GENERAL DUBAIL’S STAND
The days that followed—I may be more precise and say the three weeks
that followed—were the most critical that France had ever known. Crowded
together between August 20th and September 2nd came the capitulation of
Namur, the defeats at Morhange, Charleroi, and Mons, the evacuation of
Mulhouse, the retreats on Nancy and the Marne, the menace of von Kluck’s
advance on Paris, and the migration of the President and Government of
the Republic to Bordeaux. The war had begun in earnest. All along the
line the soldiers of France were either making a desperate stand against
superior numbers or, worse still, were retiring as fast as they could
go. It was the hour of the supreme test. Except along the twenty miles
between Thann and the Swiss frontier the whole line of the front had
been drawn in a position chosen, not by the French, but by the Germans.
Every day it was being pushed further on, and no one could say where the
limit would be reached. Even the arrival of the English Expeditionary
Force had made very little apparent difference. We know now how great
was the part that they played in the work of saving Paris, in spite of
their small numbers. But at the time all that they could do was to share
in the general retreat, and make the pursuit as costly as possible for
the triumphant Germans.
That was how the position in the north presented itself to the armies in
the east, when they had time to look beyond their own share in the
common defence, though as a matter of fact they were much too fully
occupied to take the calm and dispassionate view of the situation which
is now possible.
A soldier during a modern battle can see and understand nothing of what
is going on except on his own immediate front. He is in a state of
complete ignorance as to what may be happening to the other half of his
own battalion in the next village. But these men were hundreds of miles
from the events in Flanders. Even their chiefs can have known very
little of what was going on. Only one thing was certain. All the news
there was was bad news. Everywhere France and her armies were getting
the worst of it, and all that the individual soldier could do was to
obey his orders and do his own bit of fighting with all the courage and
endurance he could command.
I suppose that if we could see into the minds of the rank and file of
the first and second armies in those black days of disaster and doubt,
we should find that the one thing that sustained them, next to their
proud love of France, was the thought that they had Belfort and Epinal
and Toul and Verdun behind them. They had been brought up in the belief
that the four famous fortresses were to be the main defence against the
invading Germans, they knew nothing of the crushing effects of mammoth
siege guns, and believed that the forts of Liége were still holding out,
and possibly, if they had been left to their own devices, they would
have fallen back at once, as soon as they realized that the offensive
was over, on the solid protection of these bulwarks of the frontier.
Fortunately their generals knew better, and the series of battles that
saved the entire line, and therefore France, was fought in the open
country, well in advance of the fortresses. But the fine strategy and
inspiring leadership of de Castelnau and Dubail and Pau and Foch,
magnificent as they were, could have done nothing without the marvellous
spirit of the officers and men under their command. And that spirit,
after nearly a year and a half of the war, is more alive and vigorous
than ever. The point is worth dwelling upon, because of its bearing on
the future. The French in all probability have had their worst time and
the Germans their best. But even if that is not the case, even if our
Allies and we have to go through deeper waters still, we have this to
depend upon, that those armies of the east, like their brother soldiers
who fought at Charleroi and on the Marne, never once despaired, even
when they might well have thought that their cause was hopelessly lost.
Instead they first set their backs to the wall, and organized victory
out of defeat, and then contentedly settled down to a method of fighting
entirely foreign to the genius of their race. The fourth stage is yet to
come, but as to the results of it we need have no fears.
Exactly, as it happens, a year ago, from the day on which this chapter
is being written, I ended an article on a visit to the front trenches at
Celles in the Vosges with these words: “The best of it all was just the
one thing that it is most difficult to describe—the wonderful temper of
the French troops that we passed, and sometimes talked to, on the road.
In spite of cold and hardships and wounds and the constant nearness of
death, these men at the front had a spirit of cheerful endurance and
fearlessness that I believe nothing can conquer. If it comes to sitting
in the trenches for a year looking at the German trenches fifty yards
away they will sit the Germans out.” The year I spoke of has gone, and
they have not sat the Germans out—yet. But they are still sitting, and
before November 21st comes again—well, we shall see.
Three months before that visit to the Vosges, on August 21st, 1914,
there were no trenches to sit in, except the pathetic kind of enlarged
rabbit-scrapes that the men used to scoop out how and when they could.
But they had not much time for digging. The enemy were hard on their
heels. As soon as they knew that the French troops which had fought at
Morhange were retreating, followed inevitably by those which lined the
frontier of the Vosges, from the Donon down to the Ballon d’Alsace, they
hurried additional regiments across the Rhine as quickly as they could,
and very soon the force available for the attack amounted, it is
believed, to seven army corps, or something over 300,000 men. General
Dubail’s army, already reduced in size by the numerous levies made on it
for the commands in the north, had also been obliged to extend its left
wing in the direction of Nancy, and its centre, doubly weakened by these
two causes, gave way to a certain extent, under the heavy pressure
brought to bear upon it, and allowed the Germans to pour into France by
Saales, Sainte Marie aux Mines, and the Bonhomme. Those who crossed the
Col de Saales drove the French back as far as Ramberviller, twenty-five
miles due west of the pass, and occupied Provenchères, Senones, Raon
l’Etape, and St. Dié, while those who advanced by the two southern
passes occupied St. Léonard, a few miles south of St. Dié, and
threatened an attack on Epinal by the valley of Rouges-Eaux and the Col
de la Chipotte.
That was the position—the very alarming position—a day or two after the
battle of Morhange. The Col de Donon had been abandoned on the 21st, and
other German troops had advanced by Badonviller and Baccarat as far as
Gerbéviller and Lunéville, while a still larger army had crossed the
Seille and the frontier by the Château-Salins road, and arrived nearly
within striking distance of Nancy. The German front extended almost in a
straight line north-west and south-east from Etain past Pont-à-Mousson,
Champenoux, Lunéville, Gerbéviller, St. Benoit, (close to Ramberviller)
and the valley of the Rouges-Eaux (just west of St. Dié) to the Col de
Bonhomme.
The best way to arrive at a fairly clear idea of the operations that
followed is, I think, to leave for the present everything that happened
north of the Bayon-Lunéville road, culminating in the Battle of the
Grand Couronné of Nancy, and to follow first the German advance south of
the line between Lunéville and the Donon, in the department of the
Vosges.
[Illustration:
Record Press phot.
GENERAL DUBAIL.
]
Nothing had happened so far to cause any alteration in the grand plan of
campaign conceived by the general staff at Berlin before the war. Its
execution had only been delayed (for about a fortnight) first by the
unexpected resistance of Liége and the Belgian army, and secondly by the
Alsace-Lorraine offensive. Now that these two obstacles had been
disposed of the German armies were able to set themselves once again to
the task of rounding up the French and English in the neighbourhood of
Châlons-sur-Marne, to be operated by a simultaneous “hook” or encircling
movement from the north and from the south, and so to leave open the way
to Paris. From the beginning Metz was meant to be the pivot of the
double advance through Belgium and through Lorraine. It was, so to
speak, to represent the hinge of a pair of compasses. The left or lower
leg of the compasses was composed of the armies of von Strantz, von
Heeringen, and the Crown Prince of Bavaria, those which acted against
Alsace and Lorraine. The right or upper leg consisted of the remaining
armies, from the Crown Prince of Prussia’s to von Kluck’s. The two legs
were to be gradually squeezed together till they crushed the French and
English armies between them, and then—and not till then, in my
opinion—Paris was to be invested. As the war went on the left leg of the
compasses, which was at first meant to stretch as far as Belfort, was
gradually shortened, bit by bit, under stress of circumstances. At the
date at which we have arrived it only reached as far as Epinal, a little
later still as far as Nancy, and when it was found that here too the
resistance to the squeezing in process could not be overcome, the
original left leg was discarded, or at least left where it was, and a
fresh and still shorter one forged in Metz, and thrust out to St.
Mihiel. But that was not till later. In the fourth week of August the
original plan had not yet been modified. The part allotted to the armies
commanded by the Crown Prince of Bavaria in the east was still to break
through the line of frontier fortresses, and join hands with the other
Crown Prince’s army somewhere near Bar le Duc, in order to carry out the
encircling movement from the south.
In front of the left wing of his forces, which was now established to
the west of the Vosges south of the Lunéville-Donon line, there was
nothing but the open and unfortified Trouée de Charmes (the wide plain
south of Nancy between Epinal and Toul), and the attenuated army of
General Dubail. If they had succeeded in breaking through that human
barrier, and if their companion Army Corps north of Lunéville had been
equally successful in disposing of General de Castelnau’s army (two
rather large suppositions) it is possible that they may have intended to
bring up fresh forces and heavier siege guns for the investment of
Epinal and Toul, and that the main army, without waiting for their
reduction, would have been pressed forward to effect the contemplated
junction with the armies operating from the north, just as von Kluck and
von Hausen advanced to Namur and Charleroi while at least one of the
forts of Liége was still holding out. But at any rate General Dubail’s
army had to be dealt with first, and to this work they turned their
immediate attention. As for Epinal, which was directly in front of their
left flank, they found that it, like Belfort, was protected for some
miles in front of its forts by a formidable network of trenches and wire
entanglements, against which they decided not to run their heads, though
the salient just north of Bruyères in the line of their furthest advance
on this sector seems to show that they meant to make the attempt at
first. That was the second stage in the process of shortening the lower
leg of the compasses.
The position defended by Dubail’s army after the retreat from the Vosges
extended from a point a few miles south of Lunéville to the Bonhomme,
along the line forming the diagonal of an approximate square, (with a
side twenty miles long) of which Lunéville, the Donon, the Col de
Bonhomme and Epinal (nearly due south of Lunéville) were the four
angles. This tract of land is watered by three smallish rivers, the
Vesouze, the Meurthe, and the Mortagne, all rising in the Vosges, and
flowing through shallow valleys towards Lunéville. Along the banks of
each of them there is a good road and a railway. The Vesouze follows
very nearly the north side of the square, and the chief towns on it are
Cirey and Blamont. The Meurthe and the Mortagne flow close together,
from south-east to north-west, one on each side of the diagonal. On the
Meurthe the chief towns are St. Dié, Raon l’Etape, and Baccarat, and on
the Mortagne, to the west of it, Rambervillers and Gerbéviller. The
three rivers, after meeting in Lunéville or just below it, continue
their joint course through Nancy to Frouard, five miles further north,
where they join the Moselle, which rises near Belfort and flows to the
west of the three other rivers through Epinal, Charmes, and Bayon, to
Toul, from which it makes a steep bend to the east to Frouard, where it
is joined by the Meurthe, and then flows nearly due north past
Pont-à-Mousson to Metz.
It stands to reason that the position and direction of each of these
rivers has had a most important bearing on the course of the campaign in
this sector. Along the valleys of the Vesouze, the Meurthe, and the
Mortagne, and over every yard of the Lunéville-Donon-Bonhomme triangle
which they traverse, the fighting from August 21st onwards was of the
most furious description, and in the top right hand corner of the
triangle, towards the Donon, it still continues in the less murderous
form of trench warfare. To follow it in detail through all its ups and
downs and advances and retreats in that first period before the battle
of the Marne is as yet practically impossible. But the general tendency
of the engagements is, I think, fairly clear, though as yet very little
has been written about them. The main point is that the enemy, though in
some of the fights they outnumbered the French by ten to one, never
succeeded in getting within twenty miles of Epinal, or (except near
Gerbéviller) to the west of the line of the Mortagne, and were obliged
to give up any hopes they may have had at the beginning of marching
straight across the Trouée de Charmes and so getting round behind Toul.
Instead of advancing due west in this way they were forced (or possibly
they may have chosen) to incline north-west along the course of the
Mortagne and the Meurthe towards Lunéville. Both before and after St.
Dié was occupied on the 25th, after an attack that lasted for four days,
there were fierce engagements at practically every town and village on
and between the two rivers. Besides the bigger places which I have
already mentioned there were many others, starting from the Col de
Bonhomme and working up towards Lunéville, which one by one, and
sometimes more than once, were the scene of furious and bloody
encounters.
At la Croix aux Mines, Mandray, Entre-Deux-Eaux, Sauley-sur-Meurthe,
Taintrux, Le Bois de Champ, Brouvelieures, Mortagne, la Vallée des
Rouges-Eaux, le Haut Jacques, Autrey, La Bourgonce, La Salle,
Nompatelize, St. Rémy, Etivalle, St. Michel, Col de la Chipotte, St.
Benoit, Bru, Menille, Doncières, Xaffévillers, St. Piermont and Le
Plateau de Moyen thousands of French and Germans fought and died in
those few August and September days. The fighting was particularly
violent at La Bourgonce, La Salle, Nompatelize, St. Rémy, Etivalle, the
Col de la Chipotte and St. Dié. At the two last the number of the German
dead alone was probably over 20,000. There was no question then of
off-times in leafy cantonments between the spells of duty in the
trenches. The men ate and slept where they could on the ground where
they had fought. Day after day and hour after hour the fighting went on.
Brilliant bayonet charges and desperate struggles hand-to-hand and
body-to-body followed each other with hardly a moment’s break. The same
positions were lost and taken over and over again, and the firing of the
guns and the explosions of the shells kept up a ceaseless hurricane of
noise, as the storm of shells ploughed up the green fields along those
valley roads and mangled the bodies of the two armies that had been set
to butcher each other to suit the purposes of the Prussian Junkers and
the Kaiser’s militarist advisers. But the French soldiers never
flinched, outnumbered and outweighed as they were. Above all the
Chasseurs-à-pied and Chasseurs Alpins, whom the Germans feared and
respected more than any other troops in General Dubail’s army, covered
themselves with glory—glory that is none the less immortal, though very
few individual acts of bravery will ever be recorded because most of the
officers who saw them are silent in their graves. But that hardly
matters. They were fighting not for glory and for recognition but for
France and the freedom of the world. And they did their work. If they
had failed, if the Teuton hordes had broken through between Epinal and
Toul and the grand German plan had been carried out in all its
completeness, then the whole defence of France would have broken down.
But they did not fail. They gave their lives and France was saved.
Unhappily there was another side of all this fighting in the Vosges
which was not so splendid. It is obvious that if the French soldiers
quitted themselves like heroes in all this horrible strife the men they
fought against were brave too. But not gallant, but not gentlemen, which
the French are to a man. They had as a body imbibed too deeply the
teaching of certain of their own philosophers. They had learnt or been
drilled to substitute in time of war the religion of force for every
other. Their _Credo_ was the antithesis of all the recognized beliefs
which civilized men must inevitably hold or pretend to hold in time of
peace. “I believe in the God of Battles, Maker of the rulers of the
earth, who giveth the victory to those who shrink from nothing and no
means in order to attain it. I believe in terrorism and pillage and
destruction and death. I believe in stifling all my softer feelings, and
in making the life of the people in whose country I fight a hell.”
Is that too severe a judgment? I am afraid not. No creed is consistently
held or acted upon by all those who are supposedly its adherents. There
are of course thousands and thousands of gallant gentlemen among the
officers and the rank and file of the German armies. Innumerable letters
found on their dead bodies show how the frightfulness of their
fellow-soldiers shamed and angered them, and how they abominated German
“Kultur” as deeply as Nietsche himself. But unhappily for Belgium and
France, and more unhappily still for Germany, their opinions and
example, even if they were in the majority, were powerless to control
the acts of the thorough-going believers in the German war-creed. When
the war is over, if not before, their voice will prevail. They will tear
that creed, and perhaps the men who made it, to pieces as their
Government did the treaty by which they bound themselves to respect the
rights of Belgium. No nation can possibly consent to go on living under
the shadow of such a disgrace as these men have brought on Germany. But
for the present they must be judged by their present deeds, and it is
impossible to write about the war in Alsace and Lorraine and the Vosges
and the Woevre without saying something about the crimes which have been
committed in the name of Germany by German soldiers. I will not weaken
the case against them by repeating second-hand fairy-tales of
“atrocities” which have not come under my own notice. There is enough
material in the more carefully attested official reports, in what my
colleague and I have been told by the victims and reputable eyewitnesses
of these cruelties, and in what we have ourselves seen and heard, to
prove beyond doubt that a very large number of soldiers in the German
army have for some reason or other behaved during the war as
brute-beasts. In this chapter I will quote only one case of
“frightfulness” taken from a volume published officially by the French
Foreign Office. The Foreign Office report, properly attested by the
military authorities, is that at the end of August, 1914, thirty
soldiers of the French 99th Regiment, having exhausted all their
ammunition, were surrounded in a suburb of St. Dié by a company of
Bavarian soldiers, and were shot down at close range at the moment when
they were surrendering as prisoners. There is, I believe, no doubt that
the butchery was deliberate, though possibly a special pleader might
argue that the executioners did not know that their victims had no
ammunition left and killed them either from motives of precaution or in
self-defence. That line of defence cannot be adopted with regard to the
numbers of instances of wilful incendiarism which cry for justice all
over the invaded provinces. Many of the ruined villages which we saw in
the Vosges were destroyed by shot and shell in fair fight. They are the
eggs without which the omelette of war cannot be made. But that is not
the case with Gerbéviller, Baccarat, Badonviller, a whole group of
villages south of Raon l’Etape, and several other towns and villages in
the same district, all of which have been wholly or partially destroyed
by fire wantonly applied to them without a shadow of excuse on military
grounds. I will reserve for another chapter the case of Gerbéviller,
which, although it was perhaps the most cruel and wholesale of them all,
may be fairly taken as typical of the rest. In every instance it is
practically certain and generally proven that these acts of incendiarism
(more common in the smaller villages where public opinion had not the
same restrictive weight as in more important places) were accompanied by
the murder of innocent and unoffending civilians. For the only excuse
ever urged in their defence was that they were a painful necessity
forced upon the Germans by the people themselves because they had fired
upon them as franc-tireurs. And in practically every instance the more
responsible of the inhabitants declare that that statement was a pretext
and a lie.