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.”