military activity that filled the town and, as they shot out beyond
the houses, the countryside also. Every road was choked with columns
of marching infantry, with endless trains of wagons, of limbers, of
ambulances. Even cavalry was in evidence, riding with tall lances
and saddle-hung rifles on wretched-looking horses. "_Nach Verdun!_"
The German colonel, though he warily gave no information, could talk
of nothing else. Under that grey February sky pulsed and boomed the
distant detonations of artillery. The neutral listened to it with a
professional ear, was puzzled. It was persistent enough, but it was
certainly not the prolonged roar of a preparatory bombardment.
The car swung into the drive of a park. A tunnel of winter-stripped
trees, brown above, green streaking the bark, and then a large château
drew itself across the vista. Thither the other cars had preceded
them. They stood now ranked in a mass. There was a throng of officers
round the great doors, the buzz awakened by the recent passage of the
All-Highest. The neutral was shown to his room, the German colonel
volubly regretting that exigencies of space forced him to share it.
Some hours later the neutral was ushered into a vast, lofty apartment
whose tapestried walls were almost completely rehung with the huge
maps pinned upon them. On easels stood other maps, strange diagrams in
curves and slants of red, green and black ink. On a large table was
a horizontal relief model of hills and woods, a river with tributary
streams, a splash of red in the valley, thin lines of red converging
upon it, passing through, opening out again. On all these maps, on the
splash of red in the relief model, the name "Verdun" was repeated again
and again.
All these things the neutral officer noticed with the corner of his
eye--the large writing-tables behind which sat officers of high rank,
other officers grouped in a corner. His direct gaze was held by the
figure he saluted. Spare, of medium height, in the grey field-service
uniform of a general, gold cord looping across his right breast, a star
upon the left above the Iron Cross, gilt epaulettes, gilt leaves upon
the red gorgets of his collar, the would-be conqueror of the world
stood stiffly erect, graciously acknowledged his salute. The brushed-up
moustache was still dark, though the short hair on the head was grey,
almost white. The face was deeply furrowed with endless anxieties,
but the blue eyes--pouched though were their under lids--gleamed with
excitement. He spoke in a jerky but distinct manner that betrayed a
temperament of long ill-controlled impulses.
"_Guten Abend, Herr General!_ Welcome to Germany's greatest hour! You
shall see our sun mount triumphantly to its zenith, breaking through
the dark clouds of foes who cluster over against us in vain!" The tone
was that of a rhetoric practised until it has become a habit. The right
hand gesticulated with quick motions, the left arm was conspicuously
still. "General!" he turned to one of the officers sitting at the
tables, "be so good as to explain everything to our friend here."
It was to be clearly understood that the All-Highest was flatteringly
gracious.
The neutral officer bowed, expressed his thanks courteously, ventured a
request: "That I may be allowed to admire your War-Machine in all its
work, Majestät--go where I will."
"By all means, General. We have nothing to hide. You will find much
to interest you, much to relate to our well-wishers in your country.
General! see that a pass is given to our friend that will give him the
fullest freedom." The All-Highest answered the neutral's salute in a
manner that terminated the conversation.
Seated at the huge, carved writing-table with the officer to whom he
had been addressed, the neutral found himself looking at a pair of keen
grey eyes that peered through pince-nez under bushy white eyebrows. The
German spread out maps, indicated positions. He drew notice to the fact
that all roads squeezed through a bottle-neck over the river at Verdun,
spread out in a fan on the east bank to a long line of positions that
climbed from the river over the Heights of the Meuse and fell into the
plain of the Woevre across which they bent southward.
"_Die Sache ist äusserst einfach!_"[12] he said with the air of a
man explaining a chess-problem. "The French have three divisions of
Territorials in front of us to hold the entire sector. That force is
not strong enough to defend it and certainly too weak to have kept the
trench-systems in good repair. In fact we know that they have been
allowed to fall into ruin.[13] We have fifteen divisions in front
line, fifteen divisions in reserve. We do not intend to fling those
divisions away. No. Step by step our artillery will blast a passage
for them--see, here are our artillery positions," he showed concentric
lines one within the other on the map, round the doomed sector. "It
is the greatest artillery concentration the world has ever seen. Even
our concentration on the Donajetz last year is surpassed. We shall
obliterate the positions in front of us--other batteries will drench
the only avenues of supplies with shells, they must all go through the
town--our infantry will merely march into the devastated position, wait
for the clearance of the next step. I may tell you that the French
have only one small branch railway line which is safe from our fire.
We have built fourteen new lines, besides those already existing. In
the great problem of supply we have an overwhelming superiority. We
believe we have the advantage of surprise. Certainly the French have no
concentration within easy reach. In four days we shall be in Verdun.
The Western Front will have been broken."
"In four days?" The neutral officer looked at the map as a
chess-player looks at the board. "And--if I might ask the
question--supposing you do not take Verdun in four days? There is said
to be an enormous Allied force somewhere in France."
"We have yet another day," said the German a little wearily, as though
resenting the effort to explain the unnecessary. "We have five clear
days before any reinforcements can be brought up against us--all the
chances have been calculated, you see. If we are not in Verdun by
the evening of the fifth day--well, the battle will continue. But, I
repeat, we shall be in Verdun within four days. The thing is certain!"
"Of course it is, General," said another voice above their heads. Both
officers looked up, rose to their feet. "In four days we shall be in
Verdun. In a fortnight--Paris!"
The speaker was a youngish man, with a long nose in a long face,
somewhat bald upon the brow, a clipped moustache above a long thin
mouth. There was something in his manner which suggested not too
reputable finance doubled with Monte Carlo and the _coulisses_.
He repeated, smacking his hand familiarly upon the back of the
distinguished neutral: "In a fortnight--Paris!" He named the famous
city with a smack of the lips.
"Undoubtedly, Highness," said the German general, his professional
manner replaced by the obsequiousness of the courtier. "The army led by
Your Highness cannot fail to conquer."
"Verdun--Paris! This time it will not fail, General." He walked across
the room, smacking a riding-switch on his tall, patent-leather hussar
boots, and chanting: "_Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun--Paris!_"[14]
* * * * *
The morning of the 21st February, 1916, opened damp and bleak. Over
the heavy clay fields of the Woevre plain the mist hung persistently,
enclosing all vision in a few hundred yards. Through the obscurity the
poplars lining the roads loomed up like ghosts, dripping moisture from
each bare twig. In the copses and the larger stretch of woodland known
as the Forêt de Spincourt the conglobulated mist fell like rain. From
either of the high knolls known as the Twins of Ornes, just south-west
of the Forêt de Spincourt, the wooded slopes of the Heights of the
Meuse--Merbebois and the Bois de Wavrille--rose dark and indefinite,
discernible only when a little puff of the raw east wind, coming up the
valley of the Orne, broke a rift in the fog.
The neutral and the German Oberst who was his inseparable companion
stood on the more southerly of the twin heights. About them was a group
of artillery officers. In their immediate front was the deep dug-out,
sod-roofed, where telephonists sat and waited. It was an artillery
observation post. The light was yet dim though the wet fog was white.
It had been quite dark when the two spectators had made their way over
roads deep in mud to this position of vantage.
The journey had been long, for their car had had to squeeze, lurching
and slithering, past endless columns of infantry plodding over the
atrocious roads. In the darkness those thousands of men had been
scarcely more visible than phantoms who sang continuously as they
marched, chorusing to the tune set by picked singers at the head of
each company. Those who were merely the chorus broke off frequently
to shout witticisms at the labouring motor-car. In high spirits, they
wagered that they would be the first, after all, to arrive in Verdun.
On the hill-top of the Twin of Ornes, where the officers clustered, was
tense expectation. The fog did not lift. Only at rare intervals was
there a faint glimpse of the wooded heights towards which all gazed
with thrilling foreknowledge. As yet all was a quiet broken only by
an occasional isolated detonation that rolled heavily down the Orne
valley. It echoed in a dull repercussion from the mist-filled woods
upon the great scarp that was the far-flung rampart of the doomed
city. An officer looked at his watch. The example was infectious. The
seconds, the minutes passed slowly. It was like waiting for the curtain
to go up. The watches marked 8.13 (German time)--8.14--8.15!
There was one simultaneous vast roar that leaped from an arc stretching
from far in the north-west and passing round behind them to the
south. It did not cease. Minute after minute it continued, unabated,
prolonged. In the first sudden shock it appeared one colossal bellow
of sound, evenly maintained. But as the ear became accustomed to it,
instinctively analysed it, it was possible to distinguish spasms of
even fiercer sound than the general welter: the ponderous concussion of
especially heavy ordnance; the frenzied hammering of the quickfiring
field-guns. The sense of hearing was overwrought, but the view changed
not. The mist still hung over the landscape, was a curtain before the
straining eye. Only down below them to the right a howitzer battery,
adventurously pushed forward, rent the fog with stabs of orange-red
flame.
It seemed, in the overpowering blast of the German guns, that the
French artillery was making no general reply. From time to time a shell
came whining over towards them, finished in an ugly rush and a crash
somewhere upon the knoll. They scarcely noticed these occasional djinns
of death, so ineffective were they by contrast to the whirlwind of
destruction that swept the other way. The habituated ear could now pick
out the rumbling tramcar-like progress of the heavy shells overhead,
the fierce rushing drone of the missiles from lighter guns, mingling
interwoven with the uninterrupted sheet of sound.
What was happening over there among the dank, wooded hills? Nothing
could be seen, but the experienced imagination sketched, conscious that
it fell below the reality, fearful havoc distant in the fog. Trees
suddenly blasted, toppling; parapets leaping into the air--horrors
among the spout of earth that had been a sheltered dug-out; trenches
whose walls fell in; men who cowered, fear-paralysed, in a shambles;
overhead a ceaseless cracking that rained down death; shock upon shock;
chaos--such flitted through the minds of those who strained their eyes
at the fog. An artillery observation officer turned to the neutral.
"Five hours of this, Excellenz," he said with a smile, "and then, the
first step to Verdun!"
The Oberst expatiated on the wonderful German system for supplying all
these batteries indefinitely at this intensity of fire. "Who can resist
us?" was the implied corollary to his dissertation. The neutral was
duly impressed, his dark clever eyes serious.
The bombardment continued, became monotonous. The fog thinned somewhat
but permitted no clear vision. The batteries were firing by the map,
according to a prearranged programme. The Oberst suggested to his
distinguished guest that further stay was useless.
"I would like to see your guns at work, Herr Oberst," said the
neutral, and the colonel saw himself forced to put aside his hopes of
returning to Corps Headquarters for _Mittagessen_. He speculated on the
Divisional Messes in their vicinity as he replied:
"By all means, Excellenz."
They scrambled down the rough path of the knoll, through a thin growth
of birch, passed into the denser mist below.
They found themselves suddenly among long ranks of resting infantry
squatting and lying in close proximity to their piled arms. The
feld-grau uniforms merged, were lost in the fog, but there was an
indefinable suggestion of the presence of many thousands. The Oberst
and his guest might walk where they would, the shadowy grey forms
still loomed up out of the mist. All were cheerful and confident. The
officers in little groups smiling as they conversed, bent over a map.
The men grinning. They were waiting for the guns to level the path for
their "promenade."
At last the ranks of infantry ceased. They came upon a field battery
that was firing furiously. The guns were in the open, their upturned
caissons--lid upright to form a shield, exposing the pigeon-holed bases
of the cartridges--close against the left wheel. Grouped behind each
were the busy gunners, in rapid movement of arms and torso, crouching,
labouring with swift concentrated intensity as they passed the long,
gleaming projectile from hand to hand, thrust it into the breech,
closed and fired. Behind them was a heap of brass cartridge-cases, the
flat compartmented baskets that had held three rounds. The watching
officers, helmeted, in long closely-buttoned coats, stood behind their
sections. The battery hurled out its stream of death in absolute
immunity. No enemy shell came to seek it. The fog veiled its target.
Beyond that battery was another, in the open like the first, almost
wheel to wheel with it. And beyond that, another and yet others, an
endless chain of them, all scorning concealment, all firing as fast as
sweating, straining men could load and pull the lever. From behind came
the prolonged, heavy, linked detonations of yet other batteries of more
weighty metal. Overhead the rumble and rush of hurrying shells was as
the sound of heavy traffic.
The neutral and his guide turned eastwards towards the zone of the
great howitzers. Once more they were entangled in waiting masses
of grey-clad infantry. The mist had thinned, permitted quite long
vistas. Everywhere there was infantry, battalion upon battalion,
regiment on regiment, brigade after brigade. The time had passed--by
the neutral, at least, almost unnoticed, so much was there for his
brain to register--it was now almost noon. The infantry was standing
to its ranks, forming into column of route, marching forward with
songs and shouts, their spiked helmets decorated with sprigs of fir.
"_Vorwärts!_" came the sharp, barking commands of the officers. "_Nach
Verdun!_" shouted the excited men, drunk with the prospect of superbly
easy victory.
And ever the indefatigable batteries hammered and crashed, spewing
forth death in volumes that the men they served might live. From behind
every hedge, every hillock; in long lines across the open--so many that
they could afford to neglect the enemy's reply; their tongues of flame
shot out, flickered indefinitely repeated into the distance. Their
infinitely reiterated detonations smote splittingly upon the ear, were
gathered into one overpowering roar.
The dark mass of the Forêt de Spincourt was riven by red flame that
lit and was gone momentarily in every part of its recesses. As the two
officers approached it, they saw a faint film of smoke hanging over
the tree-tops, saw the quick flashes gleaming through the undergrowth
of the verge. They entered its obscurity. The air choked one with
the fumes of burnt explosive, beat against the face in gusts with
the disturbance of the multiplied discharges. The wood was a nest of
howitzer batteries. On platforms of concrete and timber the monsters
squatted, bowed their head to receive yet another shell, raised it
again with slow, determined movement, the great round jaws gaping
upward to the sky, belched with a sudden eructation of vivid flame,
a tremendous shock of which the stunning noise was only part. The
spectator behind the gun, looking upward, saw a black object speeding
high into the air, rapidly diminishing, the while a rain of twigs
pattered down upon his face. As the barrel was lowered again, the
breech opened, slow curling tongues of flame licked round the muzzle.
Behind each weapon were great stacks of shells. Hurrying men, two at a
time, a tray supported on two short poles between them, carried more
food to the iron monster, fed its fuming breech for yet another roar.
Further within the wood were still greater monsters, so huge that
their aliment was trundled to them on light rails, swung into their
maw by overhanging cranes. The earth shook, the trees rocked, with the
vehemence of their discharge.
"Frau Bertha has a most persuasive voice, _nicht wahr_?" said the
Oberst to his guest. The neutral agreed as courteously as was possible
in this chaos of bludgeoning noise. His dark eyes rested a little
contemptuously on the dapper, somewhat podgy colonel whose soul,
even in this crisis of nations, was still essentially the soul of a
commercial traveller. The order to Krupp's was not yet given.
It was one o'clock--noon to the anxious French general far over
there in the terrible distance. As suddenly as it had commenced, the
vast bombardment ceased. There was an uncanny silence. All knew its
significance. The German infantry was advancing to the assault. With
what resistance would it be met? Every ear was at strain--machine-guns?
There was no sound. Suddenly the bombardment opened again, as violent
as before. The German guns were putting a screen of death behind the
doomed positions, barring off all help. Far away huge shells were
crashing down from a curve that was four miles high at its zenith,
making an inferno of a once quiet cathedral town, wrecking the bridges
across a flooded river, blocking every avenue of supply to the
defenders agonising on the plateau.
That night in the Army Headquarters was a night of jubilation. Courtier
soldiers--who none the less laboured into the small hours at the
intricate calculations and orders that would improve the victory on
the morrow--glanced at a youngish, very exalted personage and murmured
platitudes about the pardonable intoxication of success. An even
more exalted personage strode from general to general in the great
tapestried, map-hung apartment and gave instructions that were received
as the inspiration of genius and then merged, lost sight of, nullified
in the mass of orders that emanated from those fiercely toiling brains.
The distinguished guest sat at the table with the keen-eyed,
white-browed general, had everything patiently explained to him.
"All has gone exactly according to schedule," said the German. "The
first line positions are ours. There has been a counter-attack in the
Bois de Caures, but we have stemmed it. Elsewhere there has been no
serious opposition. The first day has been a brilliant success. We
have pierced the line where we intended to pierce it. If the French
maintain their flank positions their disaster is certain. The battle
will be developed to-morrow. We shall drive right through to the
Ornes-Louvemont road. The French defence is dead, was annihilated by
our bombardment. To-morrow disintegration will set in and our progress
will be rapid. On the third day we shall take Fort Douaumont--the key
to Verdun."
"And on the fourth day?" queried the neutral, his dark eyes gazing at
the map in front of him.
"We shall be in Verdun!" said the German.
"_Verdun! Verdun! Nach Verdun--Paris!_" chanted an unsteady voice
across the room, finished in a suspicious resemblance to a hiccup.
There was a moment of tense, awkward silence in the great apartment,
and then a buzz of low voices earnestly discussing technicalities.
* * * * *
Day followed day, surcharged with fateful issues. Men who flung
themselves down, utterly wearied, to snatch a brief sleep, woke
from it with an oppression of the breast, a tremor of the nerves.
Their fiercely excited brains begrudged an instant's unconsciousness
where every minute was a vehicle of destiny, once ahead never to be
overtaken. Strenuously, night and day, laboured the Staffs in the Army
Headquarters, in the Corps, Divisions, Artillery Groups--desperately,
for after the second day they were behind their time-table. On that
second day the French defence they had fondly thought annihilated woke
to sternly resisting life. There had been terrific fighting on the
whole front from Brabant to Ornes. Once more a frightful bombardment
had opened with the dawn. Once more the German infantry had advanced
in masses. They found the trenches in front of them weakly held, had
occupied them. But _en route_ a storm of shells had rained down on the
swarming columns, had strewn the ground with dead and dying. Further
advance was barred by sheets of rifle-fire, torrents of machine-gun
bullets. There were ugly rumours as to losses. The day's objective had
not been reached. Counter-attacks had flung the grey infantry out of
positions already conquered.
During the black night of the 22nd-23rd, while the gun-teams of the
German batteries strained and stumbled forward over a shell-torn ground
to new positions, the French left flank had fallen back from Brabant.
The German guns hurled an avalanche of projectiles blindly upon the
new lines of defence, more or less at hazard since no longer did they
have them accurately marked upon the map. Once more the grey masses
swept forward, once more the hail of shells beat them down. The end
of that day saw the centre pushed in with wild confusion, but the
French resistance still alive, determined to perish rather than break.
Once more the objective had not been attained. Douaumont was not even
menaced. The time-table was hopelessly out. That night the French fell
back on both flanks, withdrew from Ornes.
The fourth day dawned--the appointed day for final victory--and still
the struggle continued, fiercer than ever. Slowly, slowly, the German
infantry pressed forward, leaving behind them a sea of helpless
bodies--a grey carpet as perceived from a distance. The artillery fire
swelled and mounted in paroxysms of incredible violence, the German
guns hammering in savage persistence, the French batteries lurking
for their target, overwhelming it in a deluge. On and on pressed the
grey infantry, thrust dangerously as night fell straight at the heart,
towards Fort Douaumont. A fierce conflict--body to body, rifles that
flashed in the face of the victim, bayonets perforce shortened for
the thrust, griping fingers clutching at the throat as men wrestled
and swayed--raved and roared in an indescribable tumult upon the
Ornes-Louvemont road. The defenders had made a supreme rally. The
Germans fought like men who grasp at victory, maddened that it is
withheld. The French fought like heroes, desperately outnumbered,
who know their duty is to die. When night fell the defence was still
intact, but the French had withdrawn to their last line, covering
Douaumont.
"We have still one more day," said the German general to the
distinguished neutral that night in the great map-hung apartment. "We
allowed that margin of time. To-morrow will see our greatest effort,
Douaumont in our hands, Verdun untenable." The dark eyes of the neutral
read a certain nervousness in the German's face, despite the confident
tone.
"It has proved rather more difficult than you expected?"