across your shoulders, or a whole grocer’s shop of tinned food, or
bags filled with every kind of provender, and, to crown it all, a mask
on your face which half stifles you. (The mask is worn because of all
the poison-gases which linger long in the ravines and rifts in the
ground, and lie in wait for you, like footpads to seize you by the
throat.) The bottoms of the valleys are all but impassable. The enemy
have got the range of all the roads and have battered them. The second
and third lines have suffered as badly from “Jack Johnsons” as the
first. Never, within the memory of men who went out on the first day of
the war and have come back, Heaven knows how, from the Marne and the
Yser, from Artois and Champagne, have we had to face such a deluge of
fire and steel. So a cook here is a soldier who comes from the back to
the front with honour as well as his burden.

On the fourth day a liaison officer assures us that Les Fosses Wood and
Les Caurières Wood have been lost.

“They are already in the La Vauche ravine.”

“In the La Vauche ravine? Then Douaumont will see them.”

And now the news grows more abundant, with more men coming and going:
reliefs, wounded, stragglers, fatigue parties meet on the hillsides,
under the never-ending shower of shells which is aimed particularly
at the fort and its immediate approaches. One needs a sober head to
extract a certain measure of truth from these alarming and often
contradictory reports. _They_ have been seen at Dieppe, _they_ have
been seen quite near Damloup. In the end, _they_ are seen everywhere.
The fort, which cheerfully digests its daily ration of projectiles,
listens philosophically to these unsettling rumours. It now knows how
solid its walls are. What interests it more than anything is the fate
of Douaumont.

Well, on the evening of February 25, a Friday, an evening when all
who go out are soaked with snow and numbed with cold, comes a wounded
man looking for his way. He has hobbled up the hill, the blood from
his thigh-wound staining the hasty dressing, and reaches the postern,
red-eyed and spattered with blood and mud. He dares to announce that
they have entered Fort Douaumont. Now, really, that is hard to believe.
However much you may want your neighbour to get a few hard knocks,
you cannot hear of his sudden death without a protest! A fort is not
swallowed up like that. And a fort is not a place of refuge. It does
not receive any guest without question. Go your way, you trafficker in
bad tidings! Still, before you go, give some details, if you have any
to give.

“_They_ were seen on the banquettes. It was even thought that they were
Zouaves. Zouaves in their khaki uniforms.”

“Why, it _was_ the Zouaves. They passed here yesterday to go and take
up their position.”

“Zouaves would not have fired at us with their rifles.”

“They mistook you for Boches.”

Night is a bad time for clearing up a mystery. It is better to count
on to-morrow. But our hopes are doomed to be shattered. Next day some
riflemen who have drifted back confirm the news. The Germans are at
Douaumont.

Vaux no longer dreams of talking lightly about the misfortunes of an
old comrade. For years they had mounted guard together before Verdun.
They lived the same life, a life that was rather sad and lonely.
They saw each other at a distance, they signalled to each other. One
relied on the other in battle as on a trench-mate. If one is dying,
the other is in danger. And from the observing-station which is still
intact the fort inspects the slopes of Hardaumont and La Caillette, the
treacherous ravines and the bare plain of the Woevre.

On Sunday, February 27, its little garrison is strengthened. The
reinforcements, Territorials from Verdun, bring us no end of rumours.
Are they laying on the colours too thick? We shall know later on or
never. They say that the Boche has flung himself at Verdun with Hell’s
own artillery (that we knew already, and besides, consider the country
round the fort!); that he expected to smash, kill, destroy everything
and to advance, shouldering arms, over a cleared terrain; that he has
found his match instead of the dead whom he hoped to trample on, and
that now fresh troops of ours are coming up: the stroke has failed, the
road is blocked. Joffre has been watching and waiting, to strike at a
time and place of his own choosing. What is more, Castelnau has come,
and Pétain is there, getting ready to take over command. If Castelnau
has come and Pétain is in command, all will be well.

“And Douaumont? Tell me about Douaumont.”

“The fort is taken. Didn’t you know?”

“I knew, but I wouldn’t believe it.”

“They won’t be left in possession. We are preparing to retake it from
them.”

“That’ll be a tough job. Those birds like to settle in strange nests.
Before you can look round, they have dug themselves in. Tell me
anything else you know.”

The fort whispers to itself, “And even what you don’t know.” For stones
have experience, and therefore irony.

“Well, the Iron Division is there. Others, too, which are unfamiliar
to me. At Douaumont village there is a colonel who says, ‘So long as I
have breath in my body, the Boche won’t get in.’”

“It’s always risky to say things like that.”

“The Boches have not got in. They were stopped in front of the village.
Our machine-guns mowed them down there by hundreds.”

“And that colonel is still alive?”

“Yes. He was picked up, and I met him. He has a calm face and fiery
eyes. He never raises his voice, yet you hear that voice inside you,
controlling you and making you march. It was in his regiment that in
Brulé Wood, towards St. Mihiel, an adjutant shouted, ‘Arise, ye dead!’”

“And did the dead answer?”

“What would you expect them to answer?”

“The dead always answer when they are called. The dead have made the
nation which the living carry on. It is the dead who have built me. And
the dead are bone of thy bone and flesh of thy flesh, as they are stone
of my stone.”

The sentries, however, have been doubled. Since the enemy is at
Douaumont, since he has descended into the Woevre, he is likely to
attempt the assault any day. On March 8 he attacks Vaux village; on the
9th and 10th he hurls himself against both village and fort.

The fort, on its hill, resists the storm, like a ship battered by the
waves.

Above the battlefield, in the plains of the air, electric waves started
from afar are recorded in signs at the receivers and by wireless
telegraphy transmit the war news to headquarters, to the nation, to the
whole world. They cross each other like flocks of migrant birds, and
engage in mysterious conflicts.

On February 26 Germany lets loose a first raven, bearing this message:

“To the east of the Meuse, in the presence of His Majesty the Emperor
and King, we achieved some notable gains. Our gallant troops seized
the heights to the south-east of Louvemont, the village of Louvemont
and the fortified position farther to the east. With a vigorous push
forward some Brandenburg regiments reached the village and the armoured
fort of Douaumont, which they took by storm. In the Woevre, the enemy’s
resistance was shattered on the whole front in the Marchéville district
(to the south of the Paris-Metz road). Our troops are pressing hard
upon the enemy in his retreat.”

No assault was made upon Fort Douaumont; it was taken by surprise.
All the German attacks on Douaumont village were a complete failure.
The Woevre was evacuated by a strategic manœuvre, and the enemy, in a
distrustful mood, only ventured upon it with considerable qualms, had
to stop in front of Manheulles on February 27, and was unable to enter
Fresnes until March 7. But how much better it looks in a communiqué
to represent those worthy Brandenburgers as scaling the glacis of a
fort under fire, putting ladders to the counterscarp, climbing to the
assault, crossing the ditches, happy to conquer or die under the benign
gaze of His Majesty the Emperor and King, who was no doubt present at
the ceremony with a golden helmet on his head and a golden sword in his
hand! A taste for romantic visions prevails in the German Great General
Staff.

The second raven is more daring. It is sent forth on March 9 and
announces to an eagerly listening world the capture of Fort Vaux. It is
the pendant to Douaumont: a diptych offered to the nations.

“To the east of the river (Meuse), in order to shorten the connections
to the south of Douaumont with our Woevre lines, the village, the
armoured fort of Vaux, and the numerous neighbouring fortifications
belonging to the enemy were seized after the way had been vigorously
cleared by our artillery, in a brilliant night attack by the Posen
reserve regiments, Nos. 6 and 19, under the direction of Infantry
General von Guretsky-Cornitz, Commander of the 9th Reserve Division.”

How could the attentive world dare to cast doubts on the veracity of
a wireless message so definite and so inspiring? The day and hour are
given, the numbers of the regiments, the name and title of the General
who held command. Such details cannot be invented. Detail is the strong
point of the German method. Learning is nothing but a knowledge of
details. History? Details or a series of detailed statements.

Has Fort Vaux been taken? How should it not have been, seeing that it
is General von Guretsky-Cornitz, commanding the 6th and 19th Posen
regiments, who took it? Obviously, on the one side, there is the
General with his two regiments, and on the other there is Fort Vaux.
How could Fort Vaux fail to lodge the General and his two regiments
with him? “Is that trunk ours?” asked Robert Macaire of the faithful
Bertrand. And he at once concluded: “It must be ours.” “Is the fort
ours?” the Boche asks himself. “It must be ours.” And he at once
announces the fact.

The only drawback is that the fort is not his. It takes this liberty
on March 8, and again on March 9, and again on the 10th. General von
Guretsky-Cornitz, Commander of the 9th Reserve Division, gains nothing
by vigorously clearing the way with his artillery and by making a
brilliant night attack. Yet the German supreme command dares not
confess to the world that the haughty General von Guretsky-Cornitz has
befooled it. Hastily, on March 10, it sends out a third raven, with
this message under his wing:

“The French have made violent counter-attacks on our new front to
the east and south of the village, as well as near Fort Vaux. In the
course of these engagements the enemy managed to regain a footing in
the armoured fort itself. Everywhere else the enemy were repulsed with
heavy losses.”

That is how the game is played. “Let us give back the fort to the
French, since they are there and have always been there. Let us give it
back, for we are honest and loyal: we give back what we haven’t got.
What ground have the French for complaint? We have given them back a
fort by a counter-attack. We credit them with a counter-attack which
they have never made. We ascribe to them a success which they have not
obtained. The world will admire us. The world will say: ‘There is true
Teutonic frankness. The Germans had taken Fort Vaux. It was a splendid
gain. Next day they lost it. Well, they don’t hesitate to proclaim the
fact. We can certainly rely on the German communiqués. They confess the
truth when things go against them. They play the game.’”

But lying requires a continuity of effort of which the most cunning
impostors are rarely capable. It is only the man who tells the truth
that never burns his fingers. Three months later--measure those three
months later: exactly eighty-eight days, in other words the whole
interval between the announcement of March 9 and the real fall of
the fort, June 7 in the early morning, eighty-eight days of heat and
cold, of weariness, of thirst and lack of sleep, of bombardments and
assaults--three months later Fort Vaux is really taken. The German
High Command knows what the cost is. It proudly announces the news. It
forgets its wireless message of March 9. It says, “The armoured fort
Vaux is occupied by us....” It does not say, it does not dare to say,
“The armoured fort of Vaux is reoccupied by us....”




II

THE ROAD

(MARCH 11)


Here is Verdun, like a Florence of the North in the midst of its
amphitheatre of hills. After days of frost and snow, so pitiless to our
men in the demolished trenches which are now mere conglomerations of
shell-holes, a soft spring air has suddenly come to relax the numbed
limbs and the frozen earth. The surprise is so great that it brings to
unaccustomed lips that charming and unexpected name of Florence. It is
the hour of sunset, a sunset that bathes the undulating line of the
hills in gold and mauve, and lights up the dismal waters of the flooded
Meuse.

At the foot of the gloomy cathedral, so different from the graceful
Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs with its coloured marble, one crosses a passage
under half-ruined walls and reaches a terrace which looks out over all
the tragedy of Verdun: gutted houses stripped of their outer wall and
with their furniture hanging loose like the inwards of slaughtered
cattle; crumbled façades, doors opening on the void, slashed and
jagged fragments of walls, often topped by tall, useless chimneys.
All this, which is now a mere shapeless mass of rubbish, was once
the Rue Mazel, the busiest, gayest, and liveliest quarter of Verdun,
and of that war-time Verdun which was far more bright, animated, and
amusing than the Verdun of peaceful days. The bombardment has brought
into prominence the ancient ramparts, dating, no doubt, from the time
of the prince-bishops, which girdle the upper city and around which
the ruins of the new city now group themselves. A stray dog, the sole
living creature that wanders through the deserted streets, utters
plaintive barks. Shells fall on Jardin-Fontaine. Right above the city
one aeroplane is chasing another. You hear the tick-tack of their
machine-guns; the German hastily makes his way back to his own lines....

I am living in a whitewashed cell in a Verdun barracks. Rolled up in a
blanket, I am sleeping on a camp-bed, when Major P----rushes in like a
whirlwind and, flashing his little electric lamp, wakes me up with a
start. At the outset of the campaign he had offered me a more sumptuous
hospitality in the cellars of Berry-au-Bac. The cellars of Berry-au-Bac
were replete with carpets, armchairs, mirrors, and art bronzes. We ate
from patterned china, and drank from fine glass. Even if the tableware
was an odd set, it gave one an impression of wealth and luxury.

We took a boat down the Aisne. At times the bullets accompanied us
like a swarm of bees, and the water seemed to prolong their mournful
whistle. When we went down, in order to get shelter, into those famous
vaulted cellars, decorated like drawing-rooms, whose mirrors double the
perspective, we basked in unexpected comfort.

“Do you want to go to Fort Vaux?” the major asks me, point-blank. “It’s
the chance of a lifetime. Three officers are needed to-night--one at
the fort, the other at Vaux village, the third at Damloup. We start in
a quarter of an hour.”

I had expressed a wish to make this pilgrimage. My wish is now to be
granted; the order is immediately given.

“It is essential,” he adds, “to start at night, so as to explore the
ground in the early morning.”

A quarter of an hour later we get into a motor-car--Captain L---- of
the Army Corps Staff and I. On the way we pick up Captain H---- of the
Divisional Staff.

We follow the Étain road, then leave the car to scramble up a wooded
slope and reach the divisional headquarters. The zone of death begins.
The road which we have just left is bordered by an inextricable mass of
fragments of waggons, open sacks, dirty harness, rifles, and distended
bodies of horses, their legs in the air, their bellies ripped open.
In the wood, our route is sometimes obstructed by broken branches,
and our feet catch on tree-stumps or stumble in the craters. When the
shells plough up the soil in our vicinity, a column of black smoke,
like sooty dust, poisons the clear night air.

For the night is perfectly clear. Between the trees the moon sheds a
bluish light, a sort of softened day, delicate and modest, as if she
refused to let us probe the wounds of the earth.

We now go down into a ravine by a path that winds like a mountain
track. The gradient is steep, and it is best to go quickly; the enemy
have obtained the range of the place, and it is shelled without
respite. A corpse is there, and has to be strode over. Lower down, in
front of headquarters, there is another that seems to sleep under its
helmet. A pious hand has put the helmet back over the mangled face.

We enter the dug-out. After a passage, where the liaison officers lie
sleeping close together, comes a wainscoted room, with a chair and a
table and, at the back, an iron bedstead. The chief, General de B----,
is poring over his map. He sits up in his chair when he sees us. He is
young and cheerful, with clear eyes and an incisive manner of speech.
Only one sign of weariness: the hollows under his eyes. How many
such leaders I have seen in action! Surmounting physical ordeals and
dangers, bearing without a murmur the weight of all the lives entrusted
to their charge, when their most loyal aides were succumbing to sleep
or anxiety, they quietly bent their brains to the study of a plan of
campaign and carefully arranged, without the dangerous counsels of
feverish haste, the minutest details of some operation.

The Germans are at the foot of the Fort Vaux and even half-way up.
The slopes descend gently at first, in front of the fort, for a space
of three or four hundred yards at most, then they rush down abruptly
to the Woevre plain. This rapid descent makes a right angle which our
artillery cannot touch because of its trajectories. The Germans are
established there. It is important that they should be dislodged. What
line do they follow below Hardaumont, past the village, and, farther
to the east, near Damloup? Before action is taken, this point must be
accurately determined. There has been fighting these last few days, and
the position remains slightly confused. Our caravan, then, will split
up into three: each of us will have his objective--Vaux, the fort, and
Damloup--and each his guide.

I recall those confabulations on the mountains before undertaking a
climb which offered some difficulty or other, or, in Lovitel’s hut in
Dauphiné, those little councils of war on the eve of a chamois hunt:
one would take this path, another that couloir; another speaks of a
dangerous place, and thinks it best to use a rope. After this, at
daybreak, we shake hands and set off, each by his own route, to meet at
the appointed place.

We go up the side of the ravine again and come to a wood that grows
sparser and sparser. Yes, it is indeed the beginning of a difficult
climb. The air is keen, and so bright is the moon that the stars are
scarcely visible. As we climb higher the vegetation becomes more
scanty; the trees are now stunted--a few hardy larches, with twisted
roots, persist in growing; then comes the zone of sickly shrubs;
finally there is nothing left but the bare ground. The same order is
found here; around me there are a large number of trees, but they are
in fragments, the branches broken, the trunks battered, the roots
protruding from the riven soil, and soon they are nothing but miserable
broomsticks. The summit, where lies the region of ice and desolation,
cannot be far off.

Yet the mountain has the unrivalled advantage of silence. We accustom
ourselves so quickly to the murmur of the torrents that roll at
the bottom., and even that murmur is like the hidden refrain that
accompanies a day-dream. Here we are obsessed by that continual,
sharp, menacing, formidable whistle which precedes the bursting of a
shell. And sometimes we have to stop, to lie down or to plunge into a
crater--there are only too many places to choose from--and wait until
the storm has passed over. When the curtain fire breaks off for a
while, we resume our journey. The ground is riddled like a sieve; at
the cross-roads the corpses, men or horses, lie in piles. The light of
the moon covers them with a mysterious winding sheet.

We stop at the stone quarry which forms the brigade headquarters.
There, too, a chief is still awake, and finishing a plan of operations.
Tall, very youthful-looking, with a ringing voice and a hearty manner,
he too appears one of those born trainers of men who know how to unite
method with dash. What a clearness they all show in their reports and
anticipations! What importance they attach to the sparing of lives!
What frankness in their tone, what an art of going straight to the
point! Here there is no longer any toadying or vanity or desire to
please. A sort of moral elevation, the result of their leadership, has
come to mark their character. When one is acquainted with the matter in
hand, a simple telephone conversation is a model of clear language and
logical reasoning.

Thus, from one post to another, the dialogue is prolonged into the
night. One seems to visit a series of catacombs where a rite is
performed by the dim light of the sanctuary lamp. One goes away with a
sense of religious reverence.

“Good luck!” says the colonel to me, as he escorts me out over the
threshold. “I am going to rest for a few hours.”

It is two o’clock in the morning.

The worst part of the journey is still to come; fifteen to eighteen
hundred yards over a tableland, which by day is here and there vaguely
guarded from sight by copses--what copses!--but for the greater part
of the time is quite devoid of cover. By moonlight our outlines will
scarcely stand out above the road over the ridge; the return journey,
if we set out again after sunrise, will be a little more complicated.

We walk in Indian file, the guide, Captain P---- of the Brigade Staff,
who wished to accompany me, and myself. The shells fall like hail. The
earth which they have churned up has crumbled to such an extent that it
looks like a mass of cinders. Fifteen to eighteen hundred yards is much
farther than one thinks. One has time to make a rapid mental survey of
one’s whole career.

Again it is mountaineering memories that surge up in my brain. This
time it is the journey through a gorge, the Neuweisthor, between the
valley of Fée and that of Zermatt in the Valais Alps. We had taken an
unfamiliar path; we had to follow a ridge, which on either side looked
out over a precipice; on the right, we could make out a very uninviting
crevasse; on the left, right at the bottom, the little Italian village
of Macugagna appeared at such a sheer drop beneath us that we had the
feeling that, if we were to stumble, we should certainly roll down to
it, two or three thousand feet below. The ridge was so narrow that we
could not place one foot alongside of the other, and we did not know
where to pitch our ice-axes. To make matters worse, while the guide
was a level-headed man, the porter who brought up the rear of our roped
party had fuddled himself with drink before starting. We were at the
mercy of a false step on the part of this tippler. But his professional
honour had passed into his legs. The ridge ends in a sort of stone
tower where one may gain a really firm foothold and breathe freely.
There, on turning round, I saw my man, streaming with sweat and his
eyes starting out of his head; he had worked all the alcohol out of his
system and had fully recovered his faculties as guide.

The track that we are now pursuing is not so hard to follow, but in
other ways it is beset with terrors. Every moment we have to walk
across bodies flung across it. At every ten or twelve yards, soon at
every five or six paces, we are compelled to stride over a corpse, or
even bunches of corpses, some slashed and torn, others in a running
posture as if they had been overtaken while in full activity. The light
of the moon softens the horror of their wounds without altogether
veiling it. Many of them belong to the scouts who ensure connections,
carry orders, show routes to be followed. In this war, where men vie
with one another in every kind of heroism, we must pay a special
tribute to those soldiers who, while their comrades dig themselves in
as best they can under the hurricane of fire, run about in the open in
order to make up for signalling difficulties or for the breaking of
telephone wires. Thanks to these men, efforts are co-ordinated and an
understanding is maintained at all points of the front, so that the
chain of unity holds together. If one falls, there is at once another
to take his place. The remainder are always ready; they even offer
their services before their turn comes. Prepared to go upon the most
perilous errands, they form a mobile guard round their chief; they are
the projecting rays of his brain, which, through them, directs men’s
wills from afar and draws up or corrects the plans of an operation.
Those who have fallen there, or at any rate some of them, seem to have
assumed in death the attitude of those antique youths who handed on to
each other the sacred torch in the race. Is it the moon that helps me
to see these broken statues? Shall I once more find such marble visions
by daylight? The crude light of day does not do justice to the beauty
of death.

The soldier who acts as our guide marches at a good rate. He gives the
signal to stop when a shell falls too close to us, or when the cadence
of the explosions points to a systematic curtain fire. He does not pick
out the places for halting, and makes us come to a standstill suddenly
with corpses under our very noses, lucky indeed if our faces are not
splashed with fragments of flesh crushed once more by that ghastly
pestle.

But why does he stop at this moment? Just now the tempo seems to be
slackening. Surely we ought to take advantage of this respite. Ah,
there he is, stripping a dead soldier! He half-raises him and takes off
one by one the straps which the man wears in banderole. In this way he
unfastens four or five water-bottles, each holding four pints. These
he unscrews and sniffs at in turn, not without anxiety on account of
the shells which might interrupt him at his task. His face lights up:
the water is drinkable. The man whom he has stripped so methodically
carried a supply of water for replenishment, and water on this dried-up
tableland is as precious as in the desert. The place from which it is
drawn is at the foot of the hillside: you are not sure of getting there
or of coming back. At the fort, so many lips are thirsty for fresh
water!

The guide, with his water-bottle straps round his waist, hastily
resumes his journey, drawing us after him as a roebuck draws a pack of
hounds.

At this pace we pass a caravan of porters loaded with a consignment of
grenades. They are marching as fast as their burden allows them, under
the rain of steel. The only means of transport here is the human back.
Poor little men, whose heart is still the greatest of all military
forces! “It is a scientific war,” people have declared. “Victory lies
with munitions. It is the munitions that crush and destroy everything.”
Well, when the artillery thinks to have destroyed everything, the human
will still offers a wall of flesh as a resistance: men have endured
everything--fire, hunger, cold, and thirst--and still they rise out of
the shattered soil. No war will be found to have given such examples of
the superiority of man to the machine.

The countryside looks all scorched and burnt. The lava of a volcano,
the shocks of an earthquake, all the cataclysms of nature would not
have flayed it more unmercifully. It is a chaos without a name, a
circle in Dante’s Inferno. I rack my memory for parallel scenes;
perhaps certain Alpine solitudes where the glaciers have withdrawn or
the moraines alternate with precipices--solitudes that have never heard
the song of a bird or felt the contact of a living creature.

The craters meet and open like the yawning mouths of volcanoes. Broken
branches, scattered boulders, detritus of all kinds and shreds of human
flesh are mingled. A nameless stench rises from the tortured soil.

In front of us rises a wall covered with earth. There are gashes in
it, and through these cracks the stones have fallen into the ditch.
On the whole, however, it has borne the avalanche without flinching.
Three-quarters of the vaulted door is masked by a mass of concrete
dislodged by a 380 or 420 mm. shell. It is like the cave of the
Cyclops, which had a rock for its door and which received Ulysses and
his companions. Past the open space we scurry along quickly, for it
is specially favoured by the enemy’s artillery, as the corpses, more
numerous here, bear witness. Even so did the Cyclops kill all strangers.

What is my surprise at finding the interior of the fort undamaged! It
must have been built of solid materials to resist such a hammering.
The staircase, the passages, the rooms are crammed. A curious sight is
the swarm of men under the electric lights: sleepers lying in every
conceivable pose, some stretched out anywhere, others curled up so as
to occupy the least possible space, all impervious to noises, refusing
to wake up, enjoying the delicious relaxation of sleep removed from
danger; fatigue parties making their way with difficulty through
the crush; guards going on or returning from duty; wounded men with
white bandages on their wounds; isolated squads looking for their
company. One guesses the cause of this confusion, which will have to be
remedied. The fort, on its tableland, plays the part of those mountain
refuges where lost caravans come to find shelter from the storm. It
is a haven of safety; he who succeeds in crossing the danger-zone can
breathe freely under the arched vaults.

Little by little the march past becomes more orderly, and organization
is introduced into the mob. The right is reserved for those coming
in, the left for those going out. Here is the ambulance, there is the
guard-room, there is the orderly-room.

On our arrival our guide is received with enthusiasm. His array of
water-bottles earns him an ovation. Thirst is working havoc here. The
nearest source of water is in the Fontaines ravine, and that ravine is
constantly peppered with shot. Yet men risk their skins to go and get
a drink. Water creates such pitiful mirages. In the shapeless furrows
which serve them as shelters, the troops, with parched lips, wait for
water with feverish impatience; they are reduced sometimes to drinking
the tainted water that stagnates in the shell-holes, and to other
strange expedients. Who will ever tell of all the horrors endured for
Verdun and for that France which is behind Verdun?

A soldier, somewhat elderly, no doubt a Territorial, comes in with
rolls of bread on his back. He is near collapsing; he pants, the sweat
pours off him in big drops, his face is white as chalk.

“You are alone?” asks the sergeant of the guard. “Where is the rest of
the fatigue?”

The man makes a vague gesture. The rest of the fatigue has not
followed, will never get here. Still, the rations it was bringing must
be looked for. Where will they be found? Far from here? Another gesture
of weariness, of indifference, of ignorance--one cannot guess which.

“Well, do explain yourself!”

The soldier lays down his load and stands up straight.

“I’ll go back,” is all he says. And he crosses the threshold again,
followed by two men whom the sergeant has told off.

The commandant of the fort made me visit his domain, the casemates of
Bourges, the observing stations, of which one is still fit for use, the
cupola deprived of its 75-mm. gun. We run across the commander of the
3rd Battalion of Light Infantry, who holds the sector in front of the
fort up to the village, and the battalion chaplain, the Abbé C----,
who, under his helmet, with his weather-beaten features and his long
beard, looks like a crusader rather than a monk. The latter comes from
the neighbouring redoubt, a little earthwork where he had set up a
dressing station, which he has had to remove.

“Yesterday,” he told me, “our riflemen brought in a prisoner, groaning
loudly and constantly repeating in a piteous tone, ‘Vier Kinder! Vier
Kinder!’ (Four children!)” For the benefit of those who knew no German,
he made gestures illustrating a row of figures of different heights
and counted up to four on his fingers. Our men put him in a corner of
the redoubt, which is very narrow, while they themselves, for want of
room, remained in the doorway, exposed to the bursting shells. The
commandant, as he passed by, ordered them to abandon this Quixotic
arrangement.

Stroking his beard, he adds philosophically: “After all, whatever comes
here comes from the prisoner’s lines. It is only fair that he should
be able to appreciate its quality.”

The commandant of the fort leads me out on to the parapets, which are
continually being demolished and continually repaired.

“Be careful; in order to get there we have to cross as quickly as
possible a zone which is under fire from an enemy machine-gun!”

More treacherous than the whistling of shells, the bullets pass above
our heads, but he himself does not hurry in the least. Here are posted,
in the hollowed-out earth, finding places as best they can, the
look-out men, and in shelters very little safer, our machine-guns.

Dawn begins to appear, eclipsing the light of the moon. Half lying on
the parapet, I see a glorious spring sunrise. It awakens the plains of
the Woevre, lighting up the rivulets and pools. Here is Vaux village
on the right, and Damloup village on the left. Farther on, that large
cluster of ruined houses must be Étain. In the rising sun they form a
white lace*-work of stone, recalling the cities of the East. And yonder
are the frowning hillsides of Hardaumont. Douaumont towers above,
Douaumont still swathed in darkness, like an evil spirit.

More efficiently than the enemy, the sunshine climbs the slopes of the
fort. It is light and airy, like a bearer of good tidings. Smiling, it
shows me, in front, two or three hundred yards beyond the counterscarp,
on the sloping turf, several greenish lumps almost dressed in line.
They are the bodies of Germans mown down in the onslaughts of March 9.
They have fallen in front of the barbed wire. One could count them.
Already their numbers are diminished. At night their comrades draw them
into their lines by means of hooks or ropes.

The sun has left the rim of the earth and is speedily mounting the
horizon. The morning is of an exquisite softness that contrasts
strangely with the tragic scene. Behind me is chaos, in front a
charnel-heap. Yet up above a lark is singing. His wings flap and his
claws quiver, but he does not change his place in the rose-tinted
heavens. I watch this sweet songster fluttering overhead, as if it were
pecking at the light. A look-out man raises his eyes to catch sight of
it. He looks at it tenderly for a moment, then resumes his watching.
The passing shells do not disturb it in the slightest.

What is happening down there, among the corpses in green uniforms? One
of them has made a movement; he glides through the grass like a snake.
The enemy uses his dead as a screen or a blind, and is coming in this
way to spy out the land. A look-out man has also observed this uncanny
resurrection. He fires. Nothing moves. We must have been mistaken. A
long time afterwards, a little below the suspected point, a body jumps
up and abruptly disappears at a spot where the gradient is very steep
and forms dead ground.

As in the mountains, I sweep the horizon with my gaze and give names to
the valleys and hills. Douaumont, on my right, is the loftiest summit
(1200 feet); only Souville, at the back, makes any approach to this. It
seems like some incubus weighing upon the whole surrounding country.
I am separated from it by the wooded slopes of Vaux-Chapître, by the
ravine of Le Bazil, whose existence I guess at, and by the rising wood
of La Caillette. Above the Woevre, Hardaumont rears its head like a
cliff. The Woevre stretches out as far as the eye can see, broken
up with undergrowth and villages and streaked with roads. In broad
daylight I get a better idea of its bareness, which was veiled by the
kindly dawn. Its untilled soil resembles a vast marsh. On the right my
eyes rest on the dark blur of Herméville Wood. The outlying spurs of
the Meuse Heights hide a portion of it from view.

It is there, towards the village, over against those hillsides, over
against Damloup, that the enemy’s onslaught was shattered. And the
fort, on its plateau, with its superstructure half crushed, with
breaches in its double wall, seems like the formidable hulk of an
ironclad which still floats upon the waters, not yet abandoned by its
crew. The storm thought to overwhelm it, and it has vanquished the
storm.

We stayed very late, in order to see everything, in accordance with our
instructions. Nine o’clock in the morning; the sun is already high in
the heavens. The sky is clear, the day is a good one for observations,
and the Boche balloons are watching us. The crossing of the ridge
threatens to be difficult.

As a matter of fact, it is difficult to go out at all. We are at once
encircled. Life hangs by a thread. The corpses, now indiscreet, display
ghastly wounds. Only a few are intact; it is hard to find the broken
statues I saw in the moonlight. And the realization of death, in the
revolt of one’s whole being, is invested with a special horror--that
of being crushed and pulverized, of being not even a dead man, but
a nameless heap, a handful of fleshly dust. Then, too, there is the
thought of remaining unburied.

This idea did not come spontaneously. We walked across two corpses:
a little soldier, very young, quite beardless, no doubt of the 1915
class, covered with a little earth, two or three shovelfuls which did
not suffice to hide him; and, quite near him, a stretcher-bearer,
identified by his Red Cross armlet, his head split open, still clasping
a spade in his hand. The stretcher-bearer was killed while trying to
carry out his pious duty of interment. Here the stricken must be left
uncared for. We must let Death bury the dead.

There is a legend which says that the souls of those who have not been
laid in consecrated ground wander in space without ever finding rest.
But the soil of our invaded country is consecrated ground. May those
who have fallen there in defending it rest in peace! For the appeal
of the Church, _Memento quia pulvis es_--“Remember, because thou art
dust”--which accompanies the placing of the ashes on the brows of the
faithful--could I ever have thought out a more eloquent paraphrase?

A last rationing party meets us. It has not been able to reach its goal
during the night. By day it is not usual to go to the fort.

“Are you going as far as the fort?”

“We’ll have a try.”

“Good luck!...”




III

THE MASTER OF THE HOUR

(MARCH 14)


In the courtyard of those Verdun barracks where I spent such a brief
night, there is a slightly larger crowd than usual. And every one
follows with his eyes two Generals who are walking at a leisurely pace.

One is dressed in a sky-blue uniform, like the rank and file, like
every one. His tanned face, every expression of which I know well--it
combines great kindliness with an intellect always in search of
certainty and precision--betrays the secret that racks him. He is in
command of the most exposed, the most frequently attacked, the most
difficult sector of the whole front of the army which covers Verdun,
and, at this moment, of the entire front of the French Army. It touches
Fort Douaumont and guards Fort Vaux. He lives heart and soul with his
men, who are down there in the whirlwind of steel, holding out against
all odds. He shares the burden of their hardships and their exertions.
He is consumed with anxiety to know. The desire to conquer is fretting
his body. His features bear ample witness to the fire that burns
within.

The other, tall and massively built, wears the old-fashioned uniform,
to whose colours the eye is unaccustomed: red trousers, black tunic,
red cap, with a double band of oak leaves.[1] He seems to be gazing at
an invisible point above the head of the person whom he is addressing.
While listening, he seems to be under the spell of some inner dream. He
wears a thick white moustache. His eyes have a far-away look. Are the
realities of the present enough for them, or do they need a map of the
world to satisfy them?

    [1] In the French Army a double band of oak leaves round the
        cap denotes a General commanding a division.--_Translator’s
        Note._

The two have stopped near our group. The senior General says to his
companion, as if putting an end to their conversation--a conversation
in which up to now he has scarcely uttered a word:

“All is well, and now you need feel no uneasiness.”

The other seems to be surprised. He is in a state of deadly anxiety,
and he is urged to be calm! He is apparently waiting for something
more, but this is really the end of the discussion. A motor-car has
been summoned. He salutes and goes off.

“You need feel no uneasiness.” One of my comrades, who in his brief
leisure moments is rereading Tolstoi’s _War and Peace_, and is blessed
with a portentous memory, reminds me of the passage where Prince André
Bolkonsky, aide-de-camp to General Bagration, comes to report to his
chief what he has been able to find out about the forces that are
threatening the Russian Army:

“While listening to him, Prince Bagration stared in front of him, and
Prince André, while studying the strongly marked features of that face
whose eyes were half-closed, wandering, and sleepy, asked himself, with
an uneasy curiosity, what thoughts, what feelings were hidden behind
that impenetrable mask?”

(The eyes, here, are also staring, but at some point far away, as if to
see beyond the horizon of Verdun.)

“All is well,” says Bagration simply, as if what he has just heard had
been anticipated by him.

And what he has just heard is the menace that weighs upon his army.

What our General has just heard has caused him no anxiety. He has
answered, “All is well,” as if the menace could in no way alter his
plans. Later on this recollection, throwing light on the phrase which
had almost shocked me, was to assume a singularly precise outline in my
mind, and to widen like those ripples which are formed in water when
a stone is flung in and grow larger and larger until they reach the
banks....




IV

THE FIRST FIGHTS ROUND VAUX

(MARCH 9, 10, 11)


From the road, I see soldiers stretched out on the grass, basking in
the spring sun, fishing in the river, or playing ball like schoolboys.
Motor-omnibuses picked them up suddenly, not far from the Verdun
battlefield, to carry them to this abode of rustic peace. They do not
even hear the guns any longer. It is strange to contrast this bucolic
scene with the fiery furnace of Vaux.

Among the valleys of the Meuse region, which are generally rather grim
and gloomy, the valley of La Saulx is the most smiling, the richest in
flowers, the most attractive. A crystal-clear brook waters its meadows
and seems, with all its meanderings, to run an endless course. Here
is Montiers-sur-Saulx, where the 303rd Brigade is billeted for a few
days. The Sire de Joinville lived there; in the archives of the town
hall one may read the charter by which he allowed the villagers the use
of a part of his forest. Jeanne d’Arc went through it, dreaming of
her mission. The troops in blue-grey caps who stroll round the central
square where the military band plays are not so very different, in
their bright uniforms, from the men-at-arms of bygone days.

In little groups the men walk about, light their pipes, and chat with
the natives. The whole scene looks like a day of peace-time manœuvres,
and the very gait of the men is so brisk that one might fancy them to
be fresh troops recently detrained here and ready to proceed again to
the front.

Yet the sentry who is mounting guard at the town hall wears a cap that
has been pierced by a bullet. Other caps are indented or knocked out of
shape. More than one of these peaceful ramblers has his head bandaged
or shows some scar on his face. The colonel in command of the brigade
has on his cheek a sabre-cut on which the blood has just dried--a
trifling wound which has not been deemed worthy of dressing.

These are the men who broke the back of the German assaults on the
village and fort of Vaux on March 8, 9, and 10. They can scarcely
remember that they forced the enemy to retreat; they are too much
occupied with forgetting their miseries--the cold, the snow, the lack
of sleep, the long hours they spent crouching down in rifle-pits, their
lost comrades, the continual presence of death during the bombardment
which shatters men’s nerves and stuns their brains.

None of them of his own accord makes any allusion to his recent
experiences: merely a word or two here and there, which cannot be
understood save by those who have been through the mill. Later on,
at home, or in some other theatre of war, when the events are really
buried in the past, they will tell the story after their own fashion.
Nor will they hesitate to weave into the tale other episodes drawn from
earlier or later combats. For the moment they content themselves with
saying that Verdun beats everything--the Argonne, Artois, Champagne,
Ailly Wood, Le Prêtre Wood. These comparisons by men who know give a
correct order of merit. They find no satisfaction in raking up what
is past and done with, except to say that the Boches will not break
through, in spite of their confounded heavy artillery. They revel in
the joy of living quietly and without danger. They are almost inclined
to pinch themselves so as to make sure that they are still alive. The
nightmare visions that haunt them yet might leave them in doubt on the
point. One must associate for a long time with officers and men in
order to unravel the truth little by little and reconstruct the earlier
Vaux engagements.

Properly speaking, there were no earlier Vaux engagements. The series
of operations forms an unbroken chain. Masters of Douaumont on
February 25, the Germans at once tried to profit by their success.
Douaumont could not be of any real use to them unless they succeeded
in debouching from it to march on the line formed before Verdun by
the hill of Froideterre, the village of Fleury on the other side of
the ridge, Fort Souville, and Fort Tavannes. With this aim in view
they will try to make progress to the east, in Nawé Wood, which is
intersected by a series of ravines favourable to an offensive, going
down from the slopes of Douaumont towards the Meuse (the ravines of
Helly, La Couleuvre, and La Dame) to reach the earthwork of Thiaumont,
and from there that of Froideterre. Their manœuvres will be the same
to the east, in the wood of La Caillette and that of Gardaumont, which
are also split up by ravines (those of La Caillette and La Fausse
Côte) to descend into the ravine of Le Bazil and to climb up again by
Vaux-Chapître Wood in the direction of Souville. On both sides they
will find the road blocked, and they will fall tooth and nail upon
the village and fort of Vaux, to the east, positions whose capture
is equally essential to the realization of their scheme. Driven back
from La Caillette Wood, they will approach, by way of Hardaumont
Wood, the village which gives the key to the ravines of Le Bazil and
Les Fontaines. They will make a frontal attack on the fort by its
north-eastern slopes, aided by the formation of the ground which, once
the foot of the slopes is occupied, enables them to advance, out of
sight and out of artillery range, on account of the angle of descent,
to within three or four hundred yards of the counterscarp wall.

Our 303rd Brigade (408th and 409th Regiments) occupies, during the
night of March 1 and 2, the section from La Caillette to Damloup; a
battalion of the 408th holds the slopes of the fort, and two battalions
of the 409th hold the cemetery and the village. The fort itself has for
a garrison two companies of the 71st Territorial Regiment, composed
of worthy natives of Anjou, level-headed and hard-working. But let
not the reader imagine a line of continuous, fully-equipped trenches,
with communication passages, dug-outs, store depots, and so forth! The
violence of the German attack launched on February 21 against Verdun
has for the time being substituted field fighting for siege warfare.
The lines of defence have been carried back to the rear, and the
artillery has swept the terrain to such an extent that it has destroyed
all the existing defences. Nothing is left but shell-holes and rubbish
heaps. It was imperative to hold fast to this devastated soil, to hang
on it, to break it up with the pickaxe and, failing pickaxes, with the
bayonet, with finger-nails, to live on top when one could not get below
ground, to keep awake and watchful, to shoot, to kill, to die without
accepting defeat.

During the early days of its occupation of the sector the brigade makes
a little progress in Hardaumont Wood. A company seizes the southern
earthwork and entrenches itself there. But on March 5, 6, and 7, the
bombardment is so violent that it is impossible to consolidate the
position. Replenishing is done with difficulty. An attack is imminent.
It takes place on the 8th about eleven o’clock in the morning, towards
the village. It is led by the famous Guretsky-Cornitz Brigade (6th and
19th Regiments), which was destined next day to be immortalized in the
German wireless. It debouches partly from Hardaumont Wood, where our
earthwork is lost, partly from the railway embankment which skirts
it and has served as a screen. The waves of enemy infantry succeed
in outflanking our first line and swamping an entire battalion. Our
machine-guns bring them to a halt at the entrance to the village, which
they have succeeded in reaching; they even occupy a few houses. Before
our fire the breakers recoil, but with the prisoners taken from our
outflanked first line.

A little later, when a fresh assault is launched farther to the east,
between the cemetery and the slopes of the fort, the enemy grenadiers
who precede it are clothed in uniforms and caps taken from the
prisoners, and they shout in French, with a heavy Teutonic accent:
“Don’t shoot!” adding even the number of the regiment (409th) whose
facings they are wearing, although the numerals have been torn off.
Already, in the morning, in order to approach the ravine, the enemy
has made use of another ruse which he has employed more than once.
Stretcher-bearers, ostentatiously displaying their Red Cross armlets,
seem to be carrying a stretcher or digging a grave: the stretcher
contains a machine-gun, the grave is an embryo trench.

For all that, this series of assaults has brought the enemy up to the
approaches to the village and cemetery of Vaux. Through what defect
in co-ordination does he fancy it to be already within his grasp? Has
his half-success of the previous day turned his head? On the morning
of March 9 he sends two or three companies of the 19th Regiment to
occupy his vaunted gain. The companies quietly enter Vaux, in columns,
without previous reconnaissances. Now a battalion of ours has just come
up to reinforce us, during the night of 8th-9th, under the command of
Major Delattre. It celebrates its arrival by a furious fire, at once
counter-attacks with the bayonet and throws the enemy back to the
ravine of Hardaumont. Major Delattre, rifle in hand, goes at the head
of his men. He is past fifty; his age and the hardships of the campaign
have earned him retirement, but he has refused it--a son and a brother
of his have fallen in the war, and he is thus tied to his post by
sacred bonds. He knows, by the way, what will befall him. The evening
before he confided his presentiments, in quite a cheerful spirit, to a
comrade:

“There are families marked out for the salvation of the country. It is
an honour. I shall follow in the footsteps of my son and my brother.”

And so it turned out; he was killed on the ground that had been
regained.

On the 9th, during the day, the enemy renews his onslaught and manages
to establish himself in the eastern portion of Vaux village and in the
cemetery. He tries to reach the fort by its northern side, but cannot
get near; our fire brings him to a halt at the trench dug behind the
barbed wire, two or three hundred yards from the earthwork.

The day of the 10th will be still more of an ordeal. The Germans have
to justify the lying communiqué which told the world of the capture
of Fort Vaux. Throughout the night of March 9-10 and the day of the
10th, the artillery, in clearing the way, overwhelms the fort with
projectiles of every calibre, and tries to isolate it by a curtain fire
which makes a special mark of the lower end of La Horgne on the Damloup
side, the ravine of Les Fontaines in Vaux-Chapître Wood, and the
advanced works of Souville. Accordingly the fort and that part of the
village which remains in our hands form an islet swept from end to end
by gunfire, where the infantry, when it marches, thinks that it will
find nothing but débris of war-stores and a garrison either wiped out
or so much reduced and dispirited that it will be incapable of defence.

But the reinforcements have come in spite of all. The 3rd Battalion
of light infantry is in reserve, ready to lend its aid to the brigade
which is fighting. The Territorials of the 71st are still sending out
fatigue parties for water, food, and munitions. The scouts have not
abandoned their duties. This is the continual miracle of Verdun. Under
an unprecedented bombardment everything is done as before--reliefs,
replenishing, the linking up of connections. A sense of order directs
the whole, and the work gets done.

Major Belleculet is in command at the fort. Besides the two companies
of Territorials, he has at his disposal a battalion of Regulars. He
has organized his defence in front of the fort, on the slopes already
approached the previous evening, protected by two rows of barbed wire.
The enemy pays less attention to these slopes than to the fort itself,
either because he believes his own lines to be nearer, or because, in
order to bring his troops close to their objective, he wishes to profit
by the more rapid descent from the tableland on to the plains of the
Woevre after the two or three hundred yards of gentle incline in front
of the counterscarp.

From eight o’clock in the morning, on the observing station which
remains intact, the commandant sees small groups of men go down the
slopes of Hardaumont and mass themselves to the left of the railway. He
calculates the forces whose range he has got to be three battalions. No
doubt the reserves, out of sight, are more numerous.

At noon the bombardment increases in force. At six o’clock in the
evening it breaks off abruptly. The village and fort are both attacked
at once. This is the sudden frontal attack, daring, almost foolhardy,
which the enemy pursued with success at the outset of the Verdun
battle, relying on his artillery superiority and on surprise or loss of
nerve in the ranks of his opponents. He is not master of La Caillette
Wood or of Damloup, he has no grip either on our right or on our left.
He confines operations to a stubborn obstacle whose possession would
ensure him a salient in our lines, and he dashes against it as hard as
he can, like a battering-ram against a door.

On the fort the assault is delivered in successive waves, not in a
cordon but in small columns, now directly in front of the parapets,
now slantwise on our left, between the cemetery and the fort, where he
finds a battalion of the 408th. In the barbed wire there are gaps that
our men have been unable to repair, dating from previous bombardments.
No doubt the enemy, from photographs by his airmen, imagines them to be
more important than they really are. He is faced by our machine-guns
and rifles along the whole line. From six to eight in the evening he
returns to the charge with a tenacity and vigour which it is only fair
to acknowledge. He wants to break through at all costs. All his efforts
are in vain. Our gallant lads’ rifles grow so hot that they have to be
relieved. The Territorials ask, as a favour, to be allowed to undertake
this shift. They acquit themselves even better than their young
comrades. They remember their lying in wait for game and their fine
marksmanship, on Sundays, on the borders of the forests of Anjou. To be
a good shot, one needs a steady nerve and one must never be in a hurry.

Inside the fort the soldiers of the Regular battalion have finished
cleaning and greasing their rifles. They feel comparatively
comfortable. One of them, however, makes a suggestion:

“The old ’uns are still down there. Are they to be left there, they in
front and we behind?”

No one looks reluctant. The officers have no need to insist. But the
“old ’uns” will not hear of giving up the position, which they consider
a good one, since the field of fire is perfect but for that confounded
drop in the ground where the Boches vanish as if through a trap-door.

The 75-gun plays its part in the affray. Its curtain fire, at the foot
of Hardaumont, works wonders. From the parapets one sees legs and arms
flying in the air. The reinforcements will not come. They are urgently
needed.

Night has fallen. A second lieutenant attached to the Brigade Staff
and dispatched to this part of the battlefield comes down from the
fort at a run. In spite of the cold, he is perspiring when he reaches
headquarters.

“A drink!” he shouts, like Gargantua at his birth. He is surrounded,
importuned, plied with eager questions; every one wants to know. The
main part of the village has held out, but the fort? The assault must
have been terrific. Who holds the fort?

“It’s all over,” answers the officer laconically, snatching up a
water-bottle.

“What do you mean--it’s all over? The fort has been captured?”

“No, the Boche is beaten.”

And he finishes his drink in peace.




V

ROUND THE WASHING-PLACE

(MARCH 18)


In the inner courtyard of a Verdun barracks, around a vast
washing-place, there is a swarm of dark-blue riflemen and light-blue
infantrymen who have just been fighting side by side, fraternally,
and who seem ready to come to blows in order to gain a place and draw
near to the delicious stream of running water. Will a regular system
of shifts have to be established? The line regiment (158th) and the
battalion of light infantry (3rd) were relieved together last night.
They went on firing up to the moment of going off, for they were
defending the fort and village of Vaux, which the enemy is attacking so
desperately.

The battle is, for the time being, ancient history, since they have
come back from it. After so many rough nights, they open their shirts
and bare their arms, to let their skins grow warm in the spring sun. No
doubt the guns continue to rumble and the columns of smoke rise from
bombarded Jardin-Fontaine; aeroplanes flit about in the sky, encircled
by the white wreaths of smoke which the shell-bursts send up to them.
But no one takes any notice; there is water to wash oneself with and to
drink.

Imagine what the sight of water--and running water to boot!--must be
for these lads who for ten days have been unable to sluice themselves
down or to refresh their parched lips properly. They enjoy in advance
its cool wholesome touch, and those who have plunged their dusty faces
right into it, faces still worn with the noise and terror of battle,
withdraw them all streaming, with a boisterous laugh of delight. It
is their weariness that is falling away from them. The drawn, livid,
mournful faces grow young again in a few moments. Each man would like
to go on longer, but thinks of his neighbour who is waiting his turn
and goes away to give up his place to the next man. Later on he may be
able to come back.

Some, apart from the rest, in the twinkling of an eye, set up a mirror
on a window-sill or a tub, bring out a piece of soap, and begin to
shave. The barber of one company is already working with the speed of
a juggler, and his customers quietly wait in single file. Why on earth
do civilians call them _les poilus_ (“the hairy ones”)? Here, no one
likes the word. They are hairy when they cannot be anything else, on
bad days, on the cruel and tragic days which afterwards become days
of heroic grandeur. But as soon as they are off duty they ask for
nothing better than to resume their pleasant everyday faces, in no way
terrifying or hirsute. It is a nation of worthy citizens who fight for
their hearths, for their invaded territory, for their rights and their
freedom, for all the past of which they are the heirs, for all the
future of which they are the trustees, and not a horde of half-savage
gipsies, ill-conditioned, without house or home. The youngest classes
are nearly always beardless, and the oldest, in order to fix their
gas-masks better, have given up wearing beards.

Almost the only exception I can see is the chaplain. He has a great
black beard, here and there flecked with grey. He persists in driving
a comb through it, for he is anxious not to appear less careful of his
person than that group of trim young lieutenants who are already here,
shaved, their hair brushed, in bright new uniforms, their moustaches
turned up, their eyes sparkling, transformed by the stroke of a magic
wand into garrison dandies. As well-informed as a staff-officer, Father
C----, whom I have already met at Fort Vaux, speaks with admiration,
nay, with affection, of his dear light infantry battalion, his “blue
devils,” with whom he has been from Artois and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
He takes out of his pocket the precious notebook in which he records
his impressions of army life.

“I should like to read one of the days in your diary.”

“Just let me put down the last two, the 16th and 17th.”

The 3rd Battalion of Light Infantry will give its historian trouble. It
has fought on every front. On August 10, in Lorraine, it repulsed by
itself, at Provenchères, four German attacks, four battalions strong.
On the 14th it is in the Saint Blaize combat. On the 19th it is in
action at Valerysthal, where it is subjected to furious assaults.
From August 29 to September 5 it holds La Chipotte Wood. Then it is
recalled to take part in the Battle of the Marne. At the beginning
of October it is sent to Artois. It is the first to enter the first
house of Ablain-St.-Nazaire. It is then sent farther north, to the
long and stubborn battle of Ypres. The men thought they would never go
through anything worse, but Verdun is to come. In December it returns
to Artois, to the Lorette region. On May 8, 1915, it attacks the White
Earthworks with superb dash; in June, the Square Wood and the Hollow
Way; in October, the Wood of the Axe. And Verdun comes to crown all
these memories like a bunch of flowers decorating a housetop. It is a
Homeric catalogue, but how many of our regiments could tell a similar
story!

It has lost two of its commanding officers, Major Renaud at Bréménil on
August 19, 1914, and in Artois, on May 8, 1915, after the attack on the
White Earthworks, that young Major Madelin, who was the most finished
type of an officer, cool-headed, yet always inspiring his men,
well-groomed, genial, brilliant, and cultured, a brother of my dear
comrade in letters and in arms, the historian, now Second Lieutenant
Louis Madelin, whom the fortune of war has suddenly thrown into my
company, and who offers me a refuge in his plank-built hut. Major
Madelin was succeeded in Artois by my friend Major Pineau, whom I find
again with the Staff; then by Major Tournes, who has just come down
from the Vaux sector, where I met him preparing an attack.

Suddenly there is bustle in the courtyard. A company, whose losses
I can guess, is gathering in a circle round the Captain and the
Sergeant-Major. To judge by their craning necks and the gleam in their
eyes, the report is of peculiar interest. Very likely it is a question
of rest billets or, perhaps, of furlough. Furlough, the mirage in
which a man’s house and loved ones appear before him! I draw near. The
Sergeant-Major is reading the order of the day addressed on March 10 by
the Commander-in-Chief to the soldiers of Verdun!

“Soldiers of the Army of Verdun!

“For three weeks you have endured the most formidable assault that the
enemy has yet attempted against us.

“Germany counted on the success of this offensive, which she thought
irresistible and to which she had devoted her best troops and her most
powerful artillery.

“She hoped that the capture of Verdun would encourage her allies and
convince neutral countries of German superiority.

“She had reckoned without you!

“Night and day, in spite of an unparalleled bombardment, you have
withstood all attacks and held your positions.

“The struggle is not yet at an end, for the Germans need a victory. You
will be able to rob them of that victory.

“We have munitions in plenty and numerous reserves.

“But above all you have your indomitable courage and your faith in the
destiny of the Republic.

“The eyes of the country are upon you. You will be among those of whom
it will be said: ‘They stopped the Germans from getting to Verdun!’”

The Sergeant-Major, himself deeply moved by what he reads, leaves a
pause between the last sentence and the official “Dismiss!” which sets
his hearers free.

And the company breaks up slowly, as if with regret. The men understand
better what they have done, and the hardships they have undergone
take on a new lustre in their eyes. That sense of loneliness which in
long conflicts leads each man, little by little, to complain of his
individual trials, and to imagine that his leaders and the community
as a whole are indifferent, suddenly vanishes: down there, when they
were in the jaws of hell, their Commander and their countrymen saw
everything.

And in the silence which for a moment seals their lips, makes their
features grave and motionless, and combines all those stray thoughts
into one supreme idea, a historic thrill passes through them.
Individual destinies grow wider; nothing counts any longer but the
collective task.

Then they disperse into groups, and tongues are loosened. For the first
time since the relief they consent to speak of the ten days spent in
the Vaux sector. Their scattered impressions may be summed up in the
proud boast:

“At any rate, _they_ have decamped for to-night.”

The fierce, uninterrupted bombardment, so hard to endure for those who
are out of action, gives rise to protests. The veterans of the Artois
campaign compare notes and agree that they have never seen such an orgy
of firing.

“It ought not to be allowed,” declares a new hand.

Modestly, as if it were an everyday incident, a Corporal of the 158th
tells some light infantrymen of his share in the last engagement, that
of the evening of March 16 in Vaux village, which is half French, half
German, and is intersected by barricades and trenches:

“I was in the village, near the barricade. After the Jack Johnsons, the
look-out men told us that _they_ were coming in masses. The parapets
are manned. The Lieutenant says: ‘Don’t hurry, my lads, let them come
up.’ When _they_ are within easy range, our men open fire. The Boches
were seen to fall like ninepins. Still they came on again, and yet
again. They have plenty of self-confidence.”

And now the talk flies to and fro like the crackling of musketry fire.
The names of dead and wounded are mentioned, but there is no sadness,
no lingering over them: it is a matter of Fate, who chooses those whom
it pleases her to strike. The praises of the stretcher-bearers are
sung: guided by cries or by instinct, they bring in the wounded, even
that blind man who, erect between the lines, walked with his hands in
front of him, without knowing where, haggard and howling. As for the
dead, burying them was out of the question. Gratitude is expressed
towards the cooks, who roll about their field-kitchens under shell-fire
and carry rations to the troops. A burly Swiss who has enrolled himself
for the duration of the war, “without any idea that it would last so
long,” he adds, “otherwise----,” receives these grateful words as a
personal compliment:

“Well, you can’t run with a great load on your back.”

The Colonel whom I met at the Carrières headquarters--a thin face with
clear-cut outlines, blue eyes, usually soft, but now and then showing
a glint of steel, slight build, keen nerves, with an unswerving
ascendancy over his men, whom he knows how to inspire with his hatred
of the Boches (hatred dies down so quickly in our race)--can speak of
nothing but his regiment:

“Hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and all the time that din and that
menace of big shells crashing, they bore it all without a murmur. You
pass down the lines; every man follows you with his eyes, centres
his hopes in you, believes in you. You acquire such a feeling of
confidence. You cannot help leading them well.”

Thus from the close union of hearts he makes leadership spring as the
wheat springs from the fertilized soil.

The chaplain has finished writing, and with the best grace in the world
he hands me the notes in which he has just been describing his stay
in Fort Vaux and the immediate surroundings from March 6 to 17. They
are moving pages, at once picturesque, sincere, and gently ironical;
they take me once more over the road I have travelled, and recall
the assault of March 10 on the slopes of the fort as the actors in
the drama had recounted it to me on the spot. On the following day,
our command prepares in its turn a little expedition in order to
gain possession of the foot of those hillsides where the Germans are
invisible and our 75’s cannot find their mark. Here is the account of
this attack on the 16th and 17th:


_Extract from the Diary of the Abbé C----, Chaplain to the 3rd
Battalion of Light Infantry._

  “_Thursday the 16th._--Great activity during the night. The enemy
  shows obvious signs of anxiety and nervousness. Numerous rockets,
  constant work at their auxiliary defences.

  “All this delights our men. So they are afraid! So that
  irresistible dash which was to reach its climax at Verdun, and
  to lead to a triumphal entry at the Champs Élysées, is being
  frittered away in dug-outs! Feverishly each man burrows himself
  in. The bayonet is abandoned for the pickaxe, and instead of those
  miraculous marches there are only monotonous shifts.

  “Yet the task is not yet ended. Verdun has seventeen forts, I
  believe. You hold only one, my dear Brandenburgers. Hardly enough!

  “1 _o’clock_ P.M.--The bombardment increases in violence. The blows
  grow more and more resounding. It is clear that the earth of our
  roof has been carried away and that the concrete has been laid bare
  in several places. There is a talk of stopping up the gaps with
  sandbags; but when? A walk on our terrace is not to be recommended,
  even by moonlight.

  “2 _o’clock_ P.M.--The trench mortar which is to destroy the barbed
  wire and the auxiliary defences cannot be fired from the fort;
  three artillerymen who were trying to set up the mortar have been
  wounded. An attempt is made elsewhere, but with still slighter
  success. Nor can our heavy artillery do anything. The attack, which
  was fixed for this evening, has been put off until five o’clock
  to-morrow. We are going to attempt a surprise stroke.

       *       *       *       *       *

  “11.30 P.M.--To arms! This cry, uttered by the look-out men,
  re-echoes from end to end of the dark corridors. At this hour, and
  during this crisis, when every moment is fraught with tragedy, it
  sounds peculiarly mournful. At once there is a stir among the poor
  numbed bodies, which were snatching an uneasy slumber on the floor;
  each man fastens on his equipment and makes sure that his rifle is
  in its place. After the first few minutes of stupor, a discussion
  arises in low tones. What is going to happen?...

  “Some look-out men have seen--or think they have seen, say some--a
  working party digging trenches quite near the auxiliary defences
  of the fort. Shadows? Boches? Stray patrols?... When nerves are
  on edge, the pale moonlight, streaked with a few clouds, seems to
  make for hallucinations. The machine-gun of the parapet sweeps the
  terrain. Nothing moves. Day will throw light upon the mystery.

  “Obviously, the enemy is still more uneasy than on previous nights;
  his artillery thunders furiously all over the place, somewhat
  at random, particularly on the fort and its approaches. All the
  fatigues that arrive announce losses. The men are streaming with
  sweat after the desperate rush they have had to make for four
  hundred yards across a bewildering mass of craters....

  “_Friday, March 17_, 2 A.M.--Our patrols are returning. They have
  searched the approaches thoroughly. No signs of the enemy, at any
  rate of live Boches.

  “In the morning, the sun brings us knowledge. There, a little in
  front of the barbed wire, we can see the earth recently turned up;
  at the side some dozen diggers, their tools in their hands or at
  their feet, their bodies stiff and stark, still bent over their
  unfinished task....

  “They are the Boches we saw yesterday evening, caught in the midst
  of their work by our machine-gun. They had not even time to dig
  their ditch!

  “But for the vigilance of our machine-gun officer, we should have
  found there, at daybreak, a nest of Boches whom it would have been
  very difficult to get rid of, in view of the lie of the land. A
  dangerous vigilance indeed! On the evening before, at the same
  place, not far from him, my left-hand neighbour was killed outright
  and my right-hand neighbour seriously wounded.

  “At last we know what to do. A brief rest before the little
  performance. At five o’clock, the hour fixed, the Commandant goes
  up to the observing station. I crouch down, with my eye at the
  loophole.

  “It is early dawn. The field of vision is very limited. We listen
  anxiously in the half-silence. It continues. So much the better.
  The plot is not discovered. After ten minutes comes a violent
  interchange of hand-grenades. We see the bluish smoke rise from the
  ground, the machine-guns cough. Then nothing more!... What agony!
  Twenty minutes later the Captain who was directing the attack
  arrives. He is a brisk young officer of the Algerian cavalry who,
  at his own request, has doffed the scarlet jacket for the dark
  tunic of the Light Infantry. He has prepared his attack as a labour
  of love, working day and night. Two days ago it would have been an
  interesting _coup-de-main_, but after three days of countermanding
  orders, the conditions have entirely changed. He tells us what has
  happened: the eight bomb-throwers have cleverly crept up to the
  enemy’s wire entanglements and discharged the contents of their
  haversacks, ready to hurl themselves into the barbed wire and jump
  further. But the Germans are numerous: their slightly curved line
  begins to encircle our light infantry. They defend themselves. The
  interchange of hand-grenades proceeds. Our bombs begin to tell; the
  Boches howl. Their bombs go much too far; they never dreamt that
  our ‘blue-devils’ were so near them.... At the same time, their
  machine-guns are brought into action, and with their infernal tempo
  mow down all that is in their way! Under this shower of bombs and
  this sheet-lightning of bullets, our men slip into the holes and,
  a few minutes later, come back unscathed, with smiles on their
  lips, delighted at their escapade; two scratches, that is all, in
  a run of more than eighty yards across the battlefield. Almost a
  miracle!

  “The sortie, by the way, is far from useless. Thanks to this
  diversion, the neighbouring detachment was able to gain a footing
  in a long line of enemy trenches, to see the occupants take to
  flight, and thus to make a still further improvement, to some
  extent, in our situation.

  “And when night has stretched its protecting veil over us, we start
  off.... Weakened, worn, feverish, dirty, physically at the end of
  our tether, but splendid so far as morale is concerned! One sees
  that by the sparkling eyes, the lively talk, the whole manner,
  which clearly shows the absolute control that these valiant souls
  maintain over their utterly exhausted bodies.

  “More or less confusedly, but none the less genuinely for that,
  each man realizes that he has just lived through some glorious
  hours. Few in number, weary, isolated, they have held enormous
  masses in check; with their moral force they have confronted a
  display of material power such as the world has never seen before.
  A few bodies have been broken. Victory has remained with the
  _idea_, with the human will, with cool, unyielding valour, with
  these children, the new knights-errant of a France whose existence
  no one suspected. They, too, are struggling under the eye of God,
  as their forbears have done so often, for right and justice, and
  for nearly two years have never ceased to offer an astonished world
  the wondrous spectacle of their self-denial and their heroism.”

Yet no one sees anything but his own little corner of the war, and
this applies even to the above eye-witness, who has a clear vision and
a fluent pen. He limits the fighting of March 16-17 to our attack, a
comparatively petty affair. But on March 16, in the evening, there
was an attempted German offensive which lasted throughout the night,
between the village and the fort. A battalion of the 7th German
Regiment of Reserve (121st Division) suffered cruel losses. A large
number of prisoners captured to the south-east of the village admitted
these losses and emphasized the seriousness of the set-back.

Beside us, the water of the washing-place goes on streaming over the
men’s faces, necks, and hands. It wipes out the memory of their efforts
and their hardships. These men, who, when they came in, thought that
they were done up, feel a fresh strength, the strength that the future
expects of them....




VI

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH


    _The same day._

It is five o’clock in the evening. I go up to the top of a hill which
overlooks Verdun. It is a glorious spring evening. The curves of the
Meuse gleam in the setting sun and form a trail of fire on the dim
plain, like a line of motor-transports rushing through the night. The
air is warm with caresses. And in this peaceful countryside nothing
moves that is not for use in battle, nothing exists save for war.

Towards Froideterre and Souville, the shells as they burst raise dense
pillars of black smoke. In the sky, a fleet of our aeroplanes is coming
back to harbour. The captive balloons complete their observations while
the light lasts. On the rising road there is a never-ending procession
of artillery waggons, travelling field-kitchens, and troops. All this
mass of men and war-material is making for the lines, in order to
deliver stores or to take up positions in a few hours’ time under cover
of darkness.

I stretch myself out on the grass in order to forget this contrast and
merely enjoy the evening air. A little further on there is some one who
has had the same idea as I. He lies at full length, and does not notice
my presence. I should have preferred to be alone. I take another look
at him: his face is one great wound. I go up to him: he is dead. One
does not come here to cut oneself off from one’s fellows and to dream.
Nothing is done here save under the mantle of death.

But with the War, death has lost much of its importance. We have grown
familiar with it. Under the form in which it appears as a rule, not
glorious, not choosing its victims in the full glow of their martial
ardour, but crafty and terrible, in the shape of a mass of iron hurled
from some miles off, it inspires a deep disgust, it is true, but we
submit to it as we submit to an old servant who rules the household. If
we do not rebel against it, if we even consent to accept it, then it
transforms itself after the manner of sorcerers in the old-time fairy
tales. The hideous skeleton is covered with young flesh that has a
fragrance of flowers. The face that it shows is one of dazzling beauty.
The kiss that it gives has something of the affection of France for her
children.

Yes, we have all become reconciled to the idea of death. What is there
left for me if I outlive the War? From my remotest past to the present
moment, all the years that I can take into account stay in my memory
as a little water stays in the hollow of my hand. If I open my fingers,
the water runs away. The past, which seems to me so short, far exceeds
in length all the future that I can anticipate. How trifling a thing,
then, is that future! Death does nothing more than open the fingers of
Time, who bears in his hand our days that are to come. And our days, as
they fall, trickle noiselessly like drops of water.

A dangerous detachment this, a lethargic calm against which we must
be on our guard. Death should merely annihilate our will to live, not
weaken it beforehand. This lesson was unconsciously taught us by one
of our comrades, Captain D----, who was twice wounded and twice went
back to the front, as he told us one evening at Verdun the story of
his second wound. He was lying on the ground with his chest bared; his
bâtman, who would not leave him, had also been wounded, but slightly,
in the shoulder. Both were Bretons, both religious, and they had been
to Communion together in the morning before starting off for the battle.

“We were there, side by side,” he said, “and the rifle-shots were
growing more distant. I thought that I was going to die, and a great
exultation came over me. My love for my wife and child, who, I felt,
were soon to lose me, was in no way altered. I don’t know how to
explain it to you: nothing weighed upon my mind any longer, and I
seemed to be set free from my closest ties. How should I ever again
meet with such an opportunity of dying? Everything within me and around
me was light and easy as the flight of a bird. I was no longer in pain.
Even the difficulty I felt in breathing gave me a sort of happiness. I
seemed to be lifted up to God, as a leaf is lifted by the wind. Then I
said to my bâtman: ‘You are going away. You are not seriously hurt. I
will stay here, I am quite ready to die.’ He would not listen to me, he
wanted to help me to rise, and, being unable to do so, tried to carry
me, in spite of the pain in his shoulder. I would not allow him to lift
me: ‘Leave me, I tell you, I want to die here.’ He stopped and looked
at me as if he did not quite understand, and then, a little timidly at
first, but soon growing bolder, he rebuked me: ‘I beg pardon, sir, but
what you are doing is not a Christian thing to do.’ I was shocked, I
admit, I who thought myself so near to God. He went on: ‘Not Christian
at all. God has nothing to give you but life. You are not going to
offend Him.’--‘But when it is He that is calling me?’--‘If He calls
you, you will hear Him plainly. Meanwhile you are still alive. And the
life that He gives us is for us to enjoy as long as we can--for His
sake, of course. You are not going to affront Him.’ And I let myself be
carried away in order not to affront God.”

Night has now fallen over Verdun. Here are the stretcher-bearers come
to look for my neighbour. The town is already shrouded in darkness,
while its girdle of hills seems still to float like a streamer in the
light. It is time to go down again. The realization of death at this
moment demands action of us, not reflection....




VII

THE ENEMY’S EVIDENCE


I have spoken, without hiding anything, of the hard life led by our
soldiers in the region of Vaux, the terrific assaults and the appalling
bombardment that they had to endure, the difficulty of obtaining
rations and reliefs, the lack of shelter, the lack of water, the lack
of sleep. But in war it is not enough to suffer, to resist, to hold
out. One must strike the enemy and drive him back. The task of the
army of Verdun is to wear out the German Army before Verdun. Does our
artillery fire work serious havoc in his ranks? Does it interfere with
his replenishing and reliefs, even more than ours are hampered? Does
our infantry lay his foot-soldiers low when it marches to the assault?
Do our counter-attacks throw them back with losses? What sort of
existence do we compel the Boche to lead opposite our lines? We want
to know. We must know. Our efforts must not be in vain. Our sacrifices
must not be fruitless.

The enemy is going to give us his evidence. He will tell us whether we
are able to defend ourselves and to attack, and whether we allow him
any respite.

A few examinations of prisoners and some extracts from letters found
on prisoners and dead, solely in the region of Vaux, during the months
of March and April, will furnish us with all the information that we
need. It is the most trustworthy source. I have collected the most
significant records, but all tell a similar story. It is not to detract
from an adversary that we make him confess what he has undergone
and what losses he has suffered, but it is to show up more vividly
the strength of our fighting forces and the successes gained by the
soldiers of Verdun.

       *       *       *       *       *

The prisoners of the 9th and 13th Companies of the 19th Regiment (9th
Reserve Division, 5th Corps of Reserves) taken at Vaux on March 9, give
the following account of the engagement of March 9:

“On the morning of March 9 the 1st Battalion received orders to occupy
Vaux village, whose capture had already been announced. The 13th
Company was the first to enter the village, in column of fours, without
any scouts or advanced guard to screen it. Suddenly it was assailed
by a violent machine-gun fire, followed up by a bayonet charge. Our
men made off and defended themselves in the houses, where the French
slaughtered them with bombs. The prisoners are under the impression
that the whole of the 13th Company was wiped out.

“The 3rd Battalion attacked on the northern slope of the fort. The 9th
Company led the way, and joined battle in succession of platoons. The
platoon to which the prisoners belong hurled itself at an enemy trench
and was mown down by our machine-guns: twenty-five men were killed,
three were taken prisoner, the rest took to flight.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The prisoners of the 9th Company of the 7th Regiment of Reserves (121st
Division) taken on March 17, to the south-east of Vaux village, give
the following details of the combat of March 16-17:

“The 3rd Battalion of the 7th Regiment of Reserves was to attack
towards the northern slopes of Fort Vaux. More than half the battalion
was cut down by the French machine-guns. Some twenty men, at most, of
the 9th Company reached the enemy trenches, where they were captured.
The rest must have been annihilated, for the curtain fire prevented
them from escaping and getting back to the trenches from which they
started.

“The revictualling of the first-line troops is almost impossible. The
troops are reduced to consuming their emergency rations.”

A soldier of the same regiment records a scene described to him by a
comrade who has just come back from special leave. The latter saw a
convoy of prisoners pass at a station in Germany: women were jeering at
them and insulting them. One of the Frenchmen called out in German:
“Women of Germany, don’t jeer at us! We are prisoners, that’s true, but
in front of Verdun the Germans are lying in heaps as high as this.”
After that the German women said no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here are some extracts from letters found on prisoners or dead in the
Vaux Sector.

Private E----, of the 6th Leib. Gren. Regt., writes:

“_Before Verdun, March 10._--Since yesterday morning there has been a
heavy snowfall: it stops everything and interferes with the operations
before Verdun. We can’t get away from the cold, the rain, the snow, and
the mud, and we camp out in the open. Each man digs himself in as best
he can, wraps himself up in his coat and his canvas bag, and freezes
all night. To make matters worse, we are constantly under an artillery
fire which claims a large number of victims every evening, for we
have no trenches or shelter; up to the present we have been in the
second line. To-night we pass into the first line. We no longer have
any confidence in our heavy artillery; yesterday morning our division
captured Vaux fort and village, but had to evacuate them because our
artillery fired into the place without a break.”

Private E---- believed what he had been told of the capture of the
fort. The lieutenant of the 7th Regiment of Reserves, which is on the
slopes of Vaux, knows the real truth:

“_March 11._--At three o’clock we start off for the position in front
of Fort Vaux. At sunrise, we occupy the position which was held by the
6th Regiment. The fort is two hundred yards in front of this line. The
position consists of shell-holes which have no longer any spaces left
between them.”

“Two hundred yards”: he seems to be a little short-sighted. At three
hundred yards from the fort, on March 11, one saw nothing but corpses.

Some days later, a soldier whose name is illegible scribbled this note
on the hillsides of Vaux:

“_March 24, 1916, before Fort Vaux._--There is no need for me to write
any more. All the rest may be left to the imagination. Still I want to
be hopeful. It’s hard, very hard! I am still so young. What’s the use?
What’s the good of prayer and entreaty? The shells! The shells!”

The next letter was found on a wounded German of the 56th Regiment of
Reserves (121st Division) captured on April 2. It bears no date. It
mingles religion with the food question. The writer had no doubt just
finished it and had had no time to send it off:

  “MY DEAR SISTER AND BROTHER-IN-LAW--This is to let you know I am in
  good health, although half dead from fatigue and fright. I cannot
  describe to you all I have lived through here, it goes far beyond
  anything we had had to put up with before. In about three days the
  company has lost more than a hundred men. Several times I didn’t
  know whether I was alive or already dead. We have not yet had to
  face the enemy; we shall do so to-morrow, and the affair will be
  on a pretty big scale. I have already given up all hope of ever
  seeing you again. Whoever comes out of this without a scratch may
  well thank the Lord. I received your parcel, as I have already told
  you in my post card, and I ate the food at once, for I didn’t know
  whether I should have a chance of eating it later. I have sent my
  pay home, because we cannot find anything to buy here....”

On April 3, Lieutenant E----, of the 6th Regiment of Reserves (9th
Division), writes to Second Lieutenant L----, of the 202nd Regiment of
Reserves:

“_April 3._--You can get some idea of how things are with us from the
fact that the corps of officers has been entirely renewed. The losses
of the regiment are rather heavy, for its position (Vaux tableland) is
a rather unpleasant one. Our battalions relieve each other, but the
rest-stations are shelled quite as much as the first line, apart from a
very few exceptions.”

The following letter from Private S----, of the 20th Regiment of
Reserves, is undated:

“You cannot realize how utterly sick of life I feel at times....
Yesterday the weather was still abominable, and we were once more
drenched to the skin. Then some one said, ‘Why don’t they sing to-day?’
And in the midst of all our misery we had to sing....”

Private S----, of the 80th Regiment, writes on April 11, 1916:

“We are here in a pit of Hell, with artillery fire day and night. I
never thought that it would be like this. Yesterday a shell fell quite
near the church; three men were killed on the spot, and nine wounded.
You should have seen us bolt! If only this wretched war would end! No
one who has any sense can justify such a butchery of men....

“At present we are to the north-east of Verdun, certainly in a very
ticklish situation....

“Although we have not been stationed here long, we have all had enough
of it, and are simply longing for peace. We should like to send to the
front all those gentry who are responsible for the war and still take
an interest in it. If only that could have been managed we should have
had peace long ago....”

Finally, here is a letter that gives fuller details as to the effect of
our artillery and machine-guns. It is written by Lieutenant H----, of
the 81st Regiment, and was found upon him at the time of his capture
before Verdun:

    “_At the Front, April 15, 1916._

  “MY DEAR PARENTS--No doubt you are waiting impatiently for some
  sign of life from me. I hope this letter will reach you, but it is
  not easy to get one’s correspondence sent through the post.

  “The good time I had as liaison officer between our regiment and
  the 56th has been a thing of the past for several days. Our officer
  losses are rather serious, so that I have had to take over the
  8th Company, as Company Commander in the first line. I am with my
  Company at present. I am huddled up in a little hole in the mud,
  which has to protect me against the enemy shell-bursts; and they
  never leave off for a moment. I have already seen a good many
  things in this war, but I had not yet been in such a situation
  as this. Its horror simply beggars description. I don’t want to
  give you a detailed account, for I should only cause you needless
  anxiety. We are under a terrific artillery fire day and night. The
  French resistance is amazingly obstinate. On April 11 we made an
  attack in order to take their trenches. We opened with an artillery
  preparation on a tremendous scale, lasting twelve hours, and then
  the infantry assault was launched. The French machine-guns were
  entirely undamaged, the result being that the first wave of our
  onset was broken by machine-gun fire as soon as it left the trench.
  What is more, the French in their turn started such an artillery
  barrage that another attack was not to be thought of. We are in the
  first-line trench, about 120 yards from the enemy. The weather is
  miserable, always cold and rainy; I wish you could see the state
  I am in, boots, trousers, and cape soaking wet and covered with a
  layer of mud quite an inch thick.

  “All the roads are commanded by the French guns, and their fire
  is so incessant that we cannot even bury our dead. It is pitiful
  to see the poor devils lying dead in their mud-holes. Every day
  some of our men are killed and wounded. It is only by risking
  our lives that we can put the wounded in a place of safety. To
  get our meals, we have to go over two miles to the rear, to the
  travelling field-kitchens, and even there one is in danger of being
  killed. Every day there are casualties among those who go for their
  rations, so much so that many would rather endure hunger than make
  these dangerous expeditions for food. Nearly the whole company is
  sick. When you are out in the rain all day and get wet through,
  sleep in the mud, and are under a frightful bombardment night
  and day, and all this for a week at a time, your nerves become
  completely shattered. So far as health is concerned I am still in
  fairly good trim. My feet are very wet and cold, and I am fearfully
  chilly about the knees. I hope I shall have the luck to get out of
  this alive. One cannot even be buried properly here....”

Some answers received from Germany add a few touches to this picture of
the German Army in the Vaux sector.

The following letter, covered with stains, was found on a dead man. It
had been kept in spite of its having been written so long ago:

    “COLOGNE, 29/12/1915.

  “There is no doubt, my dear Willy, that we are living through very
  hard times, and one cannot yet see where it will all end. You tell
  me not to believe all that the newspapers say. But do you really
  think we believe, as we did at first, in that ‘rollicking mood’
  (_Hurrastimmung_) among the men at the front? A year ago we fancied
  that we heard the note of warlike enthusiasm in every song that the
  soldiers sang. But to-day! Yesterday I happened to be present when
  thirty to thirty-five men of the Landsturm were starting off. Five
  of them were singing at the top of their voices, ‘Dear Fatherland,
  good-bye!’ But these five were so drunk that they had to lean
  against each other for support. Some hundred yards behind the group
  three policemen were marching and watching them to see that this
  enthusiasm was not overdone at the station. When we look at such
  scenes and then read the newspaper reports of deeds of valour, do
  you imagine that we think only of the latter? Yes, Willy, that’s
  what war is like, the ‘beneficent’ war that had to come, the war
  that was needed in order that the world should become a better
  place to live in. It is strange that after seventeen months of war
  I have not yet been able to discover any sign of improvement among
  my immediate neighbours!”

On the prisoners these letters were found:

    “HEISSEN, _March 24, 1916_.

  “It is still better to be at the front than here. We are suffering
  terribly from the cold, and have to wait in a queue from morning
  till evening, and even then we sometimes come home empty-handed
  at the end of the day and having nothing to eat. It is very sad,
  but you, my dear Fritz, are holding out in the enemy’s country; we
  shall hold out here as well.”

    “STRASSBURG (PRUSSIA),
    _March 20, 1916_.

  “You write to us that you have had to suck snow, so great was your
  hunger, yet that was hardly likely to cure your pangs. Yes, my
  dear, you have to starve, but do you think things are any better
  here?”

These extracts will suffice. What is the use of publishing any more?
Further letters would give us no more information as to the state of
the German soldier before Fort Vaux. We could find enough and to spare
of complaints about economic difficulties. That the German soldier who
is fighting at Verdun should know so much of the material insecurity
of those whom he has left behind him is a righteous punishment for the
terrible scourge let loose by a whole nation drunk with the sense of
power--the nation which sneered when Paris starved in 1870 and which
has set out to organize a war of frightfulness. The fires of its hell
burn hotter and hotter.

To Mont-Mare Wood and Le Prêtre Wood, which lie west of Pont-à-Mousson,
where the plains of the Woevre meet the undulating country of La Haye,
the German soldiers gave the names of Widows’ Wood and Wood of Death
respectively. What will they call the region of Vaux?

It was the 6th Division of the 3rd Corps that attacked the earthwork of
Hardaumont at the beginning of March. The assaults on Vaux village and
fort on March 8, 9, and 10 were delivered by the 9th Reserve Division
of the 5th Corps.

I have quoted, without comment, examinations of prisoners and extracts
from letters. The proof is given by the enemy in person: over the soil
of France which he came to trample upon, our artillery and our infantry
deal him out death in ample measure or, when he escapes death, force
him to lead a somewhat harassed existence. That, no doubt, is what he
calls an “amazingly obstinate” resistance.

How curious is this phrase, as if the Germans were surprised and
shocked at our resisting at all! How striking was the attitude of
prisoners whom I have seen examined, and of whom not one, though
he might be wounded, puny, hideous, or brutish, forbore to flaunt
his pride in being a German! These experiences led me to dip into
a notebook, in which I have copied out various passages from
distinguished authors peculiarly fitted to give us food for our war
reflections, and look up an extract from Fustel de Coulanges on
the German method of writing history. “The German historians,” he
says, “can find nothing nobler in history than that German emperor
who pitches his camp on the heights of Montmartre, or that other
emperor who goes to carry off the Imperial crown in Rome after
wading through the blood of four thousand Romans slaughtered on the
Bridge of St. Angelo. But when the French at last put an end to
these repeated invasions, when Henri II., Richelieu, Louis XIV., by
fortifying Metz and Strassburg, save France and Italy from these
Teutonic inundations--then the German historians are up in arms and
make virtuous protests against the Gallic lust for aggrandisement.
They cannot forgive those who try to prevent them from imposing their
sway on other nations. To defend oneself against them is a sign of war
mania; to prevent them from robbing is to be oneself a robber.”

The German historians of a later day will find matter for indignation
in the breakwater at Verdun, against which so many waves of their
soldiery have dashed themselves in vain. Let us hope at least that our
own historians, in recounting the superhuman efforts put forth in a
carefully planned resistance--destined, by the way, to be changed into
an offensive in the course of the Verdun battle--will enhance among
future generations their pride in being sons of France.




VIII

FROM MARCH 30 TO MAY 31


Who shall sing the epic of Fort Vaux in its daily phases? Relieved
at due intervals, the troops succeed each other with the same
staying-power in the same inferno. Shall we ever know all the feats
worthy of record in this war of countless episodes? How many dead would
have to be awakened from their sleep and asked for their testimony!

The living walls of Verdun, like the mediæval cathedrals, have been
built by a multitude of nameless toilers. To single out any regiment or
individual is to do an injustice to those who are not singled out. Yet
instances must be mentioned here, in order to give flesh and bones to
the framework of my story. Before I begin, I will apologise for so many
unintentional omissions, since I could not know everything or collect
every detail.

In order to gain possession of the town, the enemy, after taking
Douaumont--the resounding syllables of whose name boom like a great
bell through his communiqués--tries to approach the main line of
defence: Froideterre, Fleury, Souville. Vaux fort and village is one of
the mainstays of that line. From March 9 he pounds the slopes of the
fort and the approaches to the village. He continues to make frontal
attacks on them and at the same time attempts his usual manœuvre of
envelopment, on the one side debouching in La Caillette Wood, and on
the other side outflanking us in the village of Damloup.

Damloup, to the south-east of the fort, runs out like a pier-head
between two ravines, the gap of La Horgne which separates it from the
fort, and the gap of La Gayette which sweeps down from La Laufée Wood.
To the north-east, Vaux village, the eastern portion of which has been
lost, lies at the side of the Dieppe road, in the ravine of Le Bazil,
the entrance to which it commands. As you go up the ravine, you find,
after traversing a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards, a dyke, then
a little lake: the Pool of Vaux. At this point is the end of the ravine
of Fontaines, called by our men “the Ravine of Death,” which cuts
across Vaux-Chapître Wood. The enemy lays siege to the village, but at
the same time he also tries to get down into the ravine of Le Bazil by
advancing through La Caillette Wood. In this wild country, broken up
by clumps of trees, brushwood, narrow glens and gorges, a dim, dogged
struggle will be waged, dragging on for weeks and even months.

The enemy, at the end of March, has brought back the 121st Division
from the Woevre front. On March 21, after having made an important
reconnaissance on the previous evening, he overwhelms the fort,
the village, and the ravine of Le Bazil with shells. These are the
harbingers of an assault. The telephone communications are cut and the
connection service is kept up by means of scouts, since the broken
ground makes signalling impossible, except on the plateau of the fort.
A liquid fire attack precedes the three waves of the onset, each a
battalion strong, which dash in succession against the village. The
first is battered down; the two others, at a terrible cost in lives,
manage to encircle the three companies which still occupy the western
section.

On April 2 the 1st Battalion of the 149th Regiment (under Major
Maganiosc), which occupies the shelters of the Les Fontaines ravine,
is ordered to reoccupy the village. At daybreak it makes for the
dyke, where it breaks up into three detachments, each consisting of a
company, with the fourth as a support. One company has the main road
for its objective; another will operate farther north, between the
railway and the brook, in conjunction with the 31st Battalion of Light
Infantry; the third farther south, through the gardens.

In a few strides our men have reached the village and advanced as
far as the church. An artillery barrage, however, cuts them off and
prevents reinforcements from coming up to them. The liaison officers
who succeed in crossing this incessant curtain fire bring news that
at first cheers us, but then becomes more and more alarming. The
assailants have had to face a counter-attack and have been swept away
by the storming party. On the right bank, in the gardens, the company
commander, Lieutenant Vayssière, has been killed, and his men have been
thrown back. In the village there is hand-to-hand fighting. All the
officers of the third detachment have been killed, wounded, or taken
prisoner, among them Captain Toussaint, commanding the 2nd Company,
who, though seriously wounded, was still exhorting his men not to
surrender. Non-commissioned officers take their places. The enemy sets
fire to the houses by means of petrol. Sergeant Chef has rallied the
survivors, and, stationing them with a machine-gun section at the exit
by the side of the pool, has barricaded himself in the last house,
dug a trench, and brought the enemy to a halt. To the north, Sergeant
Chapelle holds out in the same way with some details until nightfall.
The men work in pairs; one makes a dug-out while his comrade fires. The
German losses are heavy. A private who saw them said, “Yes, there were
a good many of them laid out!”

Although the village is lost, but for the last house, the dyke road is
blocked up. On the northern side of the ravine, however, the Germans
have managed to get near the railway.

Early next day the 74th Regiment retakes the lost trenches of La
Caillette, and, continuing his advance, pushes his listening-posts up
to the ridge of far-famed Douaumont.

How can we tell the full story of all these fights, scarcely
interrupted for a moment, and all these feats of valour? On April 11
the enemy attacks with two divisions placed side by side on a front
of 1¾ miles, from Fort Douaumont to Fort Vaux; he is driven back. On
the 15th we attack him (with three battalions of the 36th Regiment
and details of the 120th) between the ravine of La Caillette and that
of La Fausse-Côte, and take nearly 200 prisoners. On the 19th the
attack is resumed; the 81st Brigade carries a small fort crammed with
dead and wounded, captures 260 prisoners (among them 9 officers, 4
cadets,[2] and 16 non-commissioned officers), and seizes machine-guns
and a large quantity of flame-throwers. In vain the enemy tries to
renew the offensive three days running; he is unable to rob us of the
trenches we have captured after so severe a struggle. All this month
of April is favourable to us in the Vaux region. General Nivelle, who
is in command of the sector, in accordance with instructions received
from the Commander-in-Chief and from General Pétain, the leader of the
army of Verdun, has given orders for an active defence, which raises
the morale of the troops and baffles the purpose of the foe. Satisfied
with the results obtained on both banks of the Meuse during the recent
operations, General Pétain, summoned by the Commander-in-Chief on April
30 to take command of the central group of armies, before handing over
to General Nivelle the command of the Second Army, addresses the troops
in an army order in which he says:

    [2] The nearest equivalent to “aspirants,” _i.e._ candidates
        for commissions who have had one year’s service after
        passing an examination and one year’s training in a
        military school.--_Translator’s Note._

“One of the greatest battles recorded in history has been raging for
more than two months round Verdun. Thanks to all, officers and men,
thanks to the devotion and self-denial shown by the various branches of
the service, a notable blow has been struck at the military power of
Germany.”

During the month of May a definite goal is aimed at, a task likely to
provide us with many thrills--the recapture of Fort Douaumont. What
a slap in the face this would be for German pride! Douaumont, which
has made the Teuton blow a loud trumpet-blast of victory; Douaumont,
a conquest won by surreptitious means and emblazoned with the glory
of a fictitious assault; Douaumont lost again would mean an outcry of
astonishment and wrath over the whole Empire. And on May 22 our gallant
lads re-enter Fort Douaumont. Soldiers of Mangin’s Division, battalions
of the 36th, 129th, 74th, and 54th Regiments, you will remember that
hour and that date when you matched the most daring conquerors!

Fort Vaux followed them from its observing stations and saw them
break through by the southern breach. It aided them with its guns in
the direction of Hardaumont and La Caillette. And its walls, which
resounded under the enemy’s bombardment, seemed to tremble with joy,
even as the hills of Israel leapt, at the deliverance of its old
comrade.

From the fort of Vaux to the pool the defences staked out on the slopes
of the hill are connected by three redoubts or entrenchments more or
less knocked to pieces, R¹, R², and R³ in the abbreviated style of
the reports. Captain Delvert, who from May 17 to 24 has occupied R¹
with the 8th Company of the 101st Regiment, and who will occupy it
again from May 31 to June 5, during the critical period, is one of
those officers whom the war has revealed to themselves by abruptly
withdrawing them from the civilian careers in which they had earned
distinction. A student and a thinker, with a fellowship in history,
he is the contemporary and was the close friend of Emile Clermont,
the tender, subtle, and pathetic novelist of _Laure_ and _Amour
Promis_, who before he was killed in a trench was able to draw lessons
favourable to his inner development from the scenes of bloodshed which
he held in instinctive horror.

His generation was at that meeting-place of all the roads of the new
age which has been marked by a certain indecision in all, or nearly
all, of us in our turn: the war, making him a leader of men, will have
prepared him for leadership in the intellectual world. He wears the
Legion of Honour and the War Cross. Of middle height, with a sunburnt
complexion, his eyes full of glittering fire behind his pince-nez,
his voice low and his gestures eloquent, he has acquired the habit
of looking at himself from outside recommended by Stendhal and his
followers. He analyzes himself while he acts. He sees himself in action
without being inconvenienced by the presence of this clear-sighted
eye-witness. Accordingly he has a precise notion of all that is
happening, and realizes the full significance of each event. The
background of the canvas does not escape him; he can easily reproduce
the stage-setting of the episodes, which he paints like an artist, with
rapid, sweeping strokes and warm colours. Men of this type will later
on make admirable chroniclers. At the most tragic moments he notices
the statuesque pose of a bomb-thrower, or is capable of feeling the
warm caress of a sunbeam. More than once I shall have recourse to the
notes which he has allowed me to consult: the concise yet passionate
style of his personal comments must be left to the imagination.

During the night of May 17-18, Captain Delvert, with his company,
reaches the entrenchment R¹ by way of the ravine of Les Fontaines. On
the way, the commander of the battalion which he is relieving receives
him in his quarters and conveys his instructions to him. “He is a
tall man,” writes Captain Delvert, “slim, about fifty years of age,
his face clean-shaven. This face is lighted up by a pair of fine,
intelligent eyes, and his lips pucker up into an ironical smile.”

There is a portrait in a few lines.

“He receives us,” continues the Captain, “in a charming manner. A
conversation is struck up with our battalion commander.

“‘We are going to the dyke. Has it been much shelled with heavies?’

“‘Well, well,’ answers the major, very coolly, ‘one of my officers
counted in his sector an average of four shells a minute in a whole
day.’

“‘And the major? what about his headquarters?’

“‘Still in pretty good condition, but you can’t get out of the place.
It opens out on to a ravine which is constantly being shelled.’

“‘And where do these shells fall?’

“‘On the north, west, and east. It is only on the southern side that we
don’t get any, except when our 155’s fire short.... (_A pause._) ...
And then, you know, you will have _totos_!’

“‘Totos?’

“‘Yes--well, fleas, if you like! Everybody has them.’

“‘We emerge from the major’s quarters and pass into the gallery which
leads to the ravine of Les Fontaines. The country becomes more and more
dismal and desolate. The trees are already nothing more than stumps.
To make matters worse, since we have had a lot of rain, the gallery
changes into a canal, with water a foot or more deep.”

       *       *       *       *       *

And now the rain of shells begins. What the Captain said is right; it
comes from every direction except the south.

At last Captain Delvert reaches his post. Every day he draws up his
balance-sheet, just as the officer of the watch on a cruiser writes
out his log. Here is the record of his days from May 18 to 24. It is a
picture of the life our men lead in the Vaux region:


_Diary of Captain Delvert_ (_May 18-24_)

  “_Thursday, May 18._--My trench by the side of the railway
  commands the ravine of Vaux, which is riddled like a sieve with
  shell-craters full of water.

  “That ruin in front, some sixty or eighty yards from the village,
  is the ‘western house of Vaux’ mentioned in the communiqués.

  “The village is now nothing more than a mass of crumbling walls,
  which our 155 mm. guns are constantly battering.

  “In front of headquarters is Fort Vaux. To the north and east it is
  surrounded by the Boche trenches.

  “The dreariness of the landscape is beyond description. At this
  moment (7 P.M.) it is bathed in the soft, warm, purple light of the
  setting sun. The ridges of the hill are bare, without a blade of
  grass. The Fumin Wood is reduced to a few tree-stumps ranged like
  the teeth of a comb along its summit, like that wood of ‘the Hand
  of Massiges’ which our troopers have nicknamed ‘the Cock’s Comb.’
  The soil has been so much churned up by the shells that the earth
  has become as shifting as sand, and the shell-holes make the place
  look like a range of dunes.

  “All of a sudden the cannonade, which had slackened off a little,
  breaks out in all its fury. In one minute we count eight Boche
  shells whistling over our heads.

  “On the ridge of Vaux, which shows up purple against the setting
  sun, the black clouds of our 155’s rise in every direction. It is
  an orchestra of Hell.

  “The Commandant’s office is a shell-hole covered with a few beams
  and a little earth. Under the floor are corpses, perhaps those whom
  the shell has buried.

  “The occupants go to sleep on the floor, their heads resting on
  their knapsacks.

  “The men are crowded together in recesses that certainly would not
  shelter them from the rain.

  “Let us wait!

  “_Friday the 19th._--The cannonade never stops day or night. It
  deafens our ears and clouds our brains.

  “To-day, since 6 P.M., the hillsides of Vaux have been disappearing
  under our shell-fire.

  “From here one can see them falling right on to the white lines
  formed in the ground by the Boche trenches and communication
  passages.

  “At night, in the starlight, green rockets shoot up from our front
  lines at the bottom of the ravines. ‘Lengthen the range! Lengthen
  the range!’ cry our poor comrades.

  “Other shouts are then heard from all sides.

  “Red rockets on the Hardaumont plateau. We are attacked. Fire,
  lads, fire! Bar the way in front of our trenches!

  “Red rockets from Fort Vaux. Red rockets down there, far off,
  behind Fumin. How many desperate appeals all over this gloomy
  countryside!

  “Meanwhile, the Boches from their lines send up other kinds of
  rockets, trench flares or ‘star-shells.’ These flash forth from the
  darkness every moment in order to ensure that no shovelful of earth
  shall be removed by the victims marked out for annihilation by the
  shells.

  “The whistling of the projectiles which cross each other above our
  heads is so loud that you might imagine yourself to be by the sea,
  with the swell of the waves, as they rise and fall, crashing in
  your ears. The explosions, with their tremendous uproar, produce
  the effect of a continual thunderstorm, accompanied by periodic
  flashes of lightning.

  “_Saturday the 20th_ (11 P.M.).--The lake, with its dreary waters
  and its sombre setting, runs right up to the three ridges that
  shut in the horizon. The moon hangs over this distant quarter like
  a silver veil, dotted with darker specks along the summit of the
  hills. At the foot of our trenches she sheds her shimmering light
  over the marsh of the ravine, so that it forms a burnished island
  amid the ripple of the waters.

  “To the right, on the dyke, a procession of funereal shadows glides
  past in silence.

  “It is the relief that is going by.

  “At a steady pace, never stumbling, it climbs up towards the
  Hardaumont plateau, where our shells are crashing, and the white,
  red, or green cones rise unceasingly into the sky--a firework
  display given by men marked out for death.

  “_Sunday, May 21._--The fine weather continues. So does the
  cannonade.

  “Midnight.

  “This evening, at nightfall, the Boche sent us tear-shells. These
  gases are extremely unpleasant. Your eyes smart, you weep, you
  choke, you get a splitting headache. What a torment!

  “The cannonade becomes fast and furious.

  “The 24th will soon have to attack on the hillsides of Vaux in
  front of R¹. All my men are at their posts. The hill that commands
  Fort Vaux stretches out its dark line beneath the half-red disc of
  the moon. It is reflected down below, a motionless shadow, in the
  marsh at the foot of our trenches.

  “The horizon, the fort, the ravine, and the distant dip of the
  Woevre are wrapped in a silvery mist.

  “Near me, right and left, I see in the darkness, above the trench,
  the dim glint of the men’s helmets. I think of the terrace of
  Elsinore and of the sentries relieving each other there during the
  night.

  “Here the sentries get no relief. Under those helmets their eyes
  are watchfully sweeping the ravine, the embankment slope and the
  ballast of the railway. On all sides there spurts up the lurid
  flame of the crashing shells. The splinters fall like a heavy
  shower of rain into the marshes; others come humming like a top and
  land in the trenches.

  “The half-hidden, sinister struggle goes on.

  “At ten minutes to two the cannonade grows more intense. Rifles and
  machine-guns spit and crackle. The night is made hideous with a
  confused uproar that re-echoes in the valley.

  “Red rockets dart up incessantly from the German lines. On the
  parapet, with straining eyes, our rifles in our hands, dumb
  with horror, we witness a mysterious duel, in which we hear
  the din without seeing the actors. Green rockets flare up from
  our trenches. ‘Lengthen the range!’ is the cry, while a Boche
  machine-gun emits its crisp, abrupt note.

  “Another machine-gun that the artillery preparation has forgotten.

  “The valley is filled with a dense vapour, a blend of dust and
  smoke, which hides everything from view.

  “On the Hardaumont plateau dawn begins to appear.

  “But the struggle goes on without respite. It rages more and more
  furiously in the fog, a fog through which the rockets cleave a
  fiery trail and the red flames of the shell-bursts are constantly
  darting up. From all sides the bullets whistle around us. The
  youngsters of the 1916 class, now receiving their baptism of fire,
  cluster round the sides of the parapet. We officers and N.C.O.’s,
  our rifles in our hands, spur them on to fight. Very soon each
  finds his mark among the Boches, who can be seen--now that day has
  risen--gradually receding all along the hillsides of Vaux.

  “_Monday, May 22._--A cartridge-base of 130 mm. has entered my
  dug-out, broken my bâtman’s leg, and flattened itself out on the
  wall near my head.

  “_11 o’clock._--German counter-attack on the trench taken this
  morning by the 129th. Boche detachments are crossing the slopes. We
  fire at them; they can be seen lying down flat on the ground, then
  proceeding again at the double. There is one who still lies prone.
  He must have been hit. One must admit that they are brave soldiers,
  these fellows.

  “They have reached the trench. A hand-grenade duel begins. An
  appalling fire is directed at Fumin, through which other units of
  the 124th are to come as reinforcements.

  “To our left, Douaumont has been recaptured since this morning.

  “_Wednesday, May 24--1 o’clock in the morning._--This time it is
  Hell indeed. The night is as black as ink. The little valley now
  seems a gigantic chasm girdled by fantastic hills, great sombre
  masses with vague outlines. At the bottom of the chasm the pools
  of the marsh glitter mysteriously in the dark. Dim vapours rise
  incessantly, accompanied by a terrific noise; red and white gleams
  cut athwart each other, so that out of the shadows there suddenly
  leap up mountains of darkness which appear for a moment to be
  encircled with light, then vanish at once into the night.

  “Through the heavy air, in which one can scarcely breathe for dust
  and smoke, there is all the time an invisible gliding to and fro,
  a frightful whistling, roaring, and crackling, and a spurting of
  flames that seems endless.

  “Is it the Twilight of the Gods? the _Götterdämmerung_ which
  haunted the sublime imagination of their barbarian giant? Is
  the earth yawning, and is that savage world whose monstrous maw
  wellnigh devoured humanity sinking into a fiery pit? No. It is
  merely an episode of the war: the German counter-attack on R¹.

  “Perhaps it will get a line in the communiqués.

  “_8 o’clock._--The hillsides of Vaux seem more sinister than ever.

  “All along the German trench that is being fought over, rigid
  bodies stiff and stark in blue greatcoats, black trails. The soil,
  in places, looks as if it were burnt. One corpse has been stripped
  of its greatcoat.

  “We can see that naked back in the sunlight.”...

Each episode of the combat is linked up with the operation as a
whole. The attack on Douaumont will have an immediate effect on the
rest of the fighting. The battle on the Verdun front is a part of the
single battle that is being waged on all the fronts. Accordingly the
beleaguered islet of Vaux is about to rivet the attention of the entire
globe.

Our troops have been unable to hold their ground in Fort Douaumont,
of which they only occupied the superstructure and a part of the
casemates. On May 24 a German counter-offensive has succeeded in
enveloping and retaking the earthwork. It seems as if the daring
enterprise of May 22 had aroused their anger as a strip of red cloth
excites a bull. They nearly lost Douaumont; so outrageous an insult
decides them to rush on Verdun with redoubled fury. They devote to
the onslaught a new force, the 1st Bavarian Corps. On May 25, 26, and
27 they pounce upon Thiaumont Farm, in the direction of Froideterre.
From May 31 onwards they move slantwise on their left and, flinging
themselves at Fort Vaux, will not resign themselves to abandoning the
prey which they covet and which they thought was in their grip eight
months ago.

Their plan will be to outflank the fort to the west by way of the
ravines of Le Bazil and Les Fontaines, and to the east by way of
Damloup.

On May 31 our line is carried up again beyond the Le Bazil ravine so
as to wind round the Hardaumont salient, which belongs to us, through
La Caillette Wood. Then it runs back, crossing the ravine by the dyke,
passes in front of the entrenchments R³, R², and R¹, envelops the fort
at a distance of barely 200 yards from the counterscarp, sweeps down
into La Horgne bottom, is thrust out into a point at Damloup village,
and bends back into La Gayette bottom in front of La Laufée.

The Hardaumont salient and Damloup village run out from the line like
spires, and their defence is a hazardous business. The entrenchments
have been broken up. What sort of a barrier can the fort still provide?




BOOK III

THE STRANGLEHOLD




I

STONES AND MEN


What is the condition of that luckless fort of Vaux, which for a
hundred days, since February 21, has received its daily ration of
shells: ten thousand on an average for the district, and of all
calibre, but chiefly of the heaviest, the 210 mm., the 305 mm., and
even the 380 mm.? It must have been hammered, pounded, bruised,
crushed, scoured, pulverized: unusable and uninhabitable, can it be
anything but an indiscriminate heap of stone and earth, of rubbish of
all kinds transformed into dust or ashes? Where the Emperor William’s
artillery has done its work thoroughly, we are assured that nothing is
left. Attila boasted that no grass grew where his horses’ hoofs had
trod.

And indeed the outward aspect of the fort is deplorable. The
superstructures are entirely destroyed, and the top is now nothing but
chaos.

The southern entrance has given way, and for a long time has been unfit
for use. In order to make one’s way into the interior one passes either
by the double transverse gallery to the north-west, or by the single
transverse gallery to the north-east.

The double transverse gallery has been staved in, but an exit has been
fitted up, an exit for the use of the troops who succeed each other in
the western sector of the fort (curtain, Besançon trench). The passage
connecting it with the main pile has crevices in it near the descent
into the ditch and has been smashed in near the barracks.

In the same way, the single north-eastern transverse gallery has been
pierced near the exterior of the fort, and provides a passage for the
details that hold the eastern and northern trenches (Fort and Belfort
trenches).

These two entrances, which are on the side of the trapezoid nearest
the enemy, will be to the advantage of the assailant. It is here if
anywhere that he will penetrate. But can he expect a resistance in such
a ruin? The 75 turret has been seriously damaged; it can no longer
communicate with the barracks. The whole place is of little use for
defensive purposes. The two armoured observing stations have escaped
destruction, but machine-guns cannot be set up in them. The single
transverse gallery to the south-west is in fairly good condition;
its line of communication, which had been blocked up, has been
re-established; it has no external opening. Finally, the barracks have
cracks in them, but are still serviceable. A garrison can take shelter
there.

The double barbed-wire entanglement which surrounded the fort is now
in fragments, or buried in the shell-holes. The resisting power of the
counterscarp, the escarp, and the ditch that lies between them cannot
be reckoned upon; the walls have several breaches and have sunk down,
and the ditch, now half filled with earth, is no longer an obstacle.

Such is this remnant of a fort, such are these inadequate defences
which the enemy is approaching. On March 9, when he laid siege to it,
he was still confronted with barbed wire, ramparts, parapets, covers
for machine-guns. Now, if he succeeds in reaching it--and he is nearly
touching it, he is less than two hundred yards from it--he can find his
way into it without any marvellous acrobatic feats, and, in order to
make an entry, he will find the two exits from the northern transverse
galleries gaping wide before him. There is now no longer anything,
apart from the demolished trenches in front and on his flanks, to
oppose his inroad. Nothing but men who await the storm, like sailors
determined not to forsake their disabled ship.

The commander of the garrison is Major Raynal of the 96th Infantry
Regiment. Though wounded, he refused to wait until he was cured before
returning to duty. Born at Bordeaux, where his father was a bootmaker,
on March 7, 1867, of a family that originally came from Montauban, the
future defender of Vaux was educated at the Angoulême _lycée_, then
enlisted in the 123rd Regiment on March 15, 1885. Five years later he
entered the military school of St. Maixent, and left it as a second
lieutenant on April 1901, having gained the first place out of 328
candidates. A Captain at the outbreak of the war, he was appointed
Battalion Commander on August 24, 1914. How he led his battalion may be
shown by a quotation from an Army order: “Commanding the advanced guard
of his regiment on September 14, 1914, and getting into touch with the
strongly entrenched enemy at a brief distance from early in the morning
onwards, he at once took up his position on the tactical points, and
by strenuous efforts kept his battalion there under fire from German
rifles, machine-guns, and heavy artillery. Seriously wounded in the
afternoon, he retained command of his battalion, staying in the first
line in order personally to direct the fighting, in close and difficult
country, until his loss of blood became so great that he was compelled
to retire.” At Crouy, on September 14, a bullet from a machine-gun
ripped up his chest on the left side. He had been a Knight of the
Legion of Honour since July 11, 1900, and was promoted Officer[3] on
January 11, 1916, with the following description:

    [3] There are five grades of the _Légion d’honneur_: (1)
        _Chevalier_, (2) _Officer_, (3) _Commandeur_, (4)
        _Grand-Officer_, (5) _Grand-Croix_.--_Translator’s Note._

“An admirable officer of high character and military abilities. Badly
wounded on September 14, 1914, he returned to the front, where he has
continued to render signal service: was very badly wounded once more on
October 3, 1915, when he was coolly and methodically proceeding to a
reconnaissance of the sector in which his battalion was posted.”

His second wound was received at Tahure, in Champagne; a splinter from
a shell in his abdomen broke the top of his hip-bone before passing out
through his back.

Not being sufficiently recovered to take up an active command with any
confidence, he asked for a post where there would be little moving
about and plenty of danger. “You will be given command of a Verdun
fort.” The Major pulls a wry face: he would prefer open country. “Then
let it be the most exposed fort.” “Which one?” “Vaux, obviously.” “Very
well, then, go to Vaux.”

So off he goes. Such is the man to whom the destinies of the fort are
entrusted. His force consists of a company of the 142nd Regiment, the
6th, under the command of Lieutenant Alirol (120 rifles), a company
of the machine-gun section of the 142nd (under Lieutenant Bazy),
some thirty artillerymen, ten engineers, twenty hospital orderlies,
stretcher-bearers and telephone operators, and twenty Territorials
for fatigues. In all, from 250 to 300 men. But this is the normal
regulation number of the garrison. All of a sudden it will be increased
by some fifty machine-gunners of the 53rd Regiment, then by wounded
who will be conveyed to the dressing-station, then by details of the
101st and 142nd Regiments. The last-named, screening the fort in
front and on the flanks, will be pushed back into the interior under
the pressure of the enemy’s advance, by way of the openings in the
transverse galleries. As early as June 2 the numbers begin to swell,
and from 250 they will soon rise to more than 600. This will add to
the already serious difficulties of the defence. In fact, whereas the
replenishments of munitions and the engineering and medical services
are on the whole adequate, the food supply has been calculated to last
out a fortnight, and that for a garrison of 250 men only. The cisterns
have indeed been filled, but the troops of the centre have always
looked upon the fort as a place to get water supplied by a merciful
Providence to save them from the thirst that is so terribly hard to
bear on those arid, fire-swept hillsides. The commandants of the fort
have constantly had to struggle against this tendency: nevertheless,
during May, they have succeeded in creating a reserve supply of water.
This reserve supply has been brought in by fatigue parties, carrying
water-bottles that hold three and a half pints each: heroic fatigue
parties these, liable at times to tragic interruptions. On May 29 the
reserve supply reached barely 3500 or 5000 pints. A garrison of the
normal size, put on rations from the beginning, would have found in
this amount resources for a period of ten to twelve days, and even
more. The new arrivals will make it run out on the very first day. It
will not be long before there is a shortage of water, and thirst will
be the most cruel hardship of the Vaux garrison.

Yet the defenders are ready, and Major Raynal is waiting.




II

THE STRANGLEHOLD TIGHTENS IN THE WEST

(JUNE 1)


From May 31 the bombardment of our first lines of La Caillette and of
the Le Bazil ravine, the Vaux-Chapître Wood, the fort and the whole
district of Vaux, Damloup, and La Laufée, outdoes the usual battering
to such an extent that one expects an offensive. At what point will
it be aimed? At the whole front or at a small section? Faithful to
his old tactics of advancing one shoulder and then another, the enemy
attacks only the west of the fort. He will confine his objective to the
Hardaumont salient, which we still hold, the border of La Caillette
Wood, the Le Bazil ravine where the railway passes, the pool and the
dyke, and finally the Fumin Wood, a part of the Vaux-Chapître Wood
lying to the east of Les Fontaines. If he reaches Fumin Wood, he will
easily carry the series of entrenchments R³, R², and R¹, which defend
the slopes above the pool of Vaux up to a point near the fort. If he
gains the entrenchments, the fort will be outflanked and will fall in
its turn. Perhaps a single day will suffice for him to achieve that
turning movement which will win him the famous “armoured fort” whose
pretended capture had sent a thrill of pride through Germany on March
9. In three months this ill-starred fort has been reduced to powder.
No matter: it bears a sonorous name, and there should be no difficulty
in taking it; what troops would ensconce themselves in such a shelter?
In order to settle the matter once for all, the enemy launches the 1st
Division (minus the 3rd Grenadiers) between La Caillette Wood and the
fort, the 50th Division between the fort and the Damloup, and between
the fort and Damloup a division comprising the 3rd Grenadiers of the
1st Division and the 126th and 105th Regiments of the 15th Corps. The
vast number of effectives employed--destined even to be reinforced on
June 5 by the 2nd Brigade of the Alpine Corps--shows the value that he
attaches to this already sore-stricken prey.

Our defence outside the fort is disposed as follows: at the Hardaumont
salient (La Caillette Wood) a battalion of the 24th Regiment; from the
dyke to the entrenchment R¹ the 1st Battalion (under Major Fralon)
of the 101st Regiment (one company at the dyke, one, the 3rd, under
Lieutenant Gontal, at R³ and R², a platoon at each redoubt); from R¹
to the west of the fort the 8th Company, under Captain Delvert, at R¹
the 7th in a defensive hook-shaped arrangement in front and to the left
of the fort.

The chain is carried on by the 142nd Regiment (under Colonel Tahon),
who provided the fort with its garrison, and who occupies, in front and
to the east, the trench of Belfort with his 2nd Battalion (under Major
Chevassu); the 7th and 8th Companies in the Belfort trench, the two
others acting as a support to the south-east. The 1st Battalion (under
Major Mouly) occupies the village of Damloup with three companies, the
4th holding in the rear the battery of Damloup and the trenches of
Saales which, from the battery, rejoins the village. Finally, farther
to the east the 3rd Battalion, under Major Bouin, is put in charge of
the Dicourt sector and the La Laufée earthwork. The defence will be
completed by relief drafts or reinforcements.

On June 1, at eight o’clock, the enemy, after a strenuous artillery
preparation, attacks that Hardaumont salient which we still hold to
the north of the Le Bazil ravine, where the railway and the road from
Fleury to Vaux pass by. At the redoubt R¹, where the ground slopes down
from the plateau on which Fort Vaux stands, Captain Delvert is in the
front row of the stalls to watch the performance going on before him
on the other side of the ravine. He sees the German infantrymen come
out like ants from an anthill that some foot has kicked. Here they are
making their way down towards our trench in the salient. They leap into
it. The white smoke that emerges shows that a hand-grenade duel is in
progress. Farther up, swarms of light-blue greatcoats try to scramble
up the slopes of La Caillette Wood, already bathed in sunshine;
they fall back in disorder towards La Fausse-Côte and descend once
more in the direction of the pool. The shells burst in their midst,
but scarcely a man is hit. Then the Germans, in single file, creep
alongside the railway! There can be no doubt on the point; the salient
is lost and they hold the ravine.

They continue to defile up to the embankment slope of the railway. In
ever-increasing numbers they arrive at the dyke, and cross it. Now they
are approaching Fumin Wood and the entrenchments. These entrenchments
are little more than shell-holes joined together, except R¹, which
still retains a fortified aspect with its walls in reinforced cement
and its lofty embankment. At noon, the assault is aimed at R² and R³;
their resistance at last stops the enemy, whose on-coming masses are
mown down by machine-guns and rifles. Every “grey ghost that crawls
along the slopes of Fumin” is at once registered and fired at. For all
that, the enemy has come very close; we have been able to capture from
him, on the spot, a lieutenant, a cadet, and four soldiers of the 41st
Infantry Regiment.

He will not halt when so near the goal, in spite of this sanguinary
set-back. A battalion takes the place of the one that has been cut
down. At two o’clock in the afternoon comes a fresh onset, which
becomes a long-drawn-out contest, swaying backwards and forwards. The
struggle is a fierce one in the communication passages and half-filled
trenches, an affair of bombs, of bayonets, of hand-to-hand fighting.
At three o’clock, however, the two entrenchments are lost. Not a man
has come back to tell what has happened at the dyke. As to what took
place at R² and R³, occupied by the two platoons, a postcard from their
commander, Lieutenant Gontal, written from a prisoners’ camp to Colonel
Lanusse, commanding the 101st Regiment, brought the news a month later.

I met Colonel Lanusse when he had just arrived at a rest billet, in a
pleasant little village amid the wild dales of the Argonne. He had had
a spell in the trenches; he had left off his jersey on account of the
heat, and was tuning a piano which he had discovered at the house of
one of the villagers. Such a stroke of luck is rare for a music-lover.
A flute and a violin, placed on the table, and also the score of a
classical trio, were awaiting the performers.

“You see,” he said to me, “_musica me juvat_.”

“Or _delectat_,” I countered, in pious recollection of my Latin grammar.

With the same simplicity he drew me a picture of the terrible week
in which his regiment distinguished itself. Lieutenant Gontal’s card
cheered him like a march tune, but did not surprise him in the least.
He was sure that things must have turned out in this way. And whenever
he laid stress on the part played by any one of his officers, he
hastened to do justice to the others. With the exception of himself, he
gave some account of the whole cadre. Here, then, is the testimony of
Lieutenant Gontal, which, in a few laconic words, sums up the defence
of R² and R³:

“Wounded on June 1. Was picked up by the Germans and brought here. We
carried out to the letter the order given: not to draw back an inch on
any pretext. Thus it was that we were cut off, outflanked on all sides,
and overwhelmed by weight of numbers. I was one of the last to fall,
hit right in the stomach by a bullet fired at ten yards’ distance.
Lieutenant Huret had his right arm fractured. Second Lieutenant
Pasquier was wounded. Sergeant-Major Farjon had his right hand crushed
and his left thigh pierced by a bullet. Cadet Tocabens had five shell
splinters in his body. Sergeant Lecocq was killed by a bullet in his
forehead. The rest of the company suffered losses in proportion. This
summary will tell you more than any lengthy comment of the way in which
we understood our duty and satisfied the claims of honour.

“I would draw special attention to the bravery shown by Lieutenant
Huret, Cadet Tocabens, and above all, Sergeant-Major Farjon, who richly
deserves the Military Medal.”

After each onset there is the same moving refrain, the same list of
officers and N.C.O.’s dead or wounded.

The first postcard written by Lieutenant Gontal on June 5 from the
hospital is addressed to his Colonel. The second is for his wife at
Toulouse. “After fighting near Verdun for twenty days,” he tells her,
“I was wounded by a bullet in the stomach. I was picked up on the
battlefield by Germans and taken prisoner. The doctor thinks he will
pull me through. Cheer up! I fell as a soldier should; honour is not
lost. But I was broken-hearted, for henceforth the War Cross is out of
the question.”

A month later, on July 13, he gives fuller details, but the same idea
haunts him. “The brave fellows,” he says of his company, “nearly all
got killed or wounded on the spot, and not one officer came out of
the battle unscathed.” Then he adds: “How is it that my wound was not
mortal? Once more Providence has intervened. Well, it will be the
proudest boast of my life not to have yielded one inch of ground and to
have fallen at the post that my country had entrusted to me. All this,
you know, makes me forget my pain and throws a halo round the memory of
all the gallant lads of my company who were killed there.”

Finally, in August, he seems to have recovered from his wound and to
be quite hopeful again. He asks his people in a graceful bit of writing
for some ten-centime cigars--“those good cigars of our sweet France,
from which there rises, subtle and sly, the blue smoke that is like
a corner of heaven mirrored in our lovely clear waters, the smoke in
which you can see our hills, our great forests, our dear land with its
twenty centuries of glory, honour, and faith--in short, that France for
which I and so many others have so gladly given up the best part of our
lives.” To make his exile bearable, he will no doubt write verses. Is
it not fitting to quote these letters from a prisoner before reverting
to that day of June 1?

In the course of this great day, the scouts, who had almost all
volunteered, ensured the connections with unflagging devotion. One
of them arrived at the Commander’s headquarters in Fumin Wood,
crossing--by what a marvellous stroke of luck!--a very heavy curtain
fire.

“You might have waited a few moments,” says the Colonel to him in a
fatherly tone.

The man points to the envelope.

“Yes, sir, but he has written ‘urgent.’”

Two others are sent from the regiment to brigade headquarters. On the
way, one of them is killed by a 105, and the despatch that he was
carrying is lost. His comrade goes back to the Colonel’s headquarters,
asks for a copy of the despatch, and starts off again to carry out his
mission.

The Germans, now in possession of the two entrenchments, make an
advance in Fumin Wood. The task that lies before them is to storm R¹,
the redoubt nearest the fort, and then they will approach the fort by
the west and even the south. Our surprise and their daring will perhaps
enable them to take it without striking a blow.

Nevertheless the Colonel of the 101st makes his arrangements for the
battle in the manner of an eminent orchestra conductor. He stations
his reserves as a barrier in the wood, seeks and finds his connections
in the Fontaines ravine, and has the ground dug into in order to gain
a better grip on it. All the ensuing night he will make his men work
without a break, profiting by the uncertainty as to the time that
paralyses the enemy’s artillery, in order to find cover and to organize
his front between R¹ and the ravine.

The redoubt R¹ is besieged from the evening of June 1. Two
machine-guns, sweeping the hillsides, damp the enemy’s ardour: in
front of their range of fire, one sees clumps of grey bodies stretched
out on the ground. In our trenches the scene is already a tragic one:
“Everywhere the stones have been splashed with red drops. In places,
great pools of violet-coloured, viscous blood have been formed, and
cease to spread. Half-way along the communication trench, in the bright
sunshine, corpses are lying, stiff and stark under their blood-stained
canvas. Everywhere there are piles of débris of all kinds: empty tins
of canned food, disembowelled knapsacks, helmets riddled with holes,
rifles shattered and splashed with blood. In the midst of these ghastly
heaps a white shirt flutters, hideous with red clots. An intolerable
stench poisons the air. To crown it all, the Boches send us some
tear-shells, which make the air impossible to breathe. And the heavy
hammer-blows of the shells never cease from echoing all around us.”

This is the picture of that June evening drawn by Captain Delvert, who
is in command of the defence of R¹. R¹ will hold out until the 8th,
and will not be taken until the night of June 8-9. Just as an artist
makes a rough cast before carving the statue in marble, so the defence
of the redoubt is a sketch, in miniature, of the defence of the fort.
As regards this episode of the fort, it is best not to interrupt the
story, but to follow it to the end, looking ahead for a while. In any
case, R¹ fights a lonely battle, unconscious of what is going on at
its right or its left, not knowing whether the fort is alive or dead,
imagining that it is still guarding one of the fort’s flanks, when the
enemy has already succeeded in passing between the entrenchment and the
counterscarp. He who led the resistance has a peculiar right to act as
its historian. Here, then, is a portion of Captain Delvert’s admirable
notes, from June 2 up to the evening of the 5th, when he was relieved:

  _Captain Delvert’s Diary, June 2-5_

  “_Friday, June 2._--A night of agony, broken by continual alarms.
  Yesterday we were not replenished. Thirst is what troubles us
  more than anything. Biscuits are being looked for.... A shell has
  just made my pen slip. It fell not very far off. It landed in
  headquarters by the door, and pulverized my quartermaster-sergeant,
  poor little C----. Everything suffered from the concussion. I was
  covered with earth, but was quite unhurt--not a scratch!

       *       *       *       *       *

  “_8 o’clock_ P.M.--The Boches opposite us are emerging from their
  trench. Here, every one is at the loophole. I have had grenades
  handed out to the whole company, for at the distance where we are
  the rifle is useless.

  “Here they come!

  “‘Forward, boys! Stick to it!’

  “S---- cuts the wire and we fling our bombs.

  “The Boches reply to us with rifle-grenades, but their range
  is too long. Those who came out of the trench, taken aback by
  our reception of them, turn tail and make with all speed for
  Sarajevo--except those who here and there, sometimes in groups, are
  left stretched out upon the plain.

  “From Sarajevo (the Sarajevo trench, occupied by the enemy, is
  scarcely 50 or 60 yards from the redoubt) shadows can be seen
  flitting out hastily and betaking themselves to the rear:
  doubtless this is the second wave that is ebbing back.

  “‘To your rifles, lads! We must follow them up!’

  “Ch---- sends up a red rocket. If we could use 75’s now, the
  conditions would be ideal.

  “All of a sudden there is a spurt of flame behind us, with torrents
  of black and white smoke. It is as though fiery fountains were
  playing. There can be no doubt about it! They have forced a passage
  on the right and are directing a liquid fire attack at us.

  “But now, from the conflagration, red and green flames are rising.
  What can it be? Ah, it’s my store of rockets that is ablaze. At
  such a moment! Luckily the Boches have been well looked after. Some
  poor devils rush down on the right, with loud shrieks. A few of the
  men near me take alarm and leave the loophole.

  “‘Back to your places! Good heavens, what do you think you are
  doing? And you, you pack of fools, bolting away because a couple of
  rockets catch fire!’

  “In less than two minutes order is restored.

  “The flames rise and bubble incessantly, in the blackness of the
  night, amid the shower of shells. Every moment a fresh rocket
  gushes out into flame.

  “The blaze reaches headquarters, and two tongues of fire soon dart
  out from there. First of all we must save the grenades, which are
  quite close to us. A sack of cartridges has been caught in the
  furnace, for we can hear the crackling. The worst of it is that the
  walls are made of sandbags and also help to feed the flames. Then
  there are the shells, and the bullets that never stop whistling.

  “At last! All the cases of grenades have been cleared away.
  Shovelfuls of earth are thrown on to the fire, which is now
  beginning to grow less violent.

  “Fortunately, our bombs have had a sobering effect upon the Boches.

  “True, we must go and look for more grenades if we wish to hold
  out against a fresh onset. Nearly twenty cases of them have been
  emptied.

  “_10 o’clock_ P.M.--A man comes from the Colonel’s headquarters
  with five water-bottles--one of them empty--for the whole company.
  The bottles hold four pints each. This makes not quite eighteen
  pints for 60 corporals and privates, 8 sergeants and 3 officers.

  “The sergeant-major, in my presence, distributes this water with
  scrupulous fairness. It has a taint of corpses.

  “_Saturday, June 3._--I have not slept for nearly sixty-two hours.

  “2.30 P.M.--The Boches are making a fresh onslaught.

  “‘Keep cool, my lads! Let them get well out! We have to husband our
  ammunition. At twenty-five paces! Let them have it hot and strong
  when I give the word of command!

  “‘Fire!’

  “‘Jump to it!’

  “Crack! go the rifles, all together. A smart piece of work. Well
  done! Black smoke rises. We see batches of Boches spin round and
  fall. One or two get up on their knees and manage to crawl away.
  Another lets himself roll down into the trench, so great is his
  haste. Some, however, advance towards us, while their comrades who
  remain in the trench riddle us with bullets.

  “One of them even comes right up to the wire entanglement, three
  yards from the parapet. D---- lays him out with a bomb flung fair
  and square at his head.

  “At three-thirty they have had enough, and withdraw into their
  lair. The sun is shining brightly. A song rises to my lips.

  “‘You are in good spirits, sir!’

  “‘Obviously. After all, when the die is cast----’

  “At six o’clock the German stretcher-bearers come out to pick up
  their wounded. I forbid my men to fire upon them.

       *       *       *       *       *

  “The Germans pass the dyke without a stop. They occupy R¹. We are
  hard pressed on all sides. The situation is highly critical. The
  horror of it grips our very heart-strings.

       *       *       *       *       *

  “This evening, the Boches clear the way with heavy artillery fire.
  We shall certainly have to face a fresh attack.

  “I order my men to reconstruct the machine-gun emplacement, which
  has been destroyed during the day, and to take up a position with
  the one of the two guns which they have succeeded in repairing.

  “For drinking-water, as it is raining, the men have put their mugs
  outside, and have laid down canvas.

  “At 8.30 P.M. the gentlemen over the way emerge from Sarajevo.

  “The _poilus_ rejoice at this. At 15 yards they send them such
  a violent barrage of bombs, supported by machine-guns, that the
  Germans are not inclined to press the point. The attack is brought
  to a dead stop.

  “At 10 P.M. an officer appears in my quarters.

  “This is to announce reinforcements, some details of the 124th
  and 298th Regiments which have come to help in the defence. The
  sorely-tried little garrison of R¹ is already greatly thinned in
  numbers.

  “The shells begin to fall again.

  “It is impossible to light a candle in the C.O.’s headquarters. If
  the least bit of light is seen from outside, the Jack Johnsons land
  on the spot.

  “In order to make out my report for the past twenty-four hours, I
  have to crouch down in a corner, under a blanket, and write on the
  ground.

  “As for taking a moment’s rest, that is not to be thought of. The
  bombardment does not break off for a single minute, and, what is
  more, we are so much pestered with fleas that we scratch ourselves
  as if we had the itch.

  “_Sunday, June 4._--‘They’re not up to taking R¹, those Boches,’
  cries one of my _poilus_ to me as he passes.

  “I was at the redoubt, organizing the connections with my left.

  “‘Well, about twenty-four hours ago you had a pretty gruelling time
  of it here,’ remarks X---- to me.

  “‘Yes, you saw those grenades being handed out.’

  “At the same moment comes a significant crackle. A duel of grenades
  is in progress.

  “I hastily scramble up the narrow path which leads me into the
  trench and reach my post in the fray.

  “The weather is superb. The bombs are roaring on all sides. A
  grenade duel is a fine sight: the bomb-thrower, firmly ensconced
  behind the parapet, hurls his bomb with the graceful swing of an
  athlete.

  “S----, crouching down near the grenade cases, calmly cuts the
  wires and passes them to us without a word. A dense black smoke
  rises heavenwards, in front of the trench.

  “At four o’clock all is over, but for a few rifle-volleys. These
  are like the final sobs of a long spell of weeping.

  “The sunshine is glorious, and makes one realize all the more
  keenly the utter desolation of this ravine.

  “Some wounded come down, streaming with blood.

  “The dead are brought in, among others poor D----, who rose up in
  the trench in order to smite down a Boche officer, and had his
  skull pierced.

  “At the end of the trench occupied by bomb-throwers of the 5th, and
  ten men of the 124th, two Boches entered and were blown to atoms.

  “A prisoner comes down. His face is beardless, his eyes are sunken.
  He lifts his bleeding hands and shouts ‘Kamerad!’ Our fellows take
  hold of him and hurry him off to the dressing-station. I go to
  visit that dressing-station. It is a gloomy place. In a dark room,
  with only one candle for a light, the patients are laid out, and
  one hears a constant groaning. They recognize me and call out to
  me. One of them has been asking for me long before I came in; he
  wants me to give him news of his brother. Another requests me to
  write to his parents.

  “Poor Corporal O----, whose face already has death written all over
  it, bids me a farewell that draws tears from my eyes. All are in
  dreadful agony, for they are parched with fever and haven’t a drop
  of water to drink.

  “In the curtain of the fort, another German prisoner, one of the
  1916 class: a savage-looking brute. Next to him is an N.C.O.,
  short, spare, light-haired, aged about twenty-four, clearly a man
  of good breeding; he is an architect from the outskirts of Cologne.

       *       *       *       *       *

  “_6 o’clock_ P.M.--The bombardment opens again.

  “A stretcher-bearer, gasping for breath, comes to lean for a few
  moments against the wall of my headquarters. His plucky, honest,
  good-natured face is now worn and hollow; his eyes, with blue
  circles round them, seem to start out of his head.

  “‘Sorry, sir, but I am simply done up. There are only three of us
  stretcher-bearers left; the others have been killed or wounded. For
  three days I haven’t had a bite of food or drunk a drop of water.’

  “One feels that his frail body only lasts out through a miracle of
  energy and will-power. They are always talking of heroes nowadays;
  here is a hero, a more genuine one than many who are so acclaimed.

  “The appalling cannonade goes on all the time.

  “There are no green rockets.

  “D----, R----, and I, under a low shed built of planks covered
  over with a few sandbags, wait for the shell which will blow us to
  pieces. We all look glum. The horror of the situation is clutching
  at our very vitals.

  “8 P.M.--We are relieved!

       *       *       *       *       *

  “11 P.M.--A note from the colonel: In view of circumstances which
  have arisen, the 101st cannot be relieved.

  “Thanks!

  “What a disappointment for my poor lads!

  “Lieutenant X---- is astounded at them, and with good reason. But I
  have only thirty-nine left!

  “_Monday, June 5._--I should like to take a rest, but the fleas
  seem to have an objection.

  “Since the relief has been countermanded, the company won’t have
  any water to-day. As soon as I received the order I sent out a
  fatigue party for water. It did not come back. It must have been
  overtaken by daylight. Probably it is held up at Tavannes or in the
  tunnel.

  “Luckily it is raining. The men go to spread out canvas so as to
  catch the water.

  “One’s throat is parched with a terrible thirst. I am hungry. To
  eat bully beef with biscuit will make my thirst still worse.

  “‘Coffee, sir!’

  “H---- is in front of me, with a smoking mess-tin in his hands.
  Yes, it really is coffee! I can hardly believe my eyes.

  “‘I found some coffee tablets, sir, so I said to myself, “This is
  where I come in! I’ll make coffee.” Would you care to accept the
  first mug, sir?’

  “What good fellows they are! I am so deeply moved that I don’t know
  what to say.

  “‘But what about you, old chap? And your mates?’

  “‘We have some for ourselves.’

  “‘Well, I can’t accept a whole mug! Just a mouthful, that’s all.’

  “‘No, no, sir; it’s for you. Come on, V----, pass along some mugs;
  I shall need the mess-tin.’

  “I give in without further resistance. I carefully put the mug
  aside. It will enable me to eat a biscuit.

  “What good fellows! What good fellows!

  “5 P.M.--The order for the relief has come. If only it isn’t
  countermanded!

  “We shall leave our dead in the trenches as a souvenir. Their
  comrades have piously laid them out of the way. I recognize them.
  Here is C----, with his velvet breeches; A----, poor youngster,
  of the 1916 class; and D----, stretching out his waxen hand, the
  hand that once flung bombs so valiantly; and P----, and G----, and
  L----, and so many others!

  “Alas! how many ghastly sentinels we leave behind! There they
  are, lying in a row on the breastwork, stiff and stark in their
  blood-stained, blood-dripping canvas,--grim and solemn guards of
  this nook of French soil where it seems that, even in death, they
  would fain bar the way to the enemy.

  “_9 o’clock_ P.M.--The relief.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The uninterrupted bombardment, the fire in the neighbourhood of the
grenade store, the daily onslaughts, the lack of provisions, the
lack of water, the lack of sleep, the smell of the corpses and the
asphyxiating shells, the mind preyed upon by the sense of death as the
body is preyed upon by vermin,--these men have endured all. And because
the sun is shining, the captain finds a song rising to his lips.

“You are in good spirits, sir.”

“Obviously. After all, when the die is cast----”

The whole attitude of our soldiers is summed up in that phrase. A
private as he passes exclaims with a laugh:

“They’re not up to taking R¹, those Boches.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Yes, the whole attitude is summed up in this: to stick to one’s post
and to think nothing of self.

The 6th Company of the 101st is relieved on June 5, in the evening,
by a company of the 298th, which will hold out for three days longer,
under more and more critical conditions, but will be outflanked in the
night of June 8-9. The enemy has managed to make progress on the right.
The fall of the fort, in the early morning of June 7, has given him a
tactical point.

R¹, however, throughout the whole siege of the fort, from June 2 to 7,
has floated, like a fishing-boat that has mastered the waves, in the
wake of the great vessel.




III

THE STRANGLEHOLD TIGHTENS IN THE EAST

(JUNE 2)


On June 2, at six o’clock in the morning, Colonel Tahon, commanding the
142nd Regiment, takes over the command of the sector stretching from
Fort Vaux to Dicourt bottom, to the south-east of the fort.

The plateau on which the fort is situated makes a bend immediately
to the east towards La Horgne bottom. Damloup village lies along the
border of the Woevre, at a point where the ground falls away from a
promontory that separates the La Horgne ravine and La Gayette bottom.
This La Gayette bottom skirts the wooded height of La Laufée, on the
other side of which lies Dicourt bottom. It is worth while describing
once more the lie of the land in this region.

I saw Colonel Tahon on a Sunday in July, at the new headquarters then
occupied by him in the Argonne. This post hid itself coyly in a leafy
retreat. The air was heavy with heat; it was warm even in the shade.
In the branches of the trees, wherever the light penetrated, insects
were humming. Here and there you came across a sentry or a fatigue
party, disturbing with their footsteps all this luxuriant growth of
the virgin forest. Not a rifle-shot could be heard; only now and then
came a stray shell, that seemed like some rude interloper. Without this
reminder of actualities, one might have fancied that life had come to
a standstill here--the same feeling that steals over one on a Sunday
excursion to the country. At one time this scrap of soil was fiercely
wrestled over and watered with blood. “At one time”: was it, then, so
long ago?

In the colonel’s thoroughly sheltered quarters there was a very
pleasant coolness, as in a cellar. A certain degree of comfort
prevailed here: armchairs, a table, and on the table a photograph,
plans, maps. The longing for domesticity takes hold of the wanderer
so very soon: the commonplace dug-out which he will have to leave
to-morrow becomes in a few moments, and for a few moments, a real
home. All that the 142nd had done during those memorable June days was
revealed to me there by its chief. He was careful to speak of it with
fairness and moderation, and to restrain the enthusiasm which prompted
him to set his men on a pedestal; that I learnt from the lips of those
men, who had returned from so great a distance. If you have not seen
things yourself, the next best course is to question those who have
seen them.

When he came to occupy his post on June 2, at 6 o’clock A.M., a portion
of his troops, placed at the disposal of the previous commander, were
already in line. Of the 2nd battalion (under Major Chevassu) one
company (the 6th) formed the garrison of the fort, and the 7th, 8th,
and 5th Companies held the approaches to the north and east. The 1st
battalion occupied Damloup and the Damloup battery; the 3rd (under
Major Bouin) Dicourt and La Laufée. The night had been one of great
activity. The fort had been subjected to assaults. Alarming rumours
were going abroad; the fort, it was said, had been taken, shadows had
been descried on the platform. At daybreak, the air was still foul with
the gas of countless asphyxiating shells: in the ravines, especially in
La Horgne bottom, the clouds left by these gases were trailing, like
those mists that rise in the morning from the rain-soaked earth.

At eight o’clock a sergeant runs up all bathed in sweat, scared and
breathless.

“Damloup is lost. The Boches are on the way.”

Immediate measures have to be taken. The artillery must open a
curtain fire in front of and to the east of Damloup and in La Horgne
ravine, in such a way as to prevent any advance on the part of the
enemy. The alarm has been given to Bouin’s battalion, and one of its
companies--the 11th, under Captain Hutinet--has been ordered to make a
prompt counter-attack. The 4th Company (under Captain Cadet), which has
been detached from the Damloup battalion in order to hold the battery,
mans the Saales trench which connects them, in order to oppose any
sortie of the Germans, should the latter attempt to debouch from the
village. Finally, reinforcements are expected of the brigade, which
places at the disposal of this sector Pelissier’s battalion of the 52nd
Regiment.

Scouts who have managed to escape from Damloup come to confirm the news
brought by the sergeant. With the aid of the dense, deadly vapours
emitted by the asphyxiating shells--these vapours still hang about La
Horgne and La Gayette bottoms--the enemy has been enabled to penetrate
into the village. The look-out men, gassed or taken unawares, have
given an inadequate alarm. There has been fighting in houses and
cellars, under a fire of flame-throwers and bombs; a difficult and
tardy defence which has not saved Damloup. And the enemy will certainly
try to advance towards the promontory.

He is forestalled by Hutinet’s company. It has taken that company only
a little time to reach shelter and, by the La Bruche communication
trench, running parallel with the pier at the end of which the village
lies, to march upon Damloup. Only a little time, and how valiantly this
force rushes to the rescue, officers and N.C.O.’s at its head! Only a
little time, and the enemy has already consolidated his gain.

An officer of the company charged with the defence of the Damloup
battery, Second Lieutenant Brieu, was an eye-witness of the struggle,
and gives the following details: “We see our comrades starting off,
their heads lowered, and jumping from shell-hole to shell-hole. The
Germans, however, have brought up machine-guns, which mow down our poor
_poilus_, and these complete the task of shattering the counter-attack.
In a few minutes the unlucky 11th is wiped out, and Captain Hutinet
and two second lieutenants are brought in to us badly wounded. What is
left of the company goes on fighting, but its effectives are terribly
reduced, and this tiny band comes to take refuge near us. At this
moment Colonel Tahon, being apprised of the state of affairs, orders
us to hold the battery at all costs and to prevent the Boches from
advancing. Captain Cadet strengthens the position with the 4th and the
remnant of the 11th, and also with a machine-gun section. We set to
work energetically, for we realize that the Germans will try to take
the important position that we are occupying. Throughout the day we are
on the alert....”

Thus the counter-attack on the 11th Company of the 142nd Regiment has
been broken by machine-guns set up at the exit from Damloup, scattered
on the bits of roof that have been spared by the bombardments, or
hidden behind the fragments of wall. Must it be started all over again
with more numerous effectives? Pelissier’s battalion of the 52nd is
ready to march; grenades have been handed out to it. But the few hours
that have elapsed have given the enemy an opportunity of entrenching
himself more strongly. Damloup, on the western side, is easier to
defend than to attack. The ravines that skirt it, as far as the
southern slopes, are in the hands of the Germans, and the promontory
that leads to them is narrow. What is more, the reinforcements have
been seen coming from Dieppe, and working parties have been signalled
to the artillery on the western and southern sides of the hill. It
would be preferable to fortify the Damloup battery, the southern slopes
of La Gayette and La Horgne bottoms, and to profit by the darkness of
night in order firmly to consolidate this new line, which may hold its
ground. And our men set to work, while our artillery goes on constantly
dispersing the massed formations of the enemy and peppering the lost
village of Damloup. “The men dig and take cover. The deluge of iron
has opened afresh and lasts the whole night long; there is a deafening
uproar of continual explosions.” Next day, at dawn, the situation has
changed for the better, and our men resolutely await the attacks.

The bombardment which precedes them demolishes the hastily improvised
trenches facing Damloup and overpowers the battery. It is the tocsin
that sets the conflagration going. It is not until three o’clock in
the afternoon that the Germans come up for the assault. At this point I
have recourse to Second Lieutenant Brieu’s narrative:

“On the 3rd, the rising sun finds each man in his place and the
situation improved. As in a dream, I wonder what this day has in store
for us, and I inspect my men. They are certainly very tired, that can
be read in their faces, but one can see that they are determined and
can be relied upon.

“Yesterday I had a fairly long list of killed and wounded; the number
has grown during the night, and this morning the bombardment claims
fresh victims, among them my poor friend Lieutenant Métayer, killed at
his post, with a bullet in his abdomen.

“All of a sudden, about three in the afternoon, the German artillery,
which has been raging for a few moments, lengthens the range, and
we see the Boches advancing. They are mown down by our rifle and
machine-gun bullets. They falter and stop; we redouble our fire, while
that of our machine-guns ceases. I look and see, in the midst of the
dust, rapidly moving shadows. These are Sergeant Favier and his men; he
has come out of the fray without a scratch. He unearths his gun, cleans
it under the enemy’s fire, and with the help of his men is setting it
up as calmly as if he were at manœuvres.

“About 5 P.M., to our astonishment, we see some sixty French soldiers
sally forth from the German trenches. They come towards us. They have
grenades in their hands and are on the point of throwing them. ‘Fire!
These are Boches!’ I had scarcely uttered this cry before the volleys
followed each other in quick succession, and, of the handful of Boches
in French uniforms, those who were not hit fled like mad and regained
their dug-outs.

“Towards 7 P.M. the Boches advance on the battery from two quarters at
once, the north and the east; their object is to encircle us and seize
the position entrusted to our care. But we hold out, the artillery
delivers a curtain fire with considerable effect, the battalion of the
52nd sends us reinforcements, and we repel all attacks. Some Boches
fall at a distance of less than ten yards from the battery. It is true
that we are in an agony of suspense, but we must stick to our ground at
all costs; this is the order, and we carry it out. At 8 P.M. comes a
fresh onset, and a renewed defence on our part. At last we can breathe
freely, bury our dead, send away our wounded, reorganize our positions,
and make ready to drive back further assaults. It is the third night,
however, that we have had no sleep, and this ordeal of sleeplessness
comes on top of all the hardships we have already suffered. What does
it matter? No one thinks of taking a rest, for we must guard the
territory placed in our keeping.”

The Germans have attacked the position of the battery from three
sides: to the east, debouching from Damloup village in French uniforms;
to the north, opposite the Saales trench; to the west by going up the
La Horgne ravine. All their onslaughts have failed, but they have come
up to within ten yards of the battery. It has been a sharp struggle.
Pelissier’s battalion of the 52nd has provided reinforcements. The
fire of Chevassu’s and Bouin’s battalions, of the 142nd, the one to
the left, the other to the right, the one above the La Horgne ravine,
the other above the La Gayette ravine, has worked havoc in the enemy’s
ranks. His losses have been heavy. At the bottom of the ravines the
blotches of grey-green uniforms have grown more and more numerous. The
order given charged us “to resist on the spot with might and main and
to hold our positions.” It has been faithfully carried out. Shall we be
able to carry out the second part of it on the morrow?

In consequence of the losses and the men’s exhausted condition the
situation is critical. The enemy continues to mass in the La Horgne
ravine. Our artillery fires on these groups; they scatter, only to be
re-formed. And on the ridge of Vaux there appear German detachments,
which our machine-guns riddle with bullets. Is the fort still in our
hands? That is the crucial problem.

At daybreak a patrol carried out in front of the battery brings in two
prisoners; according to the information they supply, five companies
occupy Damloup, while three others have left the village and are under
orders to attack the battery.

“Throughout the whole day of June 4,” Second Lieutenant Brieu notes,
“the Germans bombard us furiously, and even in the evening they launch
a vigorous attack. Our rifle-fire brings them to a halt. It is at this
moment that our brave captain and beloved comrade Cadet falls, struck
by a bullet in his forehead. While two privates convey his body a
little way to the rear, we go on fighting. At last, in the evening, we
are relieved.”

The effective firing of our artillery upon Damloup, upon the La Horgne
ravine, and in front of the battery crumples up the enemy’s forces,
and the night passes without an attack. The relief, by a battalion of
the 305th, is carried out without losses. On June 5 there is a renewed
bombardment and a renewed assault from the direction of La Horgne. This
assault is shattered before it can get into full swing.

What took place at Vaux on the western side from June 1 onward also
took place to the east on June 2 and the ensuing days. On June 1 the
enemy flung himself at the Hardaumont salient and gained possession of
it. From that point he penetrated into entrenchments R³ and R², but
his way was blocked at Fumin Wood and in front of R¹. Up to the night
of June 8-9, R¹ resisted all attacks. In the same way, on June 2, the
Germans, taking full advantage of the poison gas attack that paved the
way, occupied Damloup, but the Damloup battery deprived them of the
outlet from the village. In vain did they rush against this battery
on June 3 and 4 with ever-increasing forces; they could not contrive
to make an entrance. Its defence, more fortunate even than that of
R¹, will be prolonged until July 2. Even on July 2 the enemy will be
immediately driven out, and will not come back, this time to hold it
for good, till the 10th.

Thus the movement whereby it was intended to envelop the fort was
hampered on the right and on the left by the auxiliary defences, which
were unable to save the fort, but, even after its loss, forced the
enemy to slacken his onward pace.

The fine defence of the Damloup battery was kept up by units reduced
in numbers, limited to their emergency rations, suffering from lack
of water, and unable to obtain any rest or sleep. It seemed as if the
unexpected loss of Damloup made the position almost untenable. But is
any position untenable when troops are resolute? Fort Vaux is about to
reveal to us unsuspected powers of endurance.




BOOK IV

THE LAST WEEK




I

THE BATTLE AT THE FORT

(JUNE 2)


Those who contrived to escape from the fort have related the whole
drama. All the shifting scenes here delineated, whether outside or
inside, are based on the accounts of those who have seen them and
lived through them. The witnesses in this case are themselves the
actors. Finally, the fort itself spoke. Up to the last moment, up to
the death-agony, it communicated with the high command by means of its
signals and its carrier-pigeons.

The day of June 1 is heavy with anguish. The storm slants off to the
left, but the air remains sultry and oppressive. The Le Bazil ravine
is lost, the dyke is crossed, the enemy break through into Fumin
Wood. Of the three entrenchments that stake out the slopes between
the pool and the fort, two are given up. R¹ still holds out, but
will it be strong enough to prove an obstacle to the foe? Between
R¹ and the fort, the La Courtine trench and that of Besançon, which
ends in a winding at the double transverse gallery (north-eastern)
that has been half-disembowelled, are manned by the 7th Company of
the 101st Regiment. In front of the fort, the trench that protects it
and, farther east, the Belfort trench are occupied by the 7th and 8th
Companies of the 142nd Regiment, the 5th being on the plateau as a
support. Will these troops suffice to check the onslaughts? Will they
not be outflanked to the west by way of Fumin Wood, and to the east by
Damloup and La Horgne bottom, against which the bombardment is raging?

During the night there is great liveliness. The air shivers with
countless lightning-flashes from the batteries, and with rockets
going up or coming down in showers of stars. Darker than the night
are the columns of smoke that rise from the shell-bursts. From the
observing-station one of the guard signals movements at the foot of
the slopes. No one sleeps, except a few wounded whose strength has
completely failed them. Major Raynal, leaning on his stick, takes a
turn round the corridors. He does not speak much, he is preoccupied,
but his energetic air is reassuring. “The officers,” remarks an
eye-witness, “were constantly walking through our midst; they were as
calm and collected as usual, but we felt that the hour was at hand,
for they looked into every detail.”

At a quarter-past two, before sunrise, the enemy’s range lengthens, and
the waves of the attack unroll themselves against our defenders in a
semicircle. Our curtain fire came too late; the waves have been able to
advance without being broken, and soon they are coming up to the trench
of the fort opposite them, to the Besançon trench on the west, to the
Belfort trench on the east.

Opposite, they dash against the 7th Company of the 142nd Regiment,
which replies by throwing bombs. The first platoon is annihilated
on the spot, after inflicting serious losses on its assailants. The
second, which was acting as a support, hastens to the rescue, and
now comes a formidable rush against more numerous forces, which
it prevents from passing. Captain Tabourot is in command of this
reinforcing platoon, aided by Cadet Buffet. One of the survivors has
drawn the following portrait of him: “Captain Tabourot fought like a
lion. He overtopped us all with his tall figure, he gave his orders
in curt tones, he encouraged us and put us in our right places. Then
he put his hand himself in the grenade sack, took out an armful, and,
leaning backwards a little, threw them with perfect composure, taking
careful aim every time. This roused us, and we gave a good account of
ourselves. What a pity that it didn’t last!”

The heroic band is all of a sudden assailed in the rear, between
the trench and the fort. As a matter of fact, to the east, the
Besançon trench, after repelling a first onslaught, has given way.
Its little garrison, now outflanked, has fallen back upon the double
transverse gallery, where one of the two entrances to the fort is
to be found. Already they have had to convey to the interior of the
fort the dauntless Lieutenant Tournery, who, with his head pierced
by a bullet--a mortal wound--will take three days to die without
confessing the tortures that rack him. A force deprived of its leader
seeks a shelter in order to re-form itself. This force, sadly thinned,
re-enters the fort by the transverse gallery, the opening in which it
defends. The enemy, however, has managed to worm his way as far as the
counterscarp. The northern ditch is barred to him by a revolving gun
placed in the double transverse gallery, but, passing along it, he has
taken Captain Tabourot’s platoon in the rear.

The captain is struck from behind by a bomb, which breaks his back
and slashes both his legs. “Mastering his pain,” says the eye-witness
already quoted, “he did not let a single cry of complaint escape his
lips, and I can still see him pass in front of us, supported by two of
his sergeants. He was pale, but he pointed out the enemy to us.”

He is carried to the infirmary. The procession makes its way into the
interior by the breach in the north-eastern single transverse gallery.
Major Raynal at once comes to join him. The meeting between the two
soldiers is brief: no word of consolation is spoken, no false hopes are
held out. The one divines that all is over; the other has too high an
opinion of him to take refuge in falsehood. A firm handshake, then the
commandant of the fort merely says:

“Well done, my dear fellow!”

The captain’s thoughts are with his men:

“If the Boches get through, sir, it won’t be my company’s fault. It has
done all that could be done to block their way.”

After this report he closes his eyes. The major returns to his post.
The captain is left alone with a hospital orderly amid a wailing and
groaning throng of wounded. A moment later he asks for Cadet Buffet.
But Cadet Buffet is in the thick of the fray with the rest of his
company.

“He must not be sent for, then,” says the dying man.

A little later Cadet Buffet comes in of his own accord to visit him.
The platoon being in danger of having its flank turned, what was left
of it had to cleave a passage for itself in order to re-enter the fort.

“Come near me, boy; you who are from Dijon, if you get back safe from
the war, you will tell my wife how I died.”

The captain is at peace with his men and with his conscience as a
leader, and his thoughts turn towards his home. These were his last
words. From now onwards, until the death that comes a few hours later,
he devotes all his strength to avoiding any outward sign of the ghastly
wounds that he could not survive.

Already his name is rushing through the night, borne by a
carrier-pigeon which flew off from the fort at three o’clock in the
morning:

“The enemy is around us. I must honourably mention the gallant Captain
Tabourot, of the 142nd, who has been very badly wounded; we are still
holding out.”

A few hours later, a second pigeon announces his death:

“Captain Tabourot of the 142nd died a glorious death, his wound being
received while he was defending the north-eastern breach. I recommend
him for the Legion of Honour.”

This is only a part of the message; the rest refers to the operations.

Nevertheless, the Germans have reached the two open breaches, the one
in the north-western double transverse gallery and the other in the
north-eastern single transverse gallery. They try to force their way
through it. At each entrance there is a hand-to-hand conflict. On the
right they are at first pushed back. “Our bombs,” says one of those who
took part in the combat, “made gaps in their ranks, but reinforcements
were continually coming up. Their dead and wounded formed shifting
heaps, and, to add to the horror of it, these were cut and torn by
splinters from our projectiles.”

Fighting now proceeds in the passages which, from the transverse
galleries, lead to the interior. Major Raynal has barricades put up
consisting of sandbags got ready in anticipation.

Outside the battle is no less violent. Chevassu’s battalion, of the
142nd Regiment, seems likely to find itself in a hazardous situation.
The enemy, if he is checked to the west of the fort by the entrenchment
R¹, which he is unable to seize, has contrived to insinuate himself
between the curtain and the fort. He reaches the southern side. On
the other hand, Damloup was captured at six or seven o’clock in the
morning, and, by way of La Horgne ravine, fresh forces ascend to the
onset. Chevassu’s battalion, which has two companies in the fort (the
6th and the fragments of the 7th which Captain Tabourot was leading),
is charged with the defence of the eastern side of the fort. It does
indeed hold its ground at the Belfort and Montbéliard trenches, where
the struggle becomes a hand-to-hand one. Second Lieutenant Huguenin,
set upon by an enemy private, knocks him down, disarms him, and fights
with his adversary’s rifle. The Germans recoil, but return to the
onslaught, in the afternoon, with unfixed bayonets. The men of the
142nd, on being reinforced by a company of the 53rd, receive them with
cries of “Long live France!”

For all that, the battalion is in danger of having its flank turned.
Its machine-gun sections change places and are pointed in three
directions--in front, towards Damloup to the east, and to the west
against the enemy, who is debouching to the south of the fort. The
section commanders calmly indicate the objectives. Sergeant Narcisse,
while standing near his machine-gun, is killed by a bullet that hits
him right in the forehead. He was a gallant soldier who had been
granted the Military Medal in the Champagne battle. Corporal Reveille
takes his place, and shouts to his men, “Don’t get flurried, I take it
upon myself to clear away the Boches.”

The observers in balloons signal to the north of the fort the arrival
of more and more numerous troops, who burrow themselves in our old
trenches to evade our curtain fire and to gain ground during the
intervals. At noon, some forty men are seen upon the fort, the majority
hidden in holes. At 3 P.M. the fort itself issues a bulletin:

“The enemy has gained possession of the north-eastern and north-western
transverse galleries. I am pursuing the struggle in the inner passages.
A large number of wounded and fugitives. Officers and men are all doing
their duty. We shall fight to the bitter end.”

At seven o’clock in the evening, the watchers on the posts of the
Fleury redoubt signal that infantry details of several companies are
at present marching up in file from the north to the south, at the
north-western bend of Fort Vaux. They escalade the fort and vanish
through the summit into the interior. While this is going on, other
detachments glide along the trenches surrounding the fort.

And at two o’clock in the morning on June 3, Major Raynal sends this
message by visual signalling:

“Situation unchanged. The enemy is pursuing his labours on top and
round the earthworks. The fort is to be pounded by small ordnance.
The enemy occupies our old first-line trenches in force and is
strengthening them. He seems to have a trench armed with a machine-gun
facing the south-west, not far from the ditch of the defile.”

This machine-gun is not in the ditch of the defile, but on the very
superstructure of the fort, where the enemy has managed to convey it,
and whence he sweeps the southern slopes. It is impossible to dislodge
him from the terreplein; the cupola for 75’s is demolished, there is
no cupola for machine-guns, and a fruitless attempt has been made to
pass short rifles through the cracks in the observing stations; even
these weapons were too long, and could not be used for slaughtering the
German infantrymen, who were only a few yards distant.

The southern front of the fort has been saved by the 5th and 8th
Companies and the machine-gun section of Chevassu’s battalion,
reinforced on the morning of June 2 by the 11th Company of the 53rd
Regiment, and in the evening by a battalion of the same regiment.
This battalion was to counter-attack without delay, but when brought
up close to its objective it has already been sorely tried by the
curtain fire it has had to suffer on the way, and must limit itself to
holding its ground, to reconstructing the demolished trenches, and to
interposing itself among the reduced sections of the 142nd.

Accordingly, on the evening of the 2nd, the enemy is in the northern
and western ditches. Partially held in check to the east and south, he
is master of the two northern transverse galleries and tries to advance
in the stairway. What is more, he has clambered on top, and, from
there, searches the southern side with machine-gun fire. Any sortie
becomes difficult, if not impossible. All the lines of communication
are cut. Nothing is left but carrier-pigeons and signals. The garrison
is huddled together in the barracks. It still has access to the
observing stations and the single north-western transverse gallery,
which has no opening towards the outside. Here they have succeeded in
setting up a machine-gun to sweep the southern ditch.

“A large number of wounded and fugitives,” said Major Raynal in his
signal message. There is almost as much danger here as outside. The
sight of dying men, so continuous and so close at hand, is likely to
shake the morale of the garrison. Orders are transmitted more slowly in
the crowded and littered corridors. Finally, if there is enough tinned
meat and biscuits for all, the supply of water will soon give out.




II

THE FORT APPEALS


“Roland says: ‘I will blow a blast on my horn, and Charles, who is
passing through the gorges, will hear it. I avow to you that the Franks
will turn back.’

“Roland has put the horn to his lips. He grasps it firmly and blows
with might and main. The mountains are high, and the sound goes on in
long-drawn-out echoes. Those echoes were heard at a distance of thirty
leagues. It comes to the ears of Charles and all his men. The king
says: ‘Our troops are fighting.’

“Count Roland, with great difficulty, great effort, and great sorrow,
blows his horn. The bright blood gushes forth from his mouth. Near his
forehead his temple is shattered. But the sound of his horn carries so
far! Charles hears it as he passes through the gorges; Naimes hears
it.... And the king says: ‘I hear Roland’s horn. He would not blow it
if there were no fight going forward.’

“Count Roland’s mouth is bleeding. Near his forehead the temples
are shattered. In pain and sorrow he blows the horn. Charles and his
Frenchmen hear it. And Charles said: ‘That horn is long-winded.’ Duke
Naimes answers: ‘It is Roland who is in pain.’”

       *       *       *       *       *

Are the appeals of the horn that shook the Pyrenees more than ten
centuries ago more moving than the silent appeals of Fort Vaux, which,
above the enemy’s lines, communicates to the High Command the details
of its death-agony and its resolve to hold out?

On the morning of June 3 a swift-flying pigeon reaches the dovecote.

“Messenger, what are your tidings? The fort, since it can send you,
still lives. Tell us if it can endure a siege until the hour we had
fixed for its deliverance.”

In vain does it look under its wing for the despatch that it should
carry. Badly fastened, it has fallen off on the way. The bird has been
let loose to no purpose. How many of its mates are there left in the
fort?

On the 4th, about midday, the dovecote is visited by a poor wounded
pigeon, which drags itself laboriously up to its resting-place. This
one has not made a useless journey. Here is the message that it brings:

“We are still holding out, but are subjected to a very dangerous gas
and smoke attack. It is urgent that we should be extricated; let us
have immediate visual signalling communication by way of Souville,
which does not answer our appeals. This is my last pigeon.”

The last pigeon! The telephone wires have long since been cut, and the
signals are not working. The last pigeon: it is the final connecting
link with the fort. The fort is now cut off from the outer world.
No flapping of wings will ever again convey its messages. It will
remain dumb if they do not contrive to restore the visual signalling
connections. Nothing more will be known of its career. At the military
dovecote a soldier has put the bird on his hand--the bird, which, like
some scout, was wounded on active service.

The afternoon of June 4 passes, but the communications are not
restored. It is impossible to obtain a signal from the fort. Probably
there has been no means of registering the position of its sighting
gear. On the 5th, however, at three o’clock in the morning, the
headquarters of the division see two men arrive. They have issued
from the fort--nothing more than that! They belong to the searchlight
section. As there were no more pigeons and the signals were not
working, they had to come to restore the communications. That is as
plain as a pikestaff.

“So the fort is not encircled?”

“They are on top with a machine-gun, but there is no one at the
southern exit.”

“That exit is stopped up.”

“You jump from a window into the ditch.”

Others have made the attempt, but have not succeeded in escaping. These
two do not furnish many details. For the time being they are too much
absorbed in other matters, for they are professionals. Will the fort
hold out? Life is no laughing matter in the interior on account of
liquid fire and thirst. Then, too, the place is overcrowded: more than
600 men. Yet the morale is good. Up there, they will try once more to
interchange messages.

At half-past seven in the morning Fort Vaux is no longer isolated. It
speaks and receives an answer....

“The mountains are lofty, massive, and dark, the valleys deep, the
torrents swift. Behind and in front of the army the trumpets ring, and
they all seem to reply to the horn....”

But when Charlemagne’s trumpets ring, Roland is already no more.
Imagine him rising up in face of death to listen to those blasts!

Fort Vaux informs the High Command as to the position of the enemy. Its
message rings with hope:

“The enemy is working at the western part of the fort to construct a
mine-chamber and blow up the vault. Strike quickly with artillery.”

Ten minutes later it becomes insistent:

“Where are you?”

At eight o’clock, having had no reply, or having been unable to
decipher it, it confesses the agony of its suspense:

“We do not hear your artillery. The enemy is plying us with gas and
liquid fire attacks. Our situation is as bad as can be.”

At last, at nine o’clock, this signal is transmitted to it: “Don’t lose
heart. We shall soon attack.”

Roland, as he was dying, heard Charlemagne’s trumpets. They are so
distant, but their music is so sweet. He starts up, he listens, he
motions to death to wait awhile. But the French must make haste!
Already the shades are closing in around him and his speech grows thick.

All day the fort waits. When night falls, it shows signs of impatience.
Will not this coming night be the last? will it not be wrapped in its
lethal winding-sheet? The opening of the message that it sends is
unintelligible, the rest already has the tone of a funeral oration--it
speaks of its defenders in the past tense:

“... preceding day. It is essential that I should be delivered this
evening and that a fresh supply of water should reach me at once; I
am very near the end of my tether. In any case, the troops--officers,
N.C.O.’s, and men alike--all did their duty up to the last.”

Is this not a final farewell? Is it not the death-rattle that precedes
the end? And now, amid the formidable bombardment which from this
side and that overwhelms the hill with iron and flame, one of our
searchlight stations gets hold of these fragmentary signals:

“... 53 ... wounded ... aspires ... losses.... You will intervene
before we are utterly exhausted. Long live France!”

Roland has raised himself up. He is calling. He stretches out his arms
towards “sweet France.”

For the second time the echo of Charlemagne’s trumpets has been borne
as far as the vale of Roncevaux.

For the second time the Souville headquarters reply to Fort Vaux: “Your
message received. Don’t lose heart!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Don’t lose heart! Will this wreck of a fort have any heart left after
the three days it has just lived through? Not for a single moment has
the storm ceased to shake the plateau. To the left, it wreaks its
fury upon the entrenchment R¹, which has the audacity to resist; to
the right, upon the Damloup battery, which holds the promontory and
sweeps La Horgne bottom and the outlet from the village, and upon the
immediate approaches, which are defended to the west by La Courtine
and to the right by the Belfort and Montbéliard trenches. The enemy
follows up the general attacks with local attacks, in order either to
carry the whole position at a blow, or to make us waver at one point,
against which he can then concentrate his onrush. He plunges into the
abyss with three divisions, which he will even have to reinforce with
a brigade of the Alpine corps. He lays siege to the fort from three
sides--he is around it, above it, and inside it. Yet the fort doggedly
refuses to give in. Cut off from the outer world for a whole day, it
has no sense of being forsaken. Outside there, it feels certain, they
are working on its behalf. Inside it sets up more and more barricades.
Step by step it defends the stairways, and foot by foot the corridors.
It faces heavy artillery, machine-guns, grenades, liquid fire,
smoke-bombs, thirst, poisoning, intoxication, stench, putrefaction.
It will go to the utmost limit of human endurance, the limit that
is extended still further when one thinks that it has been reached,
goes beyond all anticipation, and verges on the impossible. Among its
cramped stones and under its echoing vaults the terrible sacrifice will
be accomplished in full measure.

A second lieutenant of the 142nd, an officer in Chevassu’s battalion,
fighting on the plateau outside the fort, described later to a comrade
those days of horror: “Everywhere there was nothing but fire and dust,
and in this pandemonium a few soldiers on the watch prevented the Boche
hordes from passing. Their attacks were renewed every day, striking
now at this point, now at that; never did we yield an inch of ground
so long as there was a man to defend it. I will not speak to you of
all that we went through. No water, no revictualling; those who went
out to bring us supplies never got back. The only thing that we were
not short of was munitions. We are terribly weakened, but happy to
have done our duty, to have had our share in preventing the Boches
from taking Verdun--Verdun, which their Emperor promised to them, and
which they will never gain.... They would be compelled to pass over
our bodies and over the corpses of all their comrades whom we have
slain.... They attacked us from three sides at once, but they never got
us in their claws....”

During the day of June 3 the enemy seeks to turn to account the capture
of Damloup and make his way round the fort to the east. Details of
the 142nd and 53rd Regiments hold him in check, and, assuming the
offensive, even force him to draw back.

Whether for army, army corps, division, or brigade, the High Command
supports the conflict that stretches from Fumin Wood to La Gayette
bottom, pours fresh troops into the firing line, and prepares
counter-attacks. There is a counter-attack on Damloup from the
morning of June 2; at any rate this rescues the battery. There is
a counter-attack on the fort from the evening of the 2nd, made by
a battalion of the 53rd Regiment, which has to run the gauntlet of
murderous curtain fires and can only reinforce the troops of the
sector. There is a counter-attack on June 3 upon our left, to recapture
the line of the entrenchments and come to the aid of R¹, which still
holds out. And the balloon observers never cease from signalling the
arrival of enemy columns, which are coming up the slopes to swell the
number of the assailants.

Connection with the fort must be established, that is beyond all
question. Comrades are there, waiting for the hour of their deliverance
to strike: “In the fort we have French comrades,” the army telephones;
“they must be released from their present plight. First and foremost,
we must get into touch with them. This is the duty of all alike--a
sacred duty.” General Tatin, who is in command of the sector, will
personally direct the operation.

Yet the enemy does not leave off attacking, and he floods his objective
with an endless deluge of projectiles. On the 4th, at two o’clock in
the morning, an attack upon the fort is started from the north-east and
the south-west. It begins by making progress, then it is checked by the
machine-guns. At daybreak an aeroplane flies above the fort and comes
down so low that it casts a shadow over all this chaos. Will the daring
bird let itself be wounded, like the last pigeon? It darts through the
midst of shells and bullets like a salamander in the fire, and behold,
it is now rising again and going away! It has fulfilled its mission: on
the superstructure of the fort it has registered the position of the
machine-guns. A few minutes later our 75’s and our 155’s crush to pulp
everything that the Germans had installed on the upper part of the
earthwork. At ten o’clock in the morning, the weather being clear, our
airmen report that the fort trenches have been entirely razed and that
not a man is left upon the top of the fort.

On the following night the enemy once more begins to construct his
works and his machine-gun shelters upon the superstructure. In this way
he blocks up the southern exit. He tries to make it impossible to sally
forth or to communicate with the outer world. Reconnoitring parties--as
soon as they were suggested, the number of volunteers was so large
that a selection had to be made--have tried to find a way of getting
into the fort. None of them was successful. To compensate for this,
some have managed to go out. Two signallers, we know already, crossed
the lines on the early evening of June 4. Some hours later, during the
night, Cadet Buffet, two N.C.O.’s, and three men of the 7th Company of
the 142nd leave the fort in their turn. The problem is less baffling
for those going out than for those coming in. The former merely have
to elude the Boche machine-guns, whereas the latter have to elude ours
as well. The fort, in order not to be invested, must keep the southern
ditch and the approaches. Every shadow that draws near is suspect. The
difficult thing is to convince the sentries that one is a friend.

“Don’t lose courage, we shall soon attack,” was the signal received,
and the High Command speeds up the preparations for a fresh attack with
more numerous effectives. It cannot be set going until June 6 at two
o’clock in the morning.

       *       *       *       *       *

We must now retrace our steps in order to know what has been going on
in the interior of the fort.

From the morning of June 2 onwards the fort is swarming with Boches
as the mane of a lion swarms with parasites. The Boche is in front,
on the flanks, on top, and even inside, for he has rushed through
the two gaps in the transverse gallery and is trying to bore his way
through into the heart of the place. Major Raynal has introduced some
order and system into the garrison, whose numbers have been unduly
enlarged by the wounded and the overflow from neighbouring details. It
ought not to consist of more than the 6th Company of the 142nd, the
machine-gun company, and the fort engineers. The 7th and 8th Companies
of the 142nd, which defended the right-hand transverse passages, have
reinforced it with more than a hundred rifles; the 7th Company of the
101st, which defended the left-hand transverse passages, has brought
some fifty. A machine-gun company of the 53rd has been left behind.
With the wounded, this makes a total of over six hundred men. Six
hundred soldiers who have to be supplied with water, when the cistern
has run dry! Six hundred soldiers, among them wounded men, wasted
with fever, who beg for a drop to drink! Nevertheless the garrison
is divided up into reliefs, look-out men and rest units, and the
distribution of boxes of tinned food, biscuits, chocolate, and even
brandy is carried out with regularity. The water ration, which on May
31 was two pints, is reduced on June 2 to a pint and three-quarters. It
will be cut down to a pint, then to barely half a pint--and under what
conditions! From June 4 the commandant will be forced to take a decided
step.

As we have seen, the enemy is at the transverse galleries on the
morning of June 2. In spite of his losses, he manages to press the
defenders hard, and they beat a retreat. The revolving gun of the
double transverse gallery has been put out of action by a shell. The
machine-gun that guards the entrance has been smashed by a bomb. The
defence is driven back into the interior. A barricade is at once set
up under the breach, but from the outside the Germans command it and
overpower it with grenades. It has to be withdrawn to the foot of
the stairway that leads up to the observing station. Another one is
constructed at the top of the stairway. This latter one will hold out
until the 4th. The same manœuvre takes place at the single transverse
gallery at the north-eastern angle. The barricades keep the enemy back
in front of the grating of the corridor, facing the lavatories, which
can still be used.

“In the semi-darkness of the fort,” writes a survivor of the 142nd,
“the struggle goes on. The enemy tried to exhaust us by depriving us
of sleep and condemning us to thirst. The atmosphere was heavy and
tainted. At every moment some part of the barricades blew up, and the
grenade duel was resumed. We would not give in. But the air grew hot
with all these explosives; the smoke and the stench made it almost
impossible to breathe, yet the fighting went on all the time. We had
installed machine-guns, which blocked up the gangways and did splendid
work. It was then that the Germans, having contrived to blow up a
barricade, attacked us with jets of flame and liquid fire. The heat,
and the fact that we were taken unawares, caused us to waver for a
moment. But Lieutenant Bazy, who was there with his machine-gun, darted
forward, and so quick was he, that before we had recovered from our
amazement he was standing upright in the middle of the gangways and
fighting the Germans single-handed with bombs. The flames came up to
his shoes, his left arm was bandaged, being already wounded, but little
did he care. As he could not speak, on account of that black acrid
smoke, he encouraged us by his example. Accordingly we shook off our
stupor and went forward in rotation to stand by his side. At last the
flame-throwers were quenched. He had succeeded in checking the attack
and was beginning to go up again on to the barricade, when the Boches
started sending us petards, which knocked us all down with the sandbags
on top of us. I was quite convinced that my back was broken, and I
only just had enough strength left to put my mask on, as I detected
the whiff of poison gas. A private extricated me and carried me to the
infirmary while the struggle recommenced. The Germans discharged gases
whose heavy fumes hung about the gangways. Despite all their devilish
contrivances, their flame-jets, their gases, and their petards, they
made no advance. It was magnificent. They shouted to us in French:
‘Surrender, or you will all be killed,’ and we answered by slinging
bombs full at their faces.”

“It was magnificent!” How comical is that outcry, in the thick of the
fray!

It was on June 4, about midday, that this liquid fire attack took
place. The Germans made it through the breach in the western passage.
The fort was filled with a “black and acrid” smoke. In order to
breathe, the garrison had to remove the armour-plating from the barrack
windows. The flames came up to the corridor leading into the rooms.
Some soldiers even jumped into the ditch in order to recover their
breath. The machine-guns installed on the fort had been destroyed in
the morning by our artillery. The curtain fire cut off the exits a
little farther south. Without disorder, the troops retired into the
interior, but the windows had to be closed again. The enemy swung up
sacks of bombs with delay-action fuses, which he sent through the
openings, and tried to blow up the armour-platings.

Nevertheless, he made progress in the north-eastern single transverse
gallery. We had to retire some yards in the corridor, but not beyond
the lavatories. The sick and the wounded had to be looked after on
the spot. The stretcher-bearers took advantage of the destruction of
the enemy machine-guns installed on the fort, and were thus able to
carry corpses away in the western ditch and to cleanse the infirmary
of all its filth. From the ensuing night onwards this task was beyond
their powers. The dead had to remain with the living. An unspeakable
horror stalked through these dim vaults, where, in a thick, pestilent
atmosphere, a sleepless, nerve-racked, thirst-maddened garrison,
crowded into a narrow space, refused to abandon the struggle.

It needed but one man to turn aside the flame attack: Lieutenant Bazy,
straight and upright like a god, amid the smoke, in the middle of the
corridor, his left arm in a sling, his right arm hurling bombs, barring
the way to the foe. It needed but the commandant, a few officers
and N.C.O.’s, a handful of picked men, to ensure, amid all these
sufferings, the maintenance of a single idea, a single aim: to hold out.

The fort is cut off from the rest of the world, its last pigeon
was sent off on the previous day, and its signals have not been
transmitted. But when night has fallen, two signallers leap into the
ditch: they are going to restore the communications.

Next day the fort’s appeal is heard.




III

THE SORTIE


On June 4 the water ration was half a pint. Half a pint for men who
have fought and are fighting in the haze of bombs, of flame-throwers,
of asphyxiating gases! Half a pint for fever patients, tossing uneasily
at the overcrowded dressing-station, amid the dead and the dying!
Piteous wails and entreaties are heard on all sides. Silence, however,
is instantly restored when Major Raynal puts in an appearance. Half
a pint, and no more. Who was it that asked for a larger ration? Why,
as things are, half a pint is a great deal! Even the wounded resign
themselves. Each man swallows his grief, having no saliva left.

The commandant has taken a census of the garrison. All who are not
ordinary members of it will have to leave the fort. Under cover of
night the sortie will be attempted, either by the southern ditch--the
windows of the barracks will in that case be blown up--or by the
south-western transverse gallery, which is not in the enemy’s hands.

The order is a formal one. Those who have to go, endeavour by the
light of day to gauge the difficulties of the enterprise: are there
machine-guns and look-out men on the fort? How far off are the German
curtain fires, and at what points are they directed? The sortie is
exceedingly risky, but the French cannot be very far away.

The first who jump into the ditch, at half-past ten at night, are
volunteers: the two signallers of whom I have spoken, who are going to
restore communications. With beating hearts their comrades listen: the
noise of the fall, then silence, no rifle-shots, no rockets, merely the
usual bombardment. Their range has not been found.

The detachments of the 101st and the 142nd, whose departure has been
settled upon, now fall in.

“Go,” says Major Raynal to them, “and if you escape, tell our comrades
how we stand and how we are resisting.”

The two groups salute. It is the moment for the sortie. It is half-past
one in the morning, and it seems as if the shower of “heavies” were
growing less violent. Cadet Buffet is in charge of the detachment
from the 142nd. He makes use of an uncovered gap at the south-eastern
corner, and is the first to descend, followed by a scout and the
quartermaster’s corporal. The company proceeds behind them, leaving
intervals so as not to attract attention. A pebble has rolled down,
and the German look-out men, from the top of the fort, are at once on
the alert, send up rockets and fire their rifles. Almost at the same
moment their artillery opens an appalling curtain fire at the immediate
approaches to the fort. The cadet has got through, with a small group
at his heels. They reach the French lines, which are quite close at
hand. The first is received by a rifle-shot, which misses him. He makes
himself recognized, not without difficulty. Explanations follow, a warm
welcome is given, while the bombardment rages at the rear of the little
group. Others are on the way; our comrades must take care not to shoot
at them. They are awaited, but after a long interval only two or three
arrive. The rest have been unable to cross the zone of death.

A private of 142nd, wounded in the flame attack, gives the following
account of the expedition:

“When the C.O. had finished speaking, I saluted and made my way to
the dormer window, from which I had to jump a depth of three yards.
I passed my hand over my stiffened limbs. Then, without further
hesitation, I let myself go. I certainly felt acute pain. I heard
rifle-shots aimed at me, and I flung myself down and shammed dead, for
the Boches were still watching. I don’t know how long I stayed like
this. At any rate, after a good minute, I began to crawl on my belly
over a lot of corpses. Gently, gliding from one corpse to another, I
managed to get over the ditch and cross the line. I could scarcely
breathe under the endless bombardment, and at last I succeeded, I don’t
know how, in reaching a dressing-station. I don’t remember the end of
the adventure, but I woke up in hospital!”

The upshot of the sortie was not very fortunate. It had to be
undertaken all over again. On June 5, at sunrise, there was another
attempt and another set-back. The day slipped away, a day still more
cruel than any that had preceded it. The struggle at the barricades
began again, with grenades and flame-jets. Water was now distributed
only drop by drop. The wounded implored their comrades to put them
out of their misery. Quicklime had to be thrown upon the dead, who
could not be carried away. The hardships were more severe than ever,
but a gleam of hope had appeared. The fort was no longer isolated:
the two signallers who went off the previous evening had succeeded in
their task. When the fort spoke, it was heard, and the reply came:
“Courage! we shall soon attack.” The defenders are not forgotten.
Their deliverance is at hand. One day more, and relief will come. One
day--how long it is, how hard to live through! Still, it will pass,
like the others.

The numbers will have to be cut down. The contingents of the 101st
and 142nd, whose presence is not indispensable, once more receive the
order to depart. During the night, more than a hundred men succeed in
getting away. Here is the story of one of them, since a selection must
be made: one cannot recite the names and fortunes of the whole hundred.
One shall be chosen, for there is no better way of making the reader
realize such tragedies than to lay one’s hand on a human heart and feel
its beats.

Stretcher-bearer Roger Vanier, of the 101st Regiment, received the
Military Medal for his conduct at Sabot Wood on February 26, 27, and
28, 1915, the official report being as follows:

“Gave proof of heroic courage and self-sacrifice. Worked for three days
and three nights without taking a rest. Went several times under enemy
fire to look for wounded between the French and German trenches, and
brought them in. At the same time identified several who were killed.
Won universal admiration from the battalion to which he showed such
whole-hearted devotion. Was registered for non-combatant service at the
mobilization, but asked to be sent to the front.”

General Joffre decorated him personally on March 25, 1915, at
Courtisols.

In the Champagne battle, on September 21, he is mentioned in army corps
orders:

“Seeing some comrades hesitate to go out of the trench for the attack,
he took off his Red Cross armlet, jumped up on the parapet and shouted
‘Forward!’ He was instantly hit in the leg by a bullet.

“He belongs to the 1916 class: of middle height, rather delicate in
health, with a tanned complexion, a faint shadow of a moustache, his
face frank, eager and all aglow, as it were, with the fire of his eyes.
‘When there is any danger,’ he says, ‘I no longer know myself; I have
to go.’ And he goes. He comes of a humble family at Montfort L’Amaury.
One of his brothers, a school teacher, a corporal-telephonist in the
146th Regiment, was killed on March 2 at Douaumont; his leg broken by
a shell, he was carried to the Les Fontaines ravine, where he died
shortly afterwards. His body remained on the spot. The stretcher-bearer
of the 101st, coming in his turn to the Vaux district, might well have
found himself face to face with the corpse when he went to look for
water in the ravine. Before the war he had been a valet. But since he
has served his country and lost his brother, his only desire, after the
war, is to enter the service of God instead of the service of death.”

Who is it that moulded such hearts as these? Vanier always carries
about with him a letter from his mother. The worthy dame of Montfort
L’Amaury writes to him on February 29: her spirit is resolute, but her
spelling is a trifle shaky:

“I know that your poor brother is at Verdun, that is to say at the post
of honour, for it is a fine thing for the French Army to hold up that
hord of savages there. How happy our Lou must be to see the war outside
the trenches! Oh, how glorious it is. I haven’t heard from him yet,
but I suppose he can’t find an oportunity of writing. I always feel
firmly convinced that nothing will happen to him. And you, my darling
boy, you must have a lot to do, be very careful, my precious, though,
of course, be brave, more and more brave than ever. Save all those poor
wounded lying there in the blood and snow. My blood boils at having to
stay here while there is so much to do down there, picking up all those
poor dears. Why don’t they want women in a place where they are so
necessery? Ah, yes, it is the business of mothers to pick up all those
poor children and speak soothing words to them. Well, my dear boy, you
must take the place of a mother, and do everything, even imposible
things, so as to be of some use to them, yes, of great use. I see you
walking, running, crawling to look for all these wounded. I should like
to slip in and come along with you, laddie, for I feel that I ought to
be by your side. Cheer up, cheer up, I know that it is the beginning
of the end, a glorious end for all who have fought in the cause of
justice....”

These mothers of France--are they not all at the front with all their
children, bleeding from all their wounds, but thrusting them forward,
in the path of duty, for their country’s sake?

Stretcher-bearer Vanier has been at the fort since June 1, doing duty
at the dressing-station with his comrades, under the command of the
admirable doctors Gaillard, Conte, and Boisramé (I think there is one
other whom I have forgotten). At all costs, then, the garrison must be
delivered. The sortie of the evening of June 4 has proved a failure.
The 5th is a gruelling day; at its close the defenders themselves are
amazed at the fact that they are still withstanding the foe. What will
befall on the morrow? It is better not to wait for it. What is left of
the 101st and of the 7th and 8th Companies of the 142nd will try to get
away.

Vanier attaches himself to the men of the 101st. They are thirty-four
in number, and among them there are some wounded. The order is to leave
the fort at no matter what cost; every man is to look after himself,
not troubling about the others. During the day each of them has
registered the direction he will take. Vanier, at half-past 10 P.M., is
the first to jump into the ditch, accompanied by a comrade. Both crawl
up the side of the ditch and, once on top, start running along at full
speed.

“_Wer da?_” (Who goes there?) “_Halte-là!_” (Halt there!)

They stop and throw themselves into a shell-hole. Vanier thinks he has
heard the German words “_Wer da?_” (Who goes there?). He loads his
revolver and whispers to his companion:

“Don’t come with me, chum. I don’t want to be a prisoner; I’d sooner be
killed.”

“But it’s a Frenchman,” answers the other.

They draw near and make themselves recognized. At barely 200 yards
from the fort they have come upon a detachment of the 298th. They are
taken to the rear, they are given wine to drink--wine, when they have
drunk no water for thirty-six hours!--they are examined.

Out of thirty-five only five miss the roll-call. Vanier goes to rejoin
his colonel at the rest billets, where he finds his regiment once more.

“I promote you to corporal,” said the colonel, embracing him.

That is how Stretcher-bearer Vanier won his stripes.




IV

SOME ONE RE-ENTERS THE FORT


Cadet Buffet, of the 141st Regiment, who assisted Captain Tabourot
when the latter was dying, and who left the fort during the night of
June 4-5 with a detachment of his company, also belongs to the 1916
class. He is the son of a working man. When quite a child he lost his
mother, and was brought up at an orphanage. He proved an excellent
pupil, gained his Bachelor’s degree in classics, and was being trained
for the teaching profession when the war caught him in its grasp. The
would-be schoolmaster is short and slim. He wears a small beard, and
his face is scarred with the marks of bomb-splinters and flame-jets.
When he arrives at divisional headquarters his eyes are almost haggard,
and he seems to be in that state of agitation which precedes a nervous
breakdown. Nevertheless, in dealing with the combats in the interior of
the fort, with the German field-works, with the German positions, he
furnishes such accurate reports and draws such shrewd conclusions that
the Divisional Commander sends him to the headquarters of the sector.

Arrived there, he resumes his account and his explanations. The General
listens to him, watches him, then orders him to take a rest. The young
man, at the end of his tether, goes to bed. A few hours later, having
washed, shaved, and had a meal, he already looks a different being.

Once more he goes before the General. Matters are urgent; a serious
problem has to be solved. An attack has been arranged to relieve the
fort. It will be started in a few hours. Major Raynal may contribute
towards its success. Let him signal, if he can, the position of the
enemy machine-guns on the fort, let him thus direct the artillery fire
during the night; he will help in the operation. While the work is
going on elsewhere, let him detain the enemy in the interior passages.
But how is one to get into touch with him? Several times, reconnoitring
and water fatigue parties have tried to do so. They have not been able
to cross the gorge: they have been brought to a halt or mown down by
the German curtain fires, or perhaps by the machine-gun which the
commandant himself has had installed to guard the southern ditch. One
who is thoroughly acquainted with the fort, who knows its ins and outs,
might possibly carry out so hazardous a mission. Cadet Buffet is the
only one who possesses these qualifications.

“I’ll go,” says the lad, without letting the General finish.

The General, whose only son has been killed, beams at him with a
paternal look.

“This is not an order, my friend”--he must have been very nearly saying
“my son”--“what I ask of you is something more than your duty. To get
away from the fort was a fine performance. I don’t _order_ you to go
back there.”

“I’ll go,” repeats Buffet stoutly.

“Of course you’ll be rewarded: the Legion of Honour or the Military
Medal.”

“Oh no!” protests the cadet; “I’ll go for nothing.”

A staff officer asks for the privilege of accompanying him.

“I would rather go alone,” he says. “When we get there, things will be
easier if I am alone. Besides, I want entire freedom of movement.”

The Chief of Staff hands him his orders. He reads them, rereads them,
imprints them in his memory and returns the paper, for he must not
carry anything away with him.

Night comes, and he is taken by motor-car as far as motor-cars dare go.
He shakes hands with the officer who is with him, then lightly runs off
into the darkness, where his outline is soon lost.

It has been arranged that, if he re-enters the fort, the searchlight
will end up its next signals with “Long live France!”

At 11.20 P.M. the visual message transmitted from Fort Vaux, after
an opening which the bombardment made it impossible to understand,
contains this phrase: “You will intervene before we are utterly
exhausted. Long live France!”




V

THE LAST WORDS


The effort to extricate Vaux has not been relaxed for a moment, but the
German attacks and ours succeed each other, dash against each other,
anticipate each other, cancel each other. Neither side contrives to
forge ahead. On the right, the enemy is unable to debouch from Damloup,
and spends his strength in vain against the battery. On the left, his
way is blocked in Fumin Wood, and R¹ continues to withstand him. The
battle drags along in the hard-pressed, flame-ravaged, starving fort,
where the energy of a handful of men makes the resistance seem likely
to last for ever. But we cannot retake the external earthworks, which
bristle with machine-guns. The whole tableland and its slopes are swept
to such an extent that the ground is like a mass of cinders.

In the course of the morning of June 6, we might have fancied for a
moment that we once more held the whole fort and that the garrison
was delivered. An attack had been prepared, and was to open at two
o’clock. At four, a German pioneer of the 27th Regiment was brought
into divisional headquarters, scared out of his wits, his uniform in
rags. He was found in our lines, without weapons, wild-eyed, running
breathlessly. On being examined, he stated that he had escaped from
Fort Vaux when the French surrounded it.

The attack was to approach the fort by its three fronts: towards the
western front, a company of the 238th; towards the gorge, another
company of the same regiment and a section of engineers, commanded by
Major Mathieu; finally, towards the eastern front, two companies of
the 321st, commanded by Major Favre. The signal was to be given at two
o’clock in the morning by a series of rockets.

On the right, the two companies of the 321st, vigorously inspired by
their leader, reach the ditch of the counterscarp in two waves; they
are received by a curtain fire of bombs and machine-guns. Their ranks
thinned by the fire of these machine-guns, which crown the parapet
of the escarp, the first bomb-throwers fall back. In their turn, the
two waves unroll themselves successively. Their leaders, however, are
almost all struck, and that almost at once: Major Favre, killed by a
bullet in his head; Lieutenant Ray, Second Lieutenant Rives, seriously
wounded; Lieutenant Bellot, wounded but revived; Second Lieutenant
Morel, killed; Second Lieutenant Billaud, killed; Second Lieutenant
Desfougères, wounded; Lieutenant Aymé, wounded. What a roll of honour,
what a book of martyrs! Robbed of so many officers, the troops waver.
Captain and Adjutant Baume takes over the command of the battalion,
restores order in the ranks, appoints the subordinate commanders, and
holds himself in readiness to thrust back a counter-assault which,
in face of the attitude of his men, does not come off after all. The
scouts keep the regiment and the brigade posted as to the situation.
However violent the curtain fires may be, they scour the volcanic
country, the survivors taking the place of the wounded or the dead.

Farther to the left, the attack of the 328th on the western front and
the gorge has met with similar obstacles. For a few moments it has
contrived to encircle the fort, but has not been able to hold its
ground. It has even been impeded by the fire of our artillery upon the
superstructure, to demolish the enemy machine-guns placed there. This
attack, too, has had to fall back on the positions from which it set
out.

With what throbbing hearts have the various phases of the struggle been
followed from the interior of the fort! To feel that one’s comrades are
approaching, that they are there, that they are bringing deliverance,
and then that they are shipwrecked when almost in harbour--what thrills
of hope, and what a disappointment! At twenty past six in the morning
the following message, half of it undecipherable, is transmitted from
the fort:

“... without having attained the objectives. Enemy machine-guns on top
of the fort: these ought to have been shelled....”

Where are they, then, these mysterious machine-guns which our artillery
cannot manage to demolish? In what hidden lurking-place, under what
shelter?

This is an account of the battle so far as observation of it has been
possible from the fort. A few minutes later the fort speaks again. This
time its words ring with the grandeur of honourable achievement, and
the sadness of grim resignation.

Reopen the _Song of Roland_, at the verses where Roland, victorious but
grievously wounded, journeys through the vale of Roncevaux in search of
the peers of France, brings back their bodies one by one, and lays them
at the feet of Archbishop Turpin, who will give them the last blessing:

“Roland departs. Alone he scours the battlefield, goes up and down
the valley, up and down the mountains. He finds Gérin and his comrade
Gérier, he finds Bérenger and Otton, he finds Anséis and Samson, he
finds old Gérard, Count of Roussillon. He carries the barons one by
one, comes back with them to the archbishop, and lays them in a row at
his feet....

“Roland returns and searches all over the plain. He has found his
friend Olivier, he has pressed him tightly to his heart, and he
returns as best he can to the archbishop....”

After the failure of the final attempt at deliverance, Fort Vaux does
not know how many hours or minutes it still has to live. In a message
resembling a last will and testament, the Commandant musters the names
of his dauntless comrades-in-arms, pays a tribute to his men, and
offers them to the high command. At half-past six his signals transmit
the following message:

“I have no more water, in spite of the ration system of the last few
days. It is essential that I should be extricated and that a fresh
supply of water should reach me without delay. I think our resources
have nearly touched rock-bottom. The troops--officers, N.C.O.’s and
men,--in all circumstances, have done their duty to the bitter end.

“I mention: Lieutenants De Roquette and Girard of the 53rd, Bazy,
Albagnac of the 142nd, all wounded; Alirol, Largnes, Cadet Tuzel,
Sergeant-Major Brune of the 142nd, Lieutenants De Nizet and Rebattet,
Artillery, Lieutenant Roy and Cadet Bérard of the 2nd Engineers,
Corporal Bonnin of the 142nd.

“Losses: 7 killed, among them Captain Tabourot of the 142nd and
Lieutenant Tournery of the 101st.

“Seventy-six wounded, among them 4 officers and the auxiliary doctors
Conte and Gaillard.

“I hope that you will once more intervene with vigour before we are
utterly exhausted.”

The chief’s duty is fulfilled. He has forgotten nothing but himself.

After this the fort maintains silence. For the whole day of June 6
the visual signalling posts, on the watch, will not register a single
message. The fort retires within itself to face all the suffering piled
on suffering: the barrages, the bombs, the flames and the gas and the
suffocation, the horror of unspeakable sights and smells, and, above
all, thirst, the thirst that makes men howl like wolves, and lacerates
their tongues and their lips.

Is it dead, is it alive? Is it captured, is it still free? The outside
world no longer knows. The longing to know keeps the whole army in
suspense. This longing is contagious at a distance. Like the signals,
it flashes to the end of the country, to the end of the world. In sober
truth, the whole earth awaits with intense eagerness the upshot of the
drama of Vaux. And it is the miracle of the defence, and that alone,
that has aroused this great thrill of admiration and anxiety.

Yet the fort is not forsaken. The whole army is concerned with working
its salvation. Without delay, a new offensive is planned. A regiment of
Zouaves and a regiment of colonial infantry, formed into a composite
brigade, are brought up into the neighbourhood. As soon as methodical
preparations will allow of it, they will be drafted into the line.

The enemy is seized with no less determination. Amazed at the
protracted nature of the struggle, he seeks to overpower the defence at
any price. At any price? What an exorbitant price he has already paid
for each square yard of the tableland slopes! Our observing-stations
signal that the German infantrymen are coming up in column of companies
to storm Fort Vaux. It is half-past 7 P.M. Once more the tornado is let
loose. The artillery rages over the whole chaotic scene.

And the Commander-in-Chief’s headquarters, at half-past 8 P.M., sends
to the army headquarters the following telegram, which is to be
transmitted to the fort by visual signalling:

  “The Commander-in-Chief wishes to express to the commandant of
  Fort Vaux, and the commandant of the garrison, as well as to their
  troops, his satisfaction at their superb resistance to the repeated
  onslaughts of the foe.

    JOFFRE.”

Amid the lightning flashes from batteries and rockets, amid the uproar
of the storm that makes the hills tremble, the message is put through.
The fort, however, does not reply. Red rockets in sheaves are descried
above it. Is it dead or alive? Is it taken, or still free?

At 9 P.M. the voice of the Commander-in-Chief is heard once more,
drowning the hurricane of fire and steel:

“Major Raynal is appointed Commander of the Legion of Honour.”

To transmit this order, the impossible has to be achieved. It is the
express desire of the supreme commander. In vain is Vaux summoned by
signals of all kinds--Vaux no longer replies. Suddenly, at daybreak on
the 7th, at 3.50 A.M., Vaux awakes and issues an appeal. The signalling
posts make out these three words: “Don’t leave us.” “Don’t leave
us”--the cry of a dying man holding the hand of one he loves. After
that, nothing more. Fort Vaux will not speak again.




BOOK V

THE DÉNOUEMENT




I

THE GERMAN ACCOUNT


On June 7, at ten to four in the morning, Fort Vaux was still breathing.

A German account of its last agonies and its death--doctored, no doubt,
to suit the German public, but nevertheless paying a tribute of respect
to the defenders--was published in the _Breisgauer Zeitung_ of June 16,
17, and 18. The first part is dated June 4, the second June 7. It is
signed by one of the war correspondents admitted to the Great General
Headquarters, Kurt von Reden, but it is dated from “the Great General
Headquarters of the attacking troops,” and it is easy to guess from
certain details that it was revised, if not actually written, by the
Staff. Here is the complete text of the enemy version:


PART I

    “GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE ATTACKING TROOPS
    NORTH-EAST OF VAUX, _June 4_.

  “On June 2, at four o’clock in the morning, the four attacking
  companies were drawn up in a semicircle round Fort Vaux, at about
  100 yards’ distance; at one swoop they pushed forward even to
  the ditch, which, 10 yards broad and 5 deep, encloses the whole
  earthwork, in the form of an irregular trapezoid, within its sheer
  walls built of large square stones. Across the appalling curtain
  fire of the French we had only been able to convey a part of
  our war material up to the heights of the fort: flame-throwers,
  hand-grenades, axes, and wire-cutters.

  “In consequence of the long bombardment with heavy guns, the fort,
  though very massively built, was no longer capable of defending
  the surrounding space effectively; but the dug-outs, hollowed
  out deep in the rocks and covered with reinforced concrete, had
  held out. The flanking transverse passages of the fort, too, were
  still factors to be reckoned with. Accordingly the first problem
  was to make their artillery and machine-guns harmless; for these,
  with their raking fire, churned up the bottom of the ditch, and
  prevented us from crossing and reaching the interior of the fort.
  Each of the two breastworks in front showed an open breach, caused
  by very heavy projectiles, in the gigantic blocks of concrete of
  which they were formed. The damage was repaired, up to a point,
  by sandbags; and, to protect the breach, they had placed there a
  machine-gun which might be able to operate towards the glacis. The
  principal obstacle, however, was still the guns of the transverse
  passages, which from their narrow concrete embrasures could sweep
  the short line of the ditches with a pitiless fire. Access to
  either of the breastworks was impeded by the fire of a 37 mm.
  revolving gun, a 55 mm. gun, and by two machine-guns. Not a cat
  could have passed through.

  “First of all, the machine-gun, which at the very breach prevented
  our approach, was silenced by hand-grenades. Then the pioneers
  crept right up to the upper edge of the escarped wall, above
  the western transverse passage, set up the flame-throwers, and,
  from above, with the aid of a crank shaft, inserted the tubes of
  the flame-throwers into the embrasures. A flame of two yards,
  accompanied by dense smoke, drove the garrison far away from its
  guns.

  “At this point some thirty pioneers, taking advantage of the
  breaches in the masonry, contrived to get down into the ditch and,
  on the other side, to reach the top of the main parapet, where they
  lay down and improvised a sort of shelter in the rubbish-heap. This
  little band was at once cut off, the French having reopened fire
  with the machine-guns; these made a retreat impossible for them,
  while in the transverse gallery the smoke had dispersed. In the
  tremendous din of the German curtain fire, about 200 yards behind
  the fort, cries could not be heard at 20 yards. The officer in
  command had to signal with his cap, which he waved in the Morse
  code.

  “At 7 A.M. we succeeded in capturing the second transverse gallery,
  the eastern one, after which the garrison, through a breach made
  by the shells, was nearly overwhelmed by a bomb attack; thirty
  men were captured, and the machine-guns, with an abundance of
  munitions, fell into our hands and were made use of.

  “But in the case of the other transverse gallery, the smoke had
  only counteracted the effects of its fire for a brief spell; it was
  therefore essential to take it, no matter how. Bags were filled
  with hand-grenades and passed along the wall until in front of the
  embrasures, where they were made to explode. This, however, could
  not be done without considerable risk to the brave pioneers, for
  the French had placed another machine-gun in a doorway not far
  from the embrasures, and could thus shoot from below at any head
  overlapping the upper edge of the wall. For all that, about 5
  P.M., the explosions were successful, and we were at last able to
  penetrate into the transverse gallery which we had first attacked.
  The garrison, by a deep corridor passing underneath the bottom
  of the ditch, had taken refuge in the interior of the fort. It
  had been a lengthy operation, for the explosives, in view of the
  French curtain fire, could only be placed on the slope in small
  quantities, and even then the danger was terrible. During the
  interval of waiting, the pioneers and the infantrymen, who were
  not working directly at the explosives, dug trenches above, on the
  glacis, and farther west, by the side of the fort; they occupied
  these positions with the machine-guns taken from the enemy to meet
  a possible attack from the south-west.

  “About 7 P.M. we pushed forward towards the gorge of the fort,
  after crossing, behind the first parapet, the second ditch, which
  under the bombardment had become a wide excavation containing
  enormous masses of shattered concrete. The armed turrets on the
  first parapet--an observing-station at each of the two breastworks,
  a big cupola in the middle, provided with two guns, and a raised
  and armoured machine-gun shelter at the left-hand breastwork--were
  unfit for further use and stripped of their thick revetment of
  concrete; the iron rods of the framework stuck out all over them
  like the prickles of a hedgehog. In the same way the infantry
  position higher up on the cavalier had been completely ripped up by
  the German shells.

  “At this point the officer commanding the pioneers wanted to make
  his way into the earthwork itself, and that by the same underground
  passage which the defenders of the smoked-out transverse gallery
  had followed. There was a deep stairway, then a short landing,
  then a steep flight of stairs going up to a stout oaken door, which
  prevented one from going farther. Pioneer-Lieutenant Ruberg decided
  to blow up this door by putting against it all the hand-grenades
  required and taking advantage of the ensuing confusion to storm
  the position with his troops. In order that the force might not
  itself be wiped out by the explosion, it was essential that it
  should gain enough time to be able, once the match was lighted,
  to go down the staircase and climb up the other side; this would
  necessitate a cord burning at least twenty seconds. Lieutenant
  Ruberg, for want of explosive petards, accordingly tied together a
  dozen grenades. He was fastening them up against the heavy door,
  when he heard behind it a whispering on the part of the French, and
  the slight crackle that denotes a Bickford cord. There was no time
  left to think matters over, for in half a minute at the most the
  door would blow up from inside, and in that case the French would
  have the moral superiority in the assault. The great thing was to
  anticipate them. The Lieutenant motioned to his men to be on their
  guard, pulled out the normal detonator of one of the hand-grenades,
  which acts in five seconds, and rushed to the foot of the staircase
  in order not to be blown to pieces. When he was half-way, a
  formidable explosion took place: the charge laid by the French,
  acted upon by the other, exploded simultaneously. The pressure of
  the air threw the Lieutenant a few yards farther, and he received
  several splinters in his back. His pioneers darted forward into the
  corridor and reached a crossing, but were then confronted by two
  machine-guns placed at about a right angle ten paces to the rear,
  so that it became impossible to push on any farther. They had to
  possess their souls in patience throughout the night. From now on
  there were two commandants of Fort Vaux, a French commandant below
  ground and a German commandant above him. The French could not
  poke their heads out anywhere without being greeted at once with
  bullets or bombs; and the Germans, for the time being, were unable
  to advance. A horrible stench emanated from all the open cracks in
  the ceiling of the casemates. The corpses of the French killed in
  the previous fighting still lay there; there was no means of either
  pulling them out or of burying them in the thick, hard stone. In
  the course of the night a dozen French tried to find a way out.
  Some of them were killed, others taken prisoners by outposts placed
  at the south-west of the fort.

  “On June 3, at five o’clock, a French airman flew above the
  earthwork in order to reconnoitre the position with accuracy. He
  came down very low, perhaps 100 yards above the ground, in order
  to see better, but he flew with such zigzags and so rapidly that
  the sensitive spot, the heart of the aeroplane, could not be hit
  in those few seconds. He made his escape; and ten minutes later a
  withering shell-fire of 22 cm.’s burst upon the trenches of the
  gorge which we were occupying, so that we had to take refuge as
  quickly as possible in the casemates that we had captured.

  “To-day, June 4, is the fourth day that the fort has been shared
  by the two sides; the French are within like mutinous prisoners
  defending themselves against their warders. It is a situation which
  has never been prolonged to such an extent in the whole history of
  fortress warfare.

  “The conduct of the French garrison is admirable; but still more
  admirable is the heroism of the German companies, which day and
  night, without a wink of sleep, without a drop of water, almost
  without food, withstand the most terrific fire, and will not let go
  their hold until this last corner of the underground passages of
  Vaux is in our hands.

    “KURT VON REDEN.”


PART II

(Delayed in Transmission and Mutilated by the Censor.)

    “GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE ATTACKING TROOPS
    NORTH-EAST OF VAUX, _June 7_.

  “For five days and five nights the terrific combat has been raging
  without respite in the interior of Fort Vaux, up to the moment
  when the remnant of the intrepid garrison, deprived of their last
  means of resistance, surrendered to the victors.

  “I have described at length the engagements of June 2 and 3; the
  fighting was continued on the following days with unparalleled
  stubbornness and ferocity. The situation was such that within the
  fort there had been formed, so to speak, a second fort, which the
  French, utterly reckless of their own lives, defended to the very
  last gasp.

  “After blowing up the heavy door opening on to the corridor which
  led to the western observing-station at the barracks of the Gorge,
  the Germans advanced step by step in the corridor. It was very
  dark, only 90 centimetres wide and a metre and a half high; the
  French had raised a barricade of sandbags two yards deep, and had
  set up a machine-gun behind it. It was now essential to blow up the
  barricade, in order to fall upon another a few yards farther on.
  Thus the French were pushed back step by step over a distance of
  twenty-five yards.

  “Near the gorge, the courtyard of the barracks had previously
  formed a concrete platform about five yards thick above the
  underground corridors and magazines; but it was now only a huge
  ploughed-up crater. The heavy shells, even in this crater, had
  hollowed out a sort of funnel, at the bottom of which a narrow
  opening, pierced through the last vault, seemed as if it might give
  access to the interior of the structure. The French, till then
  completely screened from above and entirely shut in, were suddenly
  in great danger of being smoked out through this opening. The
  bombardment that overwhelmed the fort, however, made observation
  almost impossible for us. The French were the first to notice, from
  the interior, that the bombardment had almost entirely staved in
  a ceiling; they at once occupied the edge of the funnel, stopped
  up the hole with sandbags, and installed a machine-gun. Thus they
  commanded a portion of that broken country, which now constituted
  the top of the fort; In consequence, the German communications with
  this top part, which had before this been unhampered, were now
  somewhat restricted; nor could they manage to come close enough to
  overwhelm the new pivot point with bombs.

  “Among the French the signs of hunger and thirst became more and
  more marked. Some succeeded in escaping, by the ditch of the gorge
  (this was still in their hands), towards the Montagne Wood, in
  front of Fort Souville. In this direction lay the first line of
  French infantry. By this route, too, the commandant of the fort,
  when he had no more carrier-pigeons, sent liaison officers. The
  underground telephone communications had been destroyed by heavy
  shells.

  “On June 5 and 6, the position of the French garrison grew steadily
  worse; the number of dead and especially of wounded increased with
  rapid strides; at last there were no more than a hundred pints of
  water left, even for the wounded. Those who had not been wounded
  had not a drop, and had eaten scarcely anything since the 4th.
  Yet the French continued to fire from the direction of the gorge,
  through the embrasures in the barracks and those in the ditch, at
  every target that offered itself. In this way the German garrison
  of Fort Vaux suffered losses. Other losses, by no means negligible,
  were inflicted upon it by the continual flanking fire directed
  against the fort from the infantry tactical point, situated quite
  close at hand, to the west; it was provided with a field gun.
  Similarly, the high-perched battery of Damloup, on the south,
  opened a very troublesome bombardment.

  “On the afternoon of June 6 the position of the Germans became
  extremely hazardous. The casemates which they occupied were
  assiduously peppered, at first with gas projectiles, somewhat later
  by heavy shells. The two bombardments were clearly the forerunners
  of an infantry counter-attack aiming at the recapture of the
  earthwork from the south-west. This attack, however, was brought
  to nought by the overpowering effects of the German curtain fire,
  which opened as soon as the attack was started.

  “To-day, at dawn, the French garrison surrendered through the
  medium of its commandant. The prisoners who are beginning to come
  in are the living image of misery.

    “KURT VON REDEN.”

The text, which has been suitably edited, calls for some brief comments.

The engagement before the fort on June 2 is pictured as quite separate
from the fighting of the previous day round the Hardaumont salient,
Fumin Wood, and the line of entrenchments, and, on the same day, at
Damloup and by the Damloup battery. As a matter of fact, it forms an
integral part of all this fighting. It was the retreat of the details,
placed west and east of the fort and overwhelmed by numbers, that
allowed the enemy to approach the transverse passages.

The number of cannon and machine-guns allotted to the defence of these
transverse passages is doubled in the German version.

The northern ditch, not having been swept by fire, became for the enemy
a sort of stronghold.

The anomalous situation of a commandant of the fort on top and another
inside, the one French, the other German, was not new. It had arisen,
though _vice versa_, on May 22, 23, and 24 at Fort Douaumont, where
General Mangin’s troops occupied the superstructure and a portion of
the casemates.

It was on June 4, towards noon, that the Germans, above the barricade
of sandbags, were able to hurl liquid fire and asphyxiating gases.

The German account informs us of a remarkable episode in the
resistance, or rather completes the reports of an artillery observer
who signalled on June 6 that the armoured turret of the fort would
be gutted. Not only were the besieged shut in and suffocated with
smoke, but the ceiling gave way and fell upon them. An opening was
made in the vault which protected them. They were the first to notice
it, and partly stopped up the fissure with sandbags, but succeeded
in installing a machine-gun, which battered down a part of the
superstructure and seriously interfered with the enemy’s progress.
This machine-gun was so skilfully worked that it did not allow the
assailants to approach and cripple its fire with bombs. This incident
may be assigned to June 5 or 6, for Cadet Buffet’s report, which
summarizes the life of the fort up to the night of the 4th-5th, makes
no mention of it. Thus, up to the last moment, the energy and ingenuity
of the defenders did not cease to be exerted to the full.

There was no plan for a counter-offensive on our part on the afternoon
of June 6. Our attack of the 6th, at two in the morning, had just, and
only just, failed. That of the composite brigade could not take place
until the morning of the 8th. On the evening of June 6 it was, on the
contrary, a furious enemy attack in the neighbourhood of Vaux that was
shattered under our fire.

Finally, is it possible reasonably to compare with the defence kept
up for six days under the frightful conditions already described, the
feat--admirable, no doubt, but far easier to explain--of the attacking
troops, who were relieved, revictualled, supplied with water (even if
only by rain-water--for there were several showers), and breathed an
air which was not tainted and foul?

The true victor in the contest should be mentioned, and the German
account as good as names him when it says: “Those who were not wounded
had not had a drop of water for two days.” Not a drop of water, in the
corridors poisonous with the smoke from bombs and the asphyxiating
gases!

The true victor in the contest was Thirst.




II

THE FINAL EFFORT


“The mountains are lofty, dark, and huge, the valleys deep, the
torrents swift. Behind and in front of the army, the trumpets ring,
and all seem to answer the horn. The Emperor rides in anger, and the
French, wrathful and gloomy, ride with him. There is not one who does
not weep and wail, not one who does not pray to God to guard Roland
until they arrive together at the battlefield and smite valiantly
in his company. But what good is it? All this is useless: they have
tarried too long to arrive in time.”

Charlemagne’s trumpets will not have power to wake Roland at Roncevaux.

On June 7, the fort no longer answers the appeals by visual signalling.
The German communiqué has announced its capture; but had they not
already announced it on March 9? The high command will not surrender
except to evidence. It needs certainty before it will give up the idea
of delivering the garrison. True, the mangled fort is merely a point in
the front, and has no longer any value in itself. But perhaps it still
shelters Frenchmen under its unyielding vaults.

On the 7th, General Nivelle, commanding the Second Army, addresses the
following order to the contingent entrusted with the operations in the
Vaux area:

  “The composite brigade placed at the disposal of Colonel Savy,
  consisting of the 2nd Regiment of Zouaves and the colonial
  regiment of Morocco, has been entrusted with the noblest mission
  that a French force can wish for, that of going to the aid of its
  comrades-in-arms, who are valiantly doing their duty under tragic
  circumstances.

  “Chosen out from the heroic army of Verdun among those most worthy
  of so glorious an enterprise, the 2nd Regiment of Zouaves and the
  colonial regiment of Morocco, supported by a powerful artillery,
  inspired by the unconquerable will to pursue their task to the end,
  will approach the enemy with their usual magnificent dash, and will
  add fresh laurels to those that already cover their flag.

  “The nation will know how to show them its gratitude.

  “Good luck, comrades, and long live France!

    “R. NIVELLE.”

The day of June 7 is devoted to the final preparations. The battalions
possess bombs, rockets, Bengal fire signals, as well as a second
water-bottle of four pints per man. The distribution of cartridges is
completed. Each man must carry provisions for four days, for one cannot
reckon on the possibility of revictualling. Finally, the orders are
read out to each company, so that no man may fail to be alive to the
importance of the task in hand: their comrades are waiting for them to
come to their rescue.

The approach march is made under the worst possible conditions; it is
raining, the ground is soaked, and the night is pitch dark, so that
the guides go astray and the entry of the three companies into line
is delayed. The attack is to be launched at ten past 4 A.M. One hour
previously, the enemy himself starts a bomb attack, and returns to the
charge a second time against Doualin’s battalion at the Belfort trench.
He is driven back, but not until he has caused some confusion in our
ranks.

Nevertheless, at daybreak, the Zouaves and the colonial infantry close
with the enemy “with their usual magnificent dash.” Doubtless, the hope
of bringing succour to the defenders of Vaux is a very slender one.
All the signs, in fact, go to prove that it is too late. If the German
wireless message which announced the capitulation must be received with
caution, the observing-stations have noticed changes in the aspect
of the vaults: in front of rooms 7 and 8, the bomb-proof shelter of
sandbags or stones is almost entirely destroyed.

Under the tornado of fire--for the enemy knows how to keep what he has
won--our infantrymen advance. They want to go on until they get into
touch with their comrades. They will go on.

A shell penetrates into the C.O.’s headquarters. The telephone
apparatus remains intact, but the operator has both hands cut off by a
splinter. He holds out the stumps to his chief and apologises:

“I can no longer telephone.”

Like the attack of June 6, that of the composite brigade succeeds in
encircling the fort. The enemy, however, occupies the superstructure,
and his machine-guns work great havoc in our ranks. His reinforcements
are constantly coming up. The battalion on the right can only just hang
on to the terrain, after very slow progress. In the centre, the advance
continues up to the ditches of the fort. It is at this moment that the
German machine-guns do us the most serious damage. The leaders of the
expedition fall one after the other, among them Major Gilbert and Major
Jérôme de Mouy. The latter was a cavalry officer who had passed the
staff college; he had returned from Morocco and been awarded a staff
appointment, but asked for the command of a battalion of Zouaves.

The two battalions, deprived of their officers, are compelled to give
up the scheme of recapturing the fort and to entrench themselves in the
parallel lines from which they started.

Suddenly an explosion occurs in the fort, and a dense black smoke
issues from casemate 5.

There is no human being left alive in this last stronghold.

At eight o’clock in the morning the battalion of the colonial regiment
which acts as a support still has no precise information about the
operation that has been embarked upon, save that the two attacking
battalions have not returned. Hence they have had to advance, and they
need munitions to ward off the imminent counter-attacks. A fatigue
party of eighty men is told off, under the command of a lieutenant and
of Cadet Jacques Bégouen. They carry grenades, rockets, and Bengal
fire to stake out our lines. Their progress can be followed in detail,
thanks to Cadet Bégouen’s notes, from which I will quote a passage. He
too, later on, will be among the chroniclers of the war. A son of Count
Bégouen, whose historical learning is well known, he has two brothers
serving with the colours--one of them, like himself, belongs to that
heroic colonial regiment of Morocco which distinguished itself at
Dixmude in December 1914, and which, in the battle of Verdun, added new
lustre to its crown of glory.


_From Cadet Bégouen’s Notebook_

    “_June 8._

  “So we have started in miscellaneous contingents to fulfil one
  of the most perilous missions, one where there is need of mutual
  knowledge among the men concerned and of good officers and N.C.O.’s
  who have confidence in you.

  “The guide marches slowly at our head. The men know their
  orders--all must follow. We go through a copse of dense
  undergrowth, where a deep communication trench is hidden, a place
  that cannot be taken under the enemy’s fire. We sink in the watery
  mud up to our calves. All is going well.

  “We have marched up the counter-slope, and are once more facing the
  German sausages.

  “At this point begins the zone of curtain fire and of mathematical
  pounding which stops only at the French first lines.

  “Having come to the end of the road, we climb the steep slope
  leading to the ridge. Already the trees and shrubs have been
  blasted by the firing.... The battering process begins. But the
  German sausages have not yet seen us, and we endure the usual
  punishment; barely fifty or sixty shells fall to the right and to
  the left of the little communication trench.

  “Before crossing the ridge, we take a brief rest. The first
  contingent, in front, continues its journey little by little.

  “Suddenly the guide says to me, ‘Where am I to lead you?’ ‘To the
  first line, I am told.’ ‘But I’ve got to stop at the Colonel’s
  headquarters.’ He does not know the way to the first line. We
  advance all the same. Here we are on the plateau where so much
  blood has been spilt: the communication trenches have become mere
  tracks, the forest a few sparse trunks stripped of their branches,
  the soil is made up of scraps of all kinds, and the corpses, lying
  in batches just as they fell, are in every conceivable attitude....

  “I bid my men follow me, jumping across the shell-holes, and we
  begin marching for two hundred yards.

  “At this moment the guide stops us: ‘Here on the right is the
  communication trench leading to the Colonel’s place.’ I still
  insist, ‘But I have to go to the first line.’ ‘I don’t know the
  way: I am going to the Colonel’s quarters,’ and in less time than
  it takes to tell he hurries away in that direction. What can we
  do? The men are restless, and won’t march without a guide.... We
  all rush in the direction of the Colonel’s quarters. In places,
  the communication trench cannot be traced, for it is chock-full of
  corpses. All classes of troops are there: engineers, foot-sloggers,
  colonials.... In this blend of mud and dead bodies we mark time,
  and all that amid an acrid smell of blood and putrefying flesh....
  Our nerves are on edge; we begin to become the supermen that we
  shall be when the gunpowder has scorched us....

  “We come to a relief post for scouts. Our guide is here. I am on
  the point of scolding him severely and asking for an explanation,
  when a substitute comes to lead us, this time to the first line.
  This fellow actually does know the way. We about turn to go back
  again upon the road towards Fort Vaux. The men are tired out. We
  break off for a rest.

  “Urged by the guide, who maintains that the faster we go the better
  it will be for us, we resume our march. Once again we are on a
  good road. The first fatigue party, led on the direct route by
  its guide, is far on ahead. It has passed the plateau and is now
  descending the slope of the Ravine of Death. At this moment the
  Boches begin to aim at them and start curtain fires; a rain of
  steel, projectiles of all calibres, proceeds to fall ... everywhere
  one sees things flying in the air....

  “Forward! It is a terrible dance of death. The men begin to spread
  out; if I stop, they will not start off again....

  “The whole countryside is ablaze with sunlight.... An unrivalled
  opportunity for taking a splendid photograph: in the background,
  on the left, Fort Vaux; on the right, the Woevre plains; on the
  left, the few tree-stumps that mark what was once La Caillette
  Wood, blackened with 210 rounds of gunfire. In the foreground, the
  stricken field where the shell-holes adjoin each other, full to
  the brim with dead. And everywhere great geysers, as it were, of
  earth and war-material leap into the air under the impact of the
  shells.... It was a unique scene, and so easy to photograph, since
  it was a part of my duties to do so.... But my camera was at Fort
  Tavannes....”

When the onslaughts upon the entrenchments that he was guarding were
at their height, Captain Delvert admired the pose of a bomb-thrower in
action. A soldier of the 142nd who managed to get away from Fort Vaux,
in describing the attack by flames, gas, and explosive petards, and the
giving way of the door, and the men flying in the air, and the Boches
rushing in, and Lieutenant Bazy barring the corridor to them, cannot
help giving vent to the exclamation, “It was superb!” Cadet Bégouen,
leading his fatigue party under the geysers caused by the shells,
feels sorry that he has not his camera with him. Such are the undying
characteristics of our race, ever in love with beauty, ever desirous,
under the most adverse conditions, of seeing life and realizing it to
the full.




III

THE HARVEST OF THE FUTURE


Vaux is lost, for the time being, but Vaux will be regained, and the
battle of Verdun is being won day by day. Day by day the meaning of the
Verdun battle grows clearer. The infantryman who only knows his trench
mates is an atom of a vast army distributed over all the fronts: his
blood and sweat will mingle in history with the blood and sweat of his
unknown and remote brothers. A scrap of disputed territory, which seems
to the men involved an end in itself, is really nothing but a point in
the vast shifting front where the two great forces of the world are at
grips.

On June 12, five days after the capture of the fort, the
Commander-in-Chief informs the Verdun troops of the Russian victories
in Bukovina and Galicia, through the following Army order:

“The plan matured by the councils of the coalition is now in full
course of being carried out.

“Soldiers of Verdun, it is to your heroic resistance that this
consummation is due. It is this resistance that was the essential
condition, and it is on this resistance that our coming victories
depend; for it was this resistance that has created over the whole
theatre of the European war a situation that will soon bring about the
final triumph of our cause.”

The enemy is now held, and will have to submit to our laws and accept
our manœuvres.

On March 10 the enemy climbs the northern slopes of Fort Vaux. He
is now only two or three hundred yards off the counterscarp. To
cross those two or three hundred yards will take him three months.
Three months of superhuman exertions, of ceaseless attacks, of an
inconceivable outlay of munitions and incredible losses among her young
men, the flower of the nation. Three months, as if the war had no other
object than this.

And during those three months the coalition finishes concerting,
preparing, and carrying out its plans.

Fighting takes place in front of the fort, above and within it, from
June 2 to 7. On the 4th, the first Russian offensive is launched south
of the Pripet. It at once forces Austria to abandon its own offensive
against the Trentino.

There is fighting in front of Verdun from February 21, and fighting
goes on there during June and July. The Italian offensive on the
Trentino opens on June 25, while that on the Isonzo begins during the
early days of August. The Franco-British offensive on the Somme starts
on July 1, and the central Russian offensive on July 3.

“Soldiers of Verdun, it is to your heroic resistance that this
consummation is due....”

       *       *       *       *       *

In _War and Peace_, Prince Bagration, in the course of a battle, hears
bad news, but his coolness astonishes and reassures the aides-de-camp
who bring it. He has an unswerving confidence in Russia’s future.
A temporary set-back cannot make him any less certain of the final
triumph.

“Merely at the sight of him, those who approached him with anxious
looks began to recover their calm....”

This gives us a clue to the comforting words heard at Verdun in March,
when the fort was swept by the storm for the first time:

“You need feel no uneasiness.”

For the future is taking shape.

The fort played its part before the inviolate citadel of Verdun.
And while it was keeping the enemy in check, the storm-clouds were
gathering elsewhere, some day to burst and humble the German might in
the dust.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hapless fort of Vaux, a stronghold reduced to ashes, a marvel of
endurance, you who pulsated like a human heart, the whole world had
its eyes riveted on you for the space of a few days. The whole world
was not in error when it ascribed to you that significance which your
courage enhanced. You were minister to plans whose full tenor you did
not know, and to-day you play your part in the operations that are
unfolding themselves and will continue to unfold themselves.

Land that has been overrun by the lava of volcanoes shows an
unparalleled fertility when the lava has passed. Upon your tortured
soil a harvest of victories will spring up, and from your defence will
gush forth a fresh and inexhaustible fount of French heroism....


THE END


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN




Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Inconsistent spellings were not changed, as the book contains letters
and diary entries from different writers.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; ambiguous hyphens at the
ends of lines were retained.

Page 185: Text explains that the letter beginning at the bottom of that
page contains spelling errors.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Last Days of Fort Vaux, by Henry Bordeaux



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