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.