the horizon as a rosy possibility. We were dining in Nancy at
Voltaire’s with M. Martin, the _sous-préfet_ of the department of
Meurthe-et-Moselle. M. Martin, it appeared, had never been in Verdun.
Since we had business at a French hospital fifteen kilometers from the
citadel he thought it possible, probable--of course, nothing was sure;
absolutely no Verdun passes had been issued for ten days--still, one
never could tell; and if we would like him to try--he paused to beam
and smile--if we would give him our papers he would send them in to the
Grand Quartier General, together with his own, and then--well, in short
we would await the turn of events.
“Whether we shall be accorded permission at this crucial moment is
doubtful,” he concluded. “But at any rate we may hope.”
So we turned in our papers and we hoped. To see Verdun at this
crisis, when to the north millions of men were crashing together in
terrific combat, with an appalling sanguinary back tide of wounded
and dead, lent the occasion a deep significance, for Verdun to the
whole world has become a symbol of confidence, a kind of ark of the
covenant to battling mankind. I did not conceal from myself that what
gave Verdun its specific interest to me was the news that our troops
round Montdidier and Amiens were now engaged in the present titanic
struggle. That fact took the famous fortress out of the list of mere
great monuments of history; it made it in short our own, part and
parcel of America, its glories our glories, its defense our defense,
its high challenge our challenge, its victory our victory. But there
was something more than that in the back of my mind. Verdun was behind
the French, so to speak, finished history. Our Verduns were still of
to-morrow, a promise, a prophecy. The actors were those humorous-eyed
khaki-clad soldiers standing at lonely crossroads who had given us the
smart little salute with the friendly aftergrin. Thus it was with the
feeling of reading ahead of time a page of history not yet evoked but
inevitable that I prepared to go to Verdun.
The past week had been of a piece with the raw spring weather,
lowering, foggy or sluicing water by the liquid ton out of a somber
sky. With one accord we prayed for sunshine in order to view the
surrounding heights, Côte 304, Saint Mihiel, Douaumont, Veau and Mort
Homme. But the day that dawned was brother to the rest--bleak, dark,
with a clinging fog, which muffled the landscape and grew ever thicker
as the hours passed. Our passes had arrived from French Headquarters,
but the final visé, the permission to enter Verdun itself, must be
obtained at V----, fifteen kilometers from the citadel, and if there
was heavy shelling either of the fort or of the surrounding roads we
should certainly be refused.
It was six o’clock in the morning when as guests of the French
Government and of M. Martin in particular we clambered into a military
automobile, one of those lean, powerful drab monsters that go cycloning
along the highways behind the lines at a stupefying rate of speed.
We had estimated that, including necessary stops at French hospitals
containing American wounded, we should arrive at Verdun about noon.
Therefore we had taken the precaution to bring our luncheon, with the
intention of picnicking among the ruins and perhaps obtaining some
coffee from the poilus’ mess. The _chefs d’oeuvrès_ of the provisions
were two tiny cold fowl de luxe weighing about a pound apiece, which
had cost eight round silver dollars.
The next four hours on my part were given to the task of keeping my
hair and my ears on. For the wind as it swooped by tried to drive us
bodily from the car; the cold congealed us in cramped positions and
the fog chilled us to the bone. We could not discern the road twenty
yards ahead. The car roared forward into a barrage of thick mist which
shredded on the hillcrests only to sag more heavily in the valleys.
This, M. Martin assured us, was typical Picardy weather. At crossroads
where we were stopped by the police M. Martin presented his card of
identity, signed in Joffre’s own hand, and we were waved onward with
honorable presentations of arms. As we neared our destination we
diverged from the straight highroad, making a detour, for some routes
are reserved for ingoing and some for outgoing traffic, and these
routes are constantly altered in order to safeguard materials and
confound the Hun.
Arrived at V---- we drew up in a long rank of machines in front of
Headquarters and M. Martin vanished to make his felicitations to
the commandant and to telephone in to Verdun. Our fate still hung
in the balance. The minutes slipped by. Generals--French, American,
British--dashed up in their automobiles, descended, saluted and
vanished or stood talking in earnest groups. Americans, recognizing
compatriots, saluted us from streets and doorways and strolled over to
ask of home and how the Statue of Liberty fared. She was a pretty fine
old girl, _quoi?_--as the French say.
An hour passed. And still M. Martin tarried. At the end of twenty
minutes more he reappeared down the end of a street, his civilian
black standing out in striking relief against the motley of khaki and
horizon-blue uniforms and gold braid.
“_En avant!_” he exclaimed gayly, climbing into the car. “They got the
commanding officer of the citadel on the wire. He expects us and asked
us to mess with his officers in the citadel, but I refused, as it will
be long past one by the time we arrive. This fog after all has served
us well. They are not bombarding the fortress to-day.”
I do not recall the last fifteen kilometers of that journey, save
that we sped like the wind, straining our eyes through the mist for
the first glimpse of the famous stronghold. Presently “There! There!”
broke simultaneously from our lips, and a few minutes later we were
rolling under a noble stone archway, green and mossy with age, which
looked as if it had been reared in the days of Uther Pendragon, and
were being greeted by the commanding officer of the citadel of Verdun.
We were to take everything out of the car, said he, and come right in.
Lunch was waiting. In vain M. Martin protested. The colonel waved his
protests aside with a smile. He led us into the fortress, down a long
underground tunnel, which rang hollowly beneath our feet, to a set of
guests’ dressing rooms, where we repaired the ravages of the long ride.
A few minutes later he returned, conducted us through another series of
corridors, through an enormous mess hall, where the men as he entered
sprang clattering to their feet, and ushered us into the officers’ mess
room.
It was small, that dining room situated forty feet underground in the
stone heart of the citadel, seating scarce a dozen persons, and simple,
lofty-ceiled, severe. And yet it was a veritable jewel, flashing
with rich strong colors, magnificent with its brilliant sheaths of
battle flags, and glittering with the steel and silver and gold of its
souvenirs of valor--armor and medals and trophies which gleamed from
cabinet and wall. Here had collected at one time and another all the
great chiefs of the Allies; and here the presumptuous Crown Prince had
sworn to eat his triumphal banquet.
Over the mantelpiece hung the pennants of all the Entente Powers, a
bright formidable array, topped with the watchword of the impregnable
fortress, “_On ne passe pas_,” a phrase descending from the days of the
Little Corporal. The opposite wall bore medals of honor--the Croix de
Guerre, the Médaille Militaire and the Legion d’Honneur bestowed by a
grateful nation upon the citadel itself, as if it possessed a glorious
soul. Here and there hung heavy-studded shields surrounded by rayons of
ancient swords and battle-axes.
What we ate or whether we ate I cannot recall. The colonel had left
us, bidding us genially to make haste, as there was much to see, much
to recount, and we sat drinking in the spell of that wondrous little
room, steeped in the atmosphere of valor, hearkening to the voice of
the past, rejoicing in the brave prophecy of the future, and trying to
realize that even as we sat French and American troops were rushing
north to stem the furious onslaught of the Hun.
“Well, now,” said the colonel, opening the door, “if you are refreshed
we will begin. We shall take first the view of the heights, then I
shall show you the fortress, and after that the ruins of Verdun.”
We had asked M. Martin to recount the history of the great offensive,
and he had turned over the appeal to the commanding officer of the
citadel, who had promised to describe the climax of the decisive battle
on the exact spot where the Germans made their final stubborn stand and
were beaten back with stupendous loss.
Outside, the weather had settled to a continuous drizzle. We wound
round the hill by a serpentine road and presently attained its crest.
Here we abandoned the car and stumbled over a torn and wrenched
terrain, pitted with shell holes fifty feet across and partially filled
with black filthy water. Filled also with old dismantled cannon,
unexploded cartridges, rusted bayonets, twisted iron fragments of great
shells, and an occasional sodden képi. Between these craters the
hummocks were dotted with graves marked with a cross and the simple
French _cocarde_. Standing under that bleak sky and gazing out across
that sinister smitten landscape with its gaunt shot-off trees and its
deep gashes of trenches marked by blood-red earth was like looking
upon some huge monster frozen in a horrible death agony. It had been
foully murdered, that hill, and it lay like a mutilated corpse, stiffly
outflung, uncovered, indecent, its hideous wounds gaping up to the sky.
The colonel came to a halt. “Here we are,” he began. “Here is the
farthest point that the enemy penetrated. Here he was beaten back--just
at your feet, mademoiselle.” He pointed with his cane, and I stared
down, expecting to see I scarce know what, some visible sign, some
chalk mark or whitewashed tennis-court line, to identify that
tremendous check. But there was nothing. My feet were pressing down a
clump of fresh blue violets, wet-eyed from the rain. I stepped off them
hastily.
The colonel continued his narrative. The wind blew back the heavy
skirts of his greatcoat; his sturdy, compact figure, firmly planted as
a statue, defied the elements; his leonine white head, which reminded
one of Joffre’s, glistened with rain drops; his voice, gentle, level,
dispassionate, filled one with utter conviction. We knew what he said
was true. Here came the enemy from that direction--he pointed--and
from there, and there, all converging on this one point. And when
they were very near, advancing shoulder to shoulder in dense mass
formation, two concealed French batteries, one from either side, opened
on their serried columns a terrific enfilading fire. It was close-range
slaughter--such as was going on even now in the north. Their first
ranks lay in windrows. Their dead covered this hill like a carpet. And
still their thinning numbers were filled with rushing hosts from behind
and they pressed on and on, wave upon wave, the farthest of which had
broken just at the point where we stood. There it was pushed back by a
spirited counter thrust by the French _fantassins_.
“And your own troops, _mon colonel_, I suppose they gave a good account
of themselves?” queried M. Martin.
“You have said it,” replied the colonel with proud simplicity. “My
brave men in that attack covered and recovered themselves with glory.”
In the meantime, he continued, down below--he would show us
presently--another strong enemy force had tried to force an entrance to
the fortress at one of the tunnel exits. This exit, leading by a series
of passages on different levels to the very innermost heart of the
citadel, gave on the outside upon a contracted open space between two
ridges, and was protected first by a deep surrounding fosse filled with
a maze of barbed wire, and second by a fifteen-foot stone wall which
formed part of the outer fortifications. Down this wall the Germans had
leaped like a tumbling cataract. The first wave fell into the fosse and
was followed by another and another, until the ancient moat was heaped
level with a writhing human bridge across which the hostile troops
rushed and gained the narrow space before the mouth of the tunnel.
“And were there no French machine guns playing upon them from the
entrance?”
“Oh, yes--there were two seventy-fives,” said the colonel quietly,
“less than a hundred yards away.” We could perhaps imagine, he
continued, what carnage they wrought in that confined space. Germans
had dropped down from that height like overripe fruit trained against a
wall. The French gunners obliterated the first, the second, the third
and the fourth waves; and the fifth broke right on the flaming snouts
of their guns. The sixth gained the tunnel entrance. Here the garrison
counter-attacked, and the enemy turned tail and ran. But not far. The
wall was before them and the guns were behind. That particular hostile
force was wiped out to a man.
The colonel’s calm voice flowed on and on, describing the desperate
details of that epic attack, and now and again he pointed with his
stick into the fog, locating great enemy batteries which had poured a
deadly hail of shells upon this hill. Altogether, he said, the French
had lost in killed during that six months’ offensive one hundred and
ten thousand; the Germans more than half a million. And most of them
had fallen on and round this height on which we stood. I looked about
that somber, brooding, ghost-haunted hill, where half a million souls
slain violently in battle had flown upward in a thick mist--and as I
looked it seemed that the fog had a ruddy under tinge as if a subtle
crimson reek exuded from the blood-drenched ground.
As the colonel continued his narrative I tried in fancy to reconstruct
the vision of the battlefield. Of German prisoners I had seen a-plenty
with their close-cropped, bullet-shaped heads and furtive yet arrogant
eyes. The French poilus also--those gay, stout-hearted little men, some
of the greatest fighters and the greatest phrase-makers on earth--were
familiar figures in my mind. So that all the ingredients of the picture
were at hand. Nevertheless, all unconsciously I kept making a curious
mental error. The intensity of the combat still raging to the north
somehow drew the picture out of focus, causing it to appear, not past
history but something which was still actually going on. I knew it was
past, and still it fused in my mind with the unfinished present.
Added to that, my brain was so saturated with images of our American
troops as I had seen them the past week, and those images were so
vivid, powerful and real that I could visualize nothing else. Thus,
when the colonel said “_nos soldats_,” my mind unconsciously translated
“our soldiers”; and I saw, not the horizon blue of the poilus but
the clean, lithe khaki-clad Americans with their fresh faces and
good-humored eyes. And when he said “Our brave troops charged here--and
here--and here,” my mind saw “our brave troops charging here--and
here--and here.” I tried to rid my mind of that delusion--for it was
too painful on that dusky death-smitten hill, with the knowledge that
even at that very moment our own brave troops were indeed charging to
the north upon some other hill. But the past week had etched the images
too deeply on my mind; and I could not wipe them out.
M. Martin interrogated the colonel concerning their losses.
“Yes,” replied the colonel soberly, “one hundred and ten thousand of
our men fell.”
“One hundred and ten thousand of our men fell!” reiterated my heart
with a pang. Never before had that figure seemed so monstrous.
Why, that was one, two, three, four, five whole divisions! Our
first division, that I had seen, our second, all those fine Rainbow
fellows--pshaw! It was incredible!
“One hundred and ten thousand are a great many men to die!” I remarked
aloud.
And even as I spoke, my mind, righting itself, said within itself: “But
of course those one hundred and ten thousand men were Frenchmen! Not
Americans. Our men have only just gone north. Don’t you remember, you
saw the --th Division on the move?” Thus mentally I righted myself.
Nevertheless, one hundred and ten thousand were indeed a great many men
to die, and I repeated my remark.
“_Pas trop!_”--not too many!--replied the colonel simply. And those two
words, soberly spoken, were the epitome of the Verdun spirit.
Later he pointed out a cemetery on a distant hillside containing five
thousand fallen heroes. “In that one cemetery,” said he, “lie thirty of
my own officers.”
“And you, you have been wounded, my colonel?” inquired M. Martin.
“Three times only,” replied the colonel with a shrug. “Once seriously.
But I would not leave the citadel. I do not like hospitals--those white
places. They are not for me. If I die I die here where I belong, with
my men.”
The rain still continued, a steady drenching downpour. “But you may
be thankful,” remarked the colonel, wiping his streaming face, “as
otherwise this hill would be impossible. To-day the cannon are giving
us a rest.”
He led the way to the nearest tunnel entrance to the citadel. With the
others I followed, eagerly listening to his explanations. But my mind
was still in a whirl. That dark and desolate blood-soaked hill, the
staunch old colonel, with the dewdrops in his white hair, recounting
the valorous deeds of his fallen heroes, those acres on acres of
graves, the ascending hosts of souls--were not some of them perhaps
still lingering in this lonely spot, dazed by their violent severance
from the flesh, ignorant that they had passed across? Would they not
cry out at night for aid, for news of the battle front: “Why are we
abandoned thus? Who wins? _Vaterland?_ _La Patrie?_”--the Americans,
who had not engaged in this struggle, to be sure, but were now fighting
in an even mightier struggle--all these things mingled confusedly in my
mind like the unmatched parts of a puzzle.
Thanks to my classical education, I had no proper conception of what
constitutes a modern fortress. I had vaguely imagined it as a city
ringed round with a very substantial stone wall, crenelated and
turreted, with dozens of peepholes for the doughty gunners to take
pot shots at the enemy established outside. In the very heart of the
city would be the citadel, which figured in my mind as a big, round,
impregnable stone tower bristling with teethlike rows of cannon, its
foundations naturally extending scores of feet underneath. Accordingly
when we set out to traverse the long series of dimly-lit reverberating
subterranean passages, descended flights of slimy stone stairs to lower
and danker levels, stopped in gun and ammunition rooms, electric-plant
rooms, kitchens, mess rooms, infirmaries, chapels, musées, cinema and
rest rooms, dormitories, cavernous abodes, twenty, thirty and forty
feet below ground, I began to wonder when we were going upstairs.
“But there is no upstairs,” responded M. Martin, laughing in answer
to my query--“not in this citadel. Here it all is, just as you see,
underground. You observed those big iron mushroom affairs six inches or
so aboveground when we were up on the hill?”
“But I thought they were the observation posts of hidden guns--like
that of the Big Bertha.”
“So they are--they are our own Big Berthas. Nevertheless, those
observation posts are all the upstairs there is to this citadel. What
do you suppose would happen to the superstructure of a fort if it were
hit by a shell which made a crater as large as the one we saw on the
hill--fifty feet across and twenty feet deep? Not much upstairs left,
eh?”
So much for a classical education!
“And all the French troops eat and sleep and pray and drill down here?
There are none billeted in Verdun?”
“There’s nobody in Verdun.”
“No old men and old women who still cling to their ruined firesides and
creep out into the morning sunshine after a night’s bombardment?”
“Not a single soul. It’s a blanched city of the dead.”
By this time it was well upon six o’clock and we stopped for a moment
to view a mess hall where, seated at long refectory tables, about four
hundred poilus were taking sustenance from great steaming casseroles
of ragout placed in the centers of the tables. Here indeed were the
veritable heroes of Verdun! The indomitables! I looked for halos,
but found none but the fragrant encircling wreaths of the smoking
ragout, which the heroes were bolting down like one o’clock. These
men, however, were no callow youths, but tough-muscled, tanned and
bearded veterans--or if they were youths they were veteran youths with
lines in their faces and gray in their hair. As the commanding officer
loomed in the doorway they sprang to their feet as one man. The colonel
waved them back to their stew, explaining that here were some of their
allies--American friends. What a cheer it was that rose! Some of the
Americans frankly wiped their eyes. The colonel beamed round upon us
all with a kind of indulgent fatherly grace. His blue eyes caressed his
troops with affectionate regard.
And as we departed he commented: “You will please note one thing: I did
not order that cheer. It sprang spontaneously from the hearts of my
men.”
He continued to speak of America, of the deep fraternal tenderness
existing in the hearts of the French for the splendid young army from
overseas; of the fine morale America was exhibiting in the business of
food conservation; of the hope they had in American aviation. Simple,
brave, friendly words from a brave, friendly soul.
We tramped on through vast resounding twilight caverns, slippery
underfoot with mud and exuding large clammy dewdrops from the
overarching walls. Sometimes it was pitch dark and a pocket torch or
the outstretched hand of the colonel guided our course. Once we climbed
by a kind of vertical ship’s ladder fastened against the solid wall
up into the platform of a monstrous subterranean gun which hurled
annihilation miles away. For months the Germans had been assiduously
trying to locate that gun.
It was the colonel who suggested the idea of Verdun as a Mecca for
tourist parties after the war.
“Here they will come,” he chuckled, “by train and ship loads from
all over the civilized world to view this historic spot. They will
passionately collect every old piece of shrapnel or cap or exploded
cartridge, every stick, every brick, every stone. And when all of the
veritable souvenirs have been snatched up doubtless our ingenious
guardians of the citadel will resow the sacred ground with another
artificial crop from a huge factory established hard by. ’Twill be an
industry. They will charge--let me see--three francs admission.” And
the colonel laughed heartily over his prophecy.
“But they will not have the commanding officer of the citadel for their
guide!” interjected M. Martin slyly.
“If they have the commanding officer of the citadel for their guide it
will be five francs,” said the colonel firmly. “Three francs for an
ordinary tour; five francs with the commanding officer for guide. That
is not too dear!”
They elaborated the idea with gayety. Instead of great rough soldiers
with clattering bayonets and clumping boots, the hollow corridors would
reverberate to soft, pretty laughter and the click-clack of ladies’
high-heeled boots. And downy college lads and pig-tailed misses, with
bespectacled tutors bearing Baedekers--no, _mon Dieu_, not Baedekers;
doubtless American histories!--and peaceful and portly papas and mammas
who vaguely remembered the great war in their extreme youth would
stroll through these echoing passages pensively, hand in hand. For it
would then be a public musée, this impregnable citadel, and its tragic
battles a troubled dream of yesterday.
“But in the meantime,” warned the colonel, laughing, “I am going to
charge five francs!”