took all their guns out of the forts of Verdun, pushed out before the
forts, and Verdun became just a sector in the long trench line from
the sea to Switzerland. It was defended by trenches, not forts. It was
neither of more importance nor less than any other point in the line
and it was a place of trenches, not of forts. The forts were empty and
remain empty, monuments to the past of war, quite as useless as the
walls of Rome would be against modern artillery.
The decline of Verdun was even more complete. From the strongest point
in French defence it became the weakest. When the Germans took St.
Mihiel in September, 1914, they cut the north and south railroad that
binds Verdun to the Paris-Nancy Railroad. When they retreated from the
Marne they halted at Varennes and Montfaucon, and from these points
they command the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad. Apart from a single
narrow-gauge railroad of minor value, which wanders among the hills,
climbing at prohibitive grades, Verdun is isolated from the rest of
France. Consider what this means in modern war when the amount of
ammunition consumed in a day almost staggers belief. Consider what it
means when there are a quarter of a million men to be fed and
munitioned in this sector.
More than all this, when the lines came down to the trench condition
Verdun was a salient, it was a narrow curve bulging out into the
German front. It was precisely the same sort of military position as
Ypres, which the Germans have twice before selected as the point for
a great attack. In the Verdun sector the French are exposed to a
converging fire; they are inside the German semicircle. Moreover, the
salient is so narrow that the effect of converging fire is not to be
exaggerated.
When the French attacked the Germans in Champagne last fall they
advanced on a wide front from a line parallel to the German line. As
they pierced the first German lines they were exposed to the
converging fire of the Germans, because they were pushing a wedge in.
Ultimately they got one brigade through all the German lines, but it
was destroyed beyond by this converging fire. But as the Germans
advanced upon Verdun they were breaking down a salient and possessed
the advantage they had had on the defensive in Champagne.
Finally, one-half the French army of Verdun fought with its back to a
deep river, connected with the other half only by bridges, some of
which presently came under German fire, and there was every
possibility that these troops might be cut off and captured if the
German advance were pushed home far enough on the west bank of the
Meuse and the German artillery was successful in interrupting the
passage of the river. It was a perilous position and there were some
days when the situation seemed critical.
Accordingly, when the German drive at Verdun was at last disclosed in
its real magnitude Joffre prepared to evacuate the town and the east
bank of the river, to straighten his line and abolish the salient and
give over to the Germans the wreck of Verdun. The position behind the
river was next to impregnable; the lines would then be parallel; there
would be no salient, and in the new position the French could
concentrate their heavy artillery while the Germans were moving up the
guns that they had fixed to the north of the old front.
But at this point the French politician interfered. He recognized the
wisdom of the merely military view of Joffre, but he saw also the
moral value. He recognized that the French and the German public alike
would not see Verdun as a mere point in a trench line and a point
almost impossible to defend and destitute of military value. He saw
that the French and German publics would think of Verdun as it had
been thought of before the present war changed all the conditions of
conflict. He recognized that the German people would be roused to new
hope and confidence by the capture of a great fortress, and that the
French would be equally depressed by losing what they believed was a
great fortress.
You had therefore in France for some hours, perhaps for several days,
something that approximated a crisis growing out of the division of
opinion between the civil and the military authorities, a division of
opinion based upon two wholly different but not impossible equally
correct appraisals. Joffre did not believe it was worth the men or the
risk to hold a few square miles of French territory, since to
evacuate would strengthen, not weaken, the line. The French
politicians recognized that to lose Verdun was to suffer a moral
defeat which would almost infallibly bring down the Ministry, might
call into existence a new Committee of Public Safety, and would fire
the German heart and depress the French.
In the end the politicians had their way and Castelnau, Joffre's
second in command, came over to their view and set out for Verdun to
organize the defence for the position at the eleventh hour. He had
with him Petain, the man who had commanded the French army in the
Battle of Champagne and henceforth commanded the army that was hurried
to the Verdun sector. France now took up definitely the gage of battle
as Germany had laid it down. Verdun now became a battle in the
decisive sense of the word, although still on the moral side. Nothing
is more preposterous than to believe that there ever was any chance of
a German advance through Verdun to Paris. One has only to go to
Verdun and see the country and the lines behind the city and miles
back of the present front to realize how foolish such talk is.
Meantime the German advance had been steady and considerable. All
these attacks follow the same course--Ypres, Artois, Champagne,
Dunajec. There is first the tremendous artillery concentration of the
assailant; then the bombardment which abolishes the first and second
line trenches of the defenders; then the infantry attack which takes
these ruined trenches and almost invariably many thousands of
prisoners and scores of guns. But now the situation changes. The
assailant has passed beyond the effective range of his own heavy
artillery, which cannot be immediately advanced because of its weight;
he encounters a line of trenches that has not been levelled, he has
come under the concentrated fire of his foe's heavy and light
artillery without the support of his own heavy artillery, and all the
advantage of surprise has gone.
What happened at Verdun is what happened in the Champagne. The German
advance was quite as successful--rather more successful than the
French last September; it covered three or four miles on a
considerable front, and it even reached Douaumont, one of the old
forts and the fort which was placed on the highest hill in the
environs of Verdun. Thousands of prisoners had been captured and many
guns taken. But at this point the French resistance stiffened, as had
the German last year. French reserves and artillery arrived. Petain
and Castelnau arrived. There was an end of the rapid advance and there
began the pounding, grinding attack in which the advantage passed to
the defender. It was just what happened at Neuve Chapelle so long ago
when we first saw this kind of fighting exemplified completely.
In the new attacks the Germans still gained ground, but they gained
ground because the French withdrew from positions made untenable
through the original German advance at other points. They
consolidated their line, organized their new front. Ten days after the
attack had begun it had ceased to be a question of Verdun, just as in
a shorter time the French had realized last September that they could
not break the German line in Champagne. But like the French in
Champagne, like the British at Neuve Chapelle, the Germans persevered,
and in consequence suffered colossal losses, exactly as the French and
British had.
To understand the German tactics you must recognize two things. The
Germans had expected to take Verdun, and they had unquestionably known
that the French military command did not intend at the outset to hold
the town. They had advertised the coming victory far and wide over the
world; they had staked much upon it. Moreover, in the first days, when
they had taken much ground, when they had got Douaumont and could look
down into Verdun, they had every reason to believe that they possessed
the key to the city and that the French high command was slowly but
steadily drawing back its lines and would presently evacuate the city.
Knowing these things you can understand why the Germans were so
confident. They did not invent stories of coming victory which they
did not believe. They believed that Verdun was to fall because they
knew, and the same thing was known and mentioned in London. I heard it
there when the battle was in its earlier stages--that the French high
command intended to evacuate Verdun. What they did not know and could
not know was that the French politicians, perhaps one should say
statesmen this time, had interfered, that the French high command had
yielded and that Verdun was to be defended to the last ditch.
When this decision was made the end of the real German advance was
almost instantaneous. All that has happened since has been nothing but
active trench war, violent fighting, desperate charge and counter
charge, a material shortening of the French line at certain points,
the abolition of minor salients, but of actual progress not the
smallest. The advance stopped before lines on which Petain elected to
make his stand when he came with his army to defend Verdun. The
Germans are still several miles outside of Verdun itself, and only at
Douaumont have they touched the line of the exterior forts, which
before the war were expected to defend the city.
In Paris and elsewhere you will be told that Douaumont was occupied
without resistance and that it was abandoned under orders before there
had been a decision to hold Verdun. I do not pretend to know whether
this is true or not, although I heard it on authority that was wholly
credible, but the fact that the map discloses, that I saw for myself
at Verdun, is that, save for Douaumont, none of the old forts have
been taken and that the Germans have never been able to advance a foot
from Douaumont or reach the other forts at any other point. And this
is nothing more or less than the French experience at Champagne, the
German experience about Ypres in 1915.
In a later chapter I hope to discuss the situation at Verdun as I saw
it on April 6th, and also the miracle of motor transport which played
so great a part in the successful defence of the position. But the
military details are wholly subordinate to the moral. All France was
roused by a successful defence of a position attacked by Germany with
the advertised purpose of breaking the spirit of the French people.
The battle was fought in the plain daylight without the smallest
concealment, and the least-informed reader of the official reports
could grasp the issue which was the fate of the city of Verdun.
The fact, known to a certain number of Frenchmen only, that the
defence was improvised after the decision had been made to evacuate
the whole salient, serves for them to increase the meaning of the
victory as it increases the real extent of the French exploit. But
this is a detail. The Germans openly, deliberately, after long
preparation, announced their purpose, used every conceivable bit of
strength they could bring to bear to take Verdun, and told their own
people not merely that Verdun would fall, but at one moment that it
had fallen. They did this with the firm conviction that it would
fall--was falling.
The French were steadily aware that Verdun might be lost. They knew
from letters coming daily from the front how terrible the struggle
was, and it is impossible to exaggerate the tension of the early days,
although it was not a tension of panic or fear. Paris did not expect
to see the invader, and there was nothing of this sort of moonshine
abroad. But it was plain that the fall of the town would bring a
tremendous wave of depression and if not despair yet a real reduction
of hope. Instead, Verdun defended itself, the lines were maintained
several miles on the other side of the town and all substantial
advance came to an end in the first two weeks. The army itself, the
military observers, were convinced that all danger was over as early
as the second week in March, when correspondents of French newspapers
were being taken to Verdun to see the situation and tell the people
the facts.
All over Northern France, and I was in many towns and cities, the
"lift" that Verdun had brought was unmistakable and French confidence
was everywhere evident. It showed itself in a spontaneous welcome to
Alexander of Serbia in Paris, which, I am told, was the first thing of
the sort in the war period. Frenchmen did not say that Verdun was the
beginning of the end, and they did not forecast the prompt collapse of
Germany. They did not even forecast the immediate end of the fighting
about Verdun. They did not regard the victory as a Waterloo or a Sedan
or any other foolish thing. But they did rather coolly and quite
calmly appraise the thing and see in it the biggest German failure
since the Marne, and a failure in a fight which the Germans had laid
down all the conditions in advance and advertised the victory that
they did not achieve as promising the collapse of French endurance and
spirit.
The Battle of Verdun was a battle for moral values, and the possession
of the town itself was never of any real military value. Verdun
commands nothing, and behind it lie well-prepared fortifications on
dominating heights, positions that are ten times as easy to defend as
those which the French have defended. It was not a battle for Paris,
and there was never a prospect of the piercing of the French line;
Germany was never as near a great military success as she was at Ypres
after the first gas attack a year ago. The French army leaders judged
the Verdun position as not worth the cost of defending. They were
overruled by the politicians and they defended it successfully. But
their first decision is the best evidence of the wholly illusory value
that has been attached to the possession of Verdun itself.
The politicians were unquestionably right as to the moral value, and
it is possible if not probable that the relinquishment of the city
voluntarily might have precipitated the fall of the Briand Ministry
and the creation of a Committee of Public Safety--not to make peace,
but to make war successfully. The will to defend Verdun came from the
French people, it imposed itself upon the army and it resulted in a
moral victory the consequences of which cannot be exaggerated and have
given new heart and confidence to a people whose courage and
determination must make an enduring impression on any one who sees
France in the present terrible but glorious time.
IV
VERDUN, THE DOOR THAT LEADS NOWHERE
THE BATTLE AND THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD--AN ANALYSIS
OF THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE
In a preceding article I have endeavored to explain the tremendous
moral "lift" that the successful defence of the city of Verdun has
brought to France, a moral "lift" which has roused French confidence
and expectation of ultimate victory to the highest point since the war
began. I have also tried to demonstrate how utterly without value the
fortress of Verdun was, because the forts were of no use in the
present war, were as useless against German heavy artillery as those
of Antwerp and Maubeuge, and had been evacuated by the French a full
eighteen months before the present battle began. Finally I have
indicated that so little military value was attached to Verdun by the
French high command that it was prepared to evacuate the whole
position, which is the most difficult to defend on the whole French
front, and was only persuaded to give over his purpose by the
arguments of the politicians, who believed that the moral effect of
the evacuation would be disastrous to France and inspiriting to
Germany.
I now desire to describe at some length the actual topographical
circumstances of Verdun and later I shall discuss the fashion in which
an automobile transport system was improvised to meet the situation
created by the interruption of traffic by German artillery fire along
the two considerable railroad lines. It was this system which actually
saved the town and is the real "miracle of Verdun," if one is to have
miracles to explain what brave and skilful men do.
I saw Verdun on April 6th. I went through the city, which was little
more than a mass of ashes, with General Dubois, the military governor
of the town itself, and with him I went to Fort de la Chaume, on one
of the highest hills near Verdun, and from this vantage point had the
whole countryside explained to me. The day on which I visited Verdun
was the first completely quiet day in weeks, and I was thus fortunate
in being able to see and to go about without the disturbing or
hindering circumstances which are incident to a bombardment.
The city of Verdun is situated at the bottom of the Meuse Valley on
both sides of the river. But the main portion of the town is on the
west bank and surrounds a low hill, crowned by the cathedral and old
Vauban citadel. The town is surrounded by old ramparts, long ago
deprived of military value and belonging, like the citadel, to
eighteenth century warfare. The Valley of the Meuse is here several
miles wide, as flat as your hand, and the river, which is small but
fairly deep, a real obstacle since it cannot be forded, wanders back
and forth from one side of the valley to the other. Below Verdun it is
doubled, as a military obstacle, by the Canal de l'Est.
If you put a lump of sugar in a finger bowl you will pretty fairly
reproduce the Verdun topography. The lump of sugar will represent
Verdun, the rim of the bowl the hills around the city, the interior of
the bowl the little basin in which the city stands. This rim of hills,
which rise some five or six hundred feet above the town itself, is
broken on the west by a deep and fairly narrow trough which comes into
the Meuse Valley and connects it some thirty miles to the west with
the Plain of Chalons. If you should look down upon this region from an
aeroplane this furrow would look like a very deep gutter cutting far
into the tangle of hills.
Now in the warfare of other centuries the value of the Verdun fortress
was just this: the furrow which I have described is the one avenue
available for an invading army coming from the east out of Metz or
south from Luxemburg and aiming to get into the Plain of Chalons to
the west. It is the way the Prussians came in 1792 and were defeated
at Valmy, at the western entrance of the trough about thirty miles
away. They took Verdun on their way--so did the Germans in 1870.
Verdun in French hands closed this trough to the invaders.
It closed it because the low hill which bears the town was strongly
fortified and was surrounded by lower ground. Such artillery as was in
existence was not of a sufficiently long range to place upon the hills
about Verdun which we have described as the rim of the bowl. The town
of Verdun was situated on both sides of the river and commanded all
the bridges. It was, in fact, the stopple in the mouth of the
bottle-neck passage leading into North Central France, the passage
through which ran the main road and, later, the railway from the
frontier nearest Paris to the capital.
But when the modern developments of artillery came, then Verdun, the
old fortress that Vauban built for Louis XIV, lost its value. It was
commanded by the surrounding hills and the French moved out of the
town and the Vauban fortifications and built on the surrounding hills,
on the rim, to go back to our figure, the forts which were the defence
of the town when the present war began, forts arranged quite like
those of Liege or Antwerp and some four or five miles away from the
town. But bear in mind these forts were designed, like the old
fortress and fortifications of the eighteenth century, to bar the road
from the Meuse and from Germany to the Plain of Chalons and the level
country west of the Argonne. When the Germans came south through
Belgium and got into the Plain of Chalons from the north they had
turned the whole Verdun position and had got into the region it
barred by another route; they had come in by the back door; Verdun
was the front. Not only that, but they are there now and have been
there ever since the first days of September, 1914.
When one hears about Verdun as the gateway to Paris or anything else
one hears about the Verdun of the past. It was not the door to Paris
but the outer door to the region around Paris, to the Plains of
Champagne and Chalons. But as the Germans are already in these plains
the taking of Verdun now would not bring them nearer to Paris; they
are only fifty miles away at Noyon, on the Oise, and they would be 160
at Verdun if they took the city. If they took Verdun they would get
control of the Paris-Metz Railway, and if they then drove the French
away from the trough we have been describing they would get a short
line into France, and a line coming from German territory directly,
not passing through Belgium. But they would not be nearer to Paris.
When the French saw, in the opening days of the war, that forts were
of no permanent value against the German guns they left the forts on
the hills above Verdun as they had abandoned the Vauban works and
moved north for a few miles. Here they dug trenches, mounted their
guns in concealed positions, and stood on the defensive, as they were
standing elsewhere from Belgium to Switzerland. There was now no
fortress of Verdun, and Verdun city was nothing but a point behind the
lines of trenches, a point like Rheims, or Arras. The forts of the rim
were equally of no more importance and were now empty of guns or
garrisons. If the Germans, by a sudden attack, broke all the way
through the French trenches here it would be quite as serious as if
they broke through at other points, but no more so. There was no
fortress of Verdun and the Verdun position commanded nothing.
The Battle of Verdun, as it is disclosed to an observer who stands on
Fort de la Chaume, a mile or two west and above Verdun and in the
mouth of the trough we have described, was this: On the west bank of
the Meuse, four or five miles northwest of the town, there is a steep
ridge going east and west and perhaps 1,100 feet high. This is the
crest of Charny, and it rises sharply from the flat valley and marches
to the west without a break for some miles. On it are the old forts of
the rim.
Three or four miles still to the north is a line of hills which are
separated from each other by deep ravines leading north and south. Two
of these hills, Le Mort Homme (Dead Man's Hill) and Hill 304, have
been steadily in the reports for many weeks. They are the present
front of the French. Between one and two miles still to the north are
other confused and tangled hills facing north, and it was here that
the French lines ran when the great attack began in the third week of
February. On this side the Germans have advanced rather less than two
miles; they have not reached the Charny Ridge, which is the true and
last line of defence of the Verdun position, and they have not
captured the two hills to the north, which are the advanced position,
now the first line.
When I was in Paris before I went to Verdun there was a general belief
that the French might ultimately abandon the two outer hills, Dead
Man's and 304, and come back to the Charny Ridge, which is a wall
running from the river west without a break for miles. Apparently this
has not been found necessary, but what is worth noting is that if
these hills were evacuated it would not mean the withdrawal from
Verdun but only to the best line of defence (the last line, to be
sure), which includes the town itself.