CAMPAIGN IN ARGONNE AND AROUND ARRAS
There were some weak places in the French line from Switzerland to the
North Sea; and one of them was that part in the region between the
Forest of the Argonne and Rheims. General Langle de Cary was in
command of the army which held this section. It requires no military
genius to comprehend that the French center and the right wing from
Belfort to Verdun were not safe until the Germans had been forced back
across the Aisne at every place. The French general had made an effort
to drive the Germans under General von Einem from Champagne
Pouilleuse. The preliminary effort had been to stop the Germans from
using the railroad which ran from near the Nort to Varennes through
the Forest of the Argonne and across the upper Aisne to Bazancourt.
[Illustration: Prayer in a French church which the exigencies of war
have converted into a Red Cross hospital.]
After the battle of the Marne, the crown prince's army, severely
handled by the Third French Army under General Sarrail, pushed hastily
toward the north and established itself on a line running
perpendicularly through the Argonne Forest, at about ten or fifteen
kilometers from the road connecting Ste. Menehould with Verdun. Almost
immediately there developed a series of fights that lasted during a
whole year and were really among the bloodiest and most murderous
combats of the war. The German army in the Argonne, commanded by the
crown prince, whose headquarters had long been established at Stenay,
consisted of the finest German troops, including, among others, the
famous Sixteenth Corps from Metz, which, with the Fifteenth Corps from
Strassburg, is considered the cream of the Germanic forces. This corps
was commanded by the former governor of Metz, General von Mudra, an
expert in all branches of warfare relating to fortresses and mines.
Specially reenforced by battalions of sharpshooters and a division of
Wuerttembergers, the Twenty-Seventh, accustomed to forest warfare, this
corps made the most violent efforts from the end of September,
1914, to throw the French troops back to the south and seize the road
to Verdun. The crown prince evidently meant to sever this route and
the adjoining highway, leading from Verdun to Ste. Menehould. The road
then turns to the south and joins at Revigny, the main line of
Bar-le-Duc to Paris via Chalons, forming, in fact, the only possible
line of communication for the fortress of Verdun. The other line,
running from Verdun to St. Mihiel, was rendered useless after the
Germans had fixed themselves at St. Mihiel in September, 1914.
Up to the first months of 1916 there was only a small local railway
that could be used between Revigny and Ste. Menehould by Triaucourt.
Of the two big lines, one was cut by the Germans, and the other was
exposed to the fire of their heavy artillery.
The violence of the German attacks in the Argonne prove that so long
ago as September, 1914, they already dreamt of taking Verdun. Their
aim was to force the French troops against Ste. Menehould and invest
the fortress on three sides to bring about its fall.
These Argonne battles were invested with a particular interest and
originality. They were in progress for a whole year, in a thick forest
of almost impenetrable brushwood, split with numerous deep ravines and
abrupt, slippery precipices. The humidity of the forest is excessive,
the waters pouring down from high promontories. The soldiers who
struggled here practically spent two winters in the water.
One can hardly imagine the courage and heroism necessary to bear the
terrible hardships of fighting under such conditions. All the German
soldiers made prisoners by the French describe life in the Argonne as
a hideous nightmare.
From the end of September, 1914, the Germans delivered day and night
attacks, generally lasting ten days. These attacks were made with
forces of three or four battalions up to a division or a division and
a half. In each attack the Germans aimed at a very limited
objective--to capture the first or second line of trenches, to seize
some particular fortified point. That object once attained, the
Germans held on there, consolidated the occupied terrain, fortified
their new positions and prepared for another push forward. It was thus
by a process of nibbling the French trenches bit by bit that the
Germans hoped to attain the Verdun-Ste. Menehould line.
The tactics employed in these combats were those suited to forest
fighting; sapping operations methodically and minutely carried out to
bring the German trenches as near as possible to the French; laying
small mines to be exploded at a certain hour. Two or three hours
before an attack the French positions were bombarded by trench mortars
and especially heavy mine throwers.
At the short distances the effect would naturally be to cause
considerable damage; trenches and their parapets were demolished,
shelters, screening reserves, were torn open. At that moment when the
attack is to be launched, the German artillery drops the "fire
curtain" behind the enemy trenches to prevent reenforcements from
arriving. Such are the tactics almost constantly employed by the
Germans.
Despite their most furious efforts during the winter of 1914 and the
spring and summer of 1915, in at least forty different attacks, the
German gains were very insignificant, and if one considers the line
they held after the battle of the Marne and compares it with their
present position, one may gather some idea of how little progress they
have made.
It was in June and July, 1915, that the Germans displayed their main
efforts in the Argonne. Their three great attacks were made with
greater forces than ever before (two or three divisions), but the
results were as profitless as their predecessors. The heroism of the
French barred the way.
At Arras in June, there was almost as much activity as at Ypres.
During the last part of the campaign in the Artois, General d'Urbal
began an advance between Hebuterne and Serre. The former had been held
by the French and the latter by the Germans. The two villages were
each on a small hill and not quite two miles apart. There were two
lines of German trenches in front of the farm of Tout Vent which was
halfway between the villages.
The trenches were held by the Seventeenth Baden Regiment which was
attacked by the French on June 7, 1915. The French troops consisted of
Bretons, Vendeans, and soldiers from Savoy and Dauphine. The work of
the infantry was preceded by a heavy bombardment to which the German
artillery replied. Then the French charged with a dash that seemed
irresistible.
On the following day, June 8, 1915, the French gained more ground to
the north in spite of the activity of the German artillery. June 9,
1915, saw desperate fighting in the German communicating trenches, and
on June 10, 1915, several hundred yards of trenches to the south were
taken. The Seventeenth Baden Regiment was only a name and a memory
when the fighting ceased; and two German battalions had fared but
little better. Of the five hundred and eighty prisoners taken ten were
officers.
General de Castelnau, on the day before the fighting at Hebuterne,
made a break in the German line east of Forest of l'Aigle which is a
continuation of the Forest of Compiegne but is separated from it by
the Aisne. Within the French lines were the farms of Ecaffaut and
Quennevieres. The Germans held Les Loges and Tout Vent. There was a
German salient opposite Quennevieres with a small fort at the peak of
the salient. Defenses had been built also where the northern and
southern sides of the salient rested on the main line of trenches.
There were two lines of trenches on the arc of the salient with three
lines on a portion of the arc. An indented trench held the chord of
the arc. The Germans had placed several guns in a ravine which ran
down toward Tout Vent. Four companies of the Eighty-sixth Regiment had
held the salient.
On June 5, 1915, the reserve troops were taken from the Tout Vent
ravine for reenforcements. Their places were occupied then by other
German troops. The French artillery bombarded the fort at the peak of
the salient, and all of the trenches and defenses of the Germans in
that neighborhood and the French infantry kept up a rifle and
machine-gun fire which was an aid in preventing the Germans from
repairing the damage done their defenses. The bombardment continued
all day and all night and increased in volume and intensity on the
morning of June 6, 1915. Then it was continued intermittently. A mine
under the fort at the peak of the salient blew up. The Germans who
sought refuge in their dugouts found them unavailing. The shells had
blown the roofs from those places of supposed safety. In many
instances their occupants had been buried in the debris and
suffocated. The French artillery lengthened its range and made a
curtain of fire between the Germans on the front and the German
supports in the rear. Then the French infantry charged. The men had
dispensed with knapsack that they might not be hampered with
unnecessary weight. All had three rations and two hundred and fifty
rounds of ammunition. They were also provided with two hand grenades
and a sack. The last was to be filled with earth. The filled sacks
were sufficient to form breastworks with which any place taken might
be held. With a cheer the French infantry ran across the two hundred
yards between the two lines. The German infantry's nerves had been so
badly shaken by the bombardment that only a scattering fire, badly
directed, greeted the French. It was but the work of minutes to take
the first line of German trenches. The two hundred and fifty survivors
of two German battalions were made prisoners. The German reserves in
the ravine on the Tout Vent farm made a dash to aid their fire line;
but the French artillery shells accounted for them before the reserves
ever reached those whom they would have relieved. Thus in less than an
hour 2,000 Germans were put out of the fight. The French who had been
selected for this work included Bretons, Zouaves, and Chasseurs.
The Zouaves then made a dash for the ravine on the Tout Vent front.
There they came upon a field work equipped with three guns. This work
was protected by wire entanglements. The German artillerymen retreated
to their dugouts, but the Zouaves captured them and their
fortification. At that stage of the fighting the French aviators saw
German reenforcements on their way to take part in the battle. The
aviators signaled to their troops this information. Two German
battalions were being hurried in motor cars from Roye to the east of
the Oise; but before they reached the scene of the fighting the
Germans managed to mass for a counterattack. It was ill-planned and
executed. French shrapnel and machine guns annihilated those making
the counterattack. In the meantime the French sappers were fortifying
with sacks of earth the ends of the salient, so that by night the
French were in a position to hold what they had gained. The
precautions which the French had made were shown to be extremely
timely, for that night the reenforcements from Roye made eight
desperate attacks.
The lack of success throughout the night did not prevent the Germans
from making a reckless attack on the French works at both ends of the
salient on the morning of June 7. The Germans made their advance along
the lines of the communicating trenches. They were greeted with a
shower of hand grenades. By nightfall the Germans seemed to have
wearied of the attacks. The total German loss in killed in this
engagement was three thousand. The French had lost only two hundred
and fifty killed and fifteen hundred wounded. They captured a large
amount of equipage and ammunition, besides twenty machine guns.
The French front south of Pont-a-Mousson, on the Moselle, through the
gap of Nancy to the tops of the Vosges experienced only slight changes
during the spring and summer of 1915. The Germans assumed the
offensive in the region of La Fontenelle, in the Ban-de-Sapt, in April
and June. The French engineers had built a redoubt to the east of La
Fontenelle on Hill 627. The Germans found they could not take it by an
assault; so their sappers went to work to tunnel under it; but they
had to bore through very hard rock and the work was necessarily slow.
The French, learning of the mining operations of their foes, started a
countereffort with the result that there was a succession of fierce
skirmishes under the surface of the earth. Finally the German sappers
were lured into a communicating tunnel which had been mined for the
purpose and they all perished. The greatest activity of the sappers
was between April 6 and April 13, 1915. On the night of the latter
date the officers of the Germans tried to rally their men for further
operations, but their soldiers had had enough and refused to renew
their work.
The Germans, however, did not give up in their attempts to take Hill
627, which they called Ban-de-Sapt, and in an assault they made upon
it on June 22 they took the hill. Thereupon the general in command of
the Thirtieth Bavarian Division made the following announcement:
"I have confidence that the height of Ban-de-Sapt will be transformed
with the least possible delay into an impregnable fortification and
that the efforts of the French to retake it will be bloodily
repulsed."
On the night of July 8 the French began a bombardment which was
followed by an infantry charge which forced its way through five lines
of trenches and gained the redoubt on the top of the hill, in spite of
its corrugated iron and gun-shield defenses to which had been added
logs and tree trunks. At the same time the French made an attack on
the German trenches on the left and surrounded the hill from the
eastward. The Germans on the right flank of the French were kept busy
by another attack. In this battle two battalions of the Fifth Bavarian
Ersatz Brigade were taken from the German ranks either by death or as
prisoners. The French captured eight hundred and eighty-one, of whom
twenty-one were officers, who, for the most part, were men of more
than ordinary education.
The principal work of the French troops at this time was in the valley
of the Fecht and the neighboring mountains. They planned to go down
through the valley to Muenster and take the railroad to which the
mountain railroads were tributaries. In connection with this campaign
in the mountains the achievement of a company of French Chasseurs
serves to illustrate the heroic and hardy character of these men. They
were surrounded by German troops on June 14, 1915, but refused to
surrender. Instead they built a square camp which they prepared to
hold as long as one of them remained alive. When their ammunition
began to give out, they rolled rocks down on their enemy and hurled
large stones at the advancing foe. At the same time the French
artillery aided them by raining shells on the Germans, though the
artillery was miles from the scene of action. Thus the Chasseurs were
able to hold their position until they were relieved on June 17,
1915. In the meantime the French proceeded down the valley of the
Fecht and up the mountains overlooking the valley. An assault was made
on the top of Braunkopf and an attack was made on Anlass on June 15
and 16, 1915. The French captured Metzeral on June 19, 1915, the
Germans having set fire to it before being driven out. The soldiers of
the republic then began to bombard Muenster with such success that they
destroyed a German ammunition depot there. The Sondernach ridge was
held by the French about the middle of July, 1915, and they continued
to gain ground so that they were near Muenster by the end of July,
1915. In these actions the French mountaineers were pitting their
skill against the mountaineers from Bavaria.
By midsummer the lines on both sides of the western front were an
elaborate series of field fortifications. The shallow trenches of the
preceding fall were practically things of the past. And these
fortifications extended from the Vosges to the North Sea. They
naturally varied with the nature of the region in which they were
built. The marshy character of the soil along the Yser and about the
Ypres salient made it impossible to go down very deep. Hence it was
necessary to build up parapets which were easy marks for the
artillery. The Germans had the better places on the higher levels from
Ypres to Armentieres; but the British line opposing them showed
remarkable engineering skill. The advances of the Allies had resulted
in making the first line of trenches somewhat temporary in character
in the sections about Festubert, La Bassee, and the Artois; but in
these regions there were strong fortifications in the rear of both
lines. The condition of the ground from Arras to Compiegne was
excellent for fortification purposes. The Teutons had the better
position in the chalky region along the Aisne, though the chalk
formation did not add to the comfort of the men. In the northern part
of Champagne trench life was more bearable. The forests in the
Argonne, the Woevre, and the Vosges made the trenches the best of all
on the western front. The greater part of these so-called trenches,
the like of which had never before been constructed, could not be
taken without a bombardment by heavy artillery. And, in the rear of
each line there was a series of other fortifications quite as
impregnable. This condition was a gradual growth which had developed
as a result of the increasingly new methods of attack. As new means of
taking life were invented, new means of protection came into
existence, until, for the present, the inventive genius of man seemed
to be at a standstill. But all this activity and preparation at the
front meant a greater activity in the rear of the opposing lines.
Fighting men were a necessity; but, under existing conditions of
warfare, they were useless unless they were kept supplied by an army
of artisans and another army of men to transport munitions to the
soldiers on the firing line. In fact it was being forced on the minds
of the commanding officers that the war could be won in the workshop
and laboratory rather than on the battle field.