In order to rush headlong at the enemy out in the open, where at any
moment shot and shell may do its worst, one must have an exuberance of
energy. This increase of courage exists only among troops who have for a
long time been able to accumulate reserves of moral force. A unit that
has recently made a bloody effort is incapable of delivering a _furious
and unlimited assault_, such as we wish for. It might with trouble take
a line of trenches and there hastily take cover. The supply of energy is
used up quickly and comes back very slowly; the memory of the terrible
dangers must be dulled. In a combat, the expenditure of energy is at
once physical and nervous, but rather nervous than physical. Now the
mistake is often made of thinking that an organization is in fighting
condition when it has again taken on a good appearance and seems in
excellent form. A few nights of sleep and a few days of good food are
sufficient to restore the physique, but the nerve cells are reformed
with all the slowness that is characteristic of them. How many times,
some days after bloody fights which have left me weak and emaciated,
have I found myself in a state of flourishing health almost shameful for
a soldier, and felt at the same time a faltering courage at heart!
To try to attack with troops already dejected or insufficiently
recovered is to march to meet a certain and bloody defeat. It is
sufficient to see the troops with which the attempts to break through at
Neuville in the month of June were made and their result, known in
advance by the discouraged officers. The almost destroyed regiments that
had made the magnificent attacks of May 9 and had occupied the conquered
ground under the worst bombardments until the 25th, had been reorganized
with dispirited officers and noncommissioned officers, and were the
sorriest soldiers that one could see—men recalled after having been
formerly rejected, incompletely instructed, and of rather mediocre
spirit. The few survivors of the splendid days of May, instead of being
exalted by the memory of these exploits, had retained the memory of the
massacre which had left them almost alone among their former officers
and two hundred comrades. Two weeks rest and a new attack with the
painful result which covered the famous regiments with unmerited shame;
companies hesitating to leave their trenches, officers obliged to drive
their men, the slaughter of abandoned noncommissioned officers.
Therefore do not attack except with troops that have not made a bloody
effort for a long time and who have been able to recuperate their supply
of energy.
The second condition under which troops attack without thought of
sparing themselves is when they truly feel that the action in which they
are going to engage is worth the immense sacrifice of life. Each man
down to the most humble feels conscious that his existence is of
inestimable value, that it represents many efforts, many troubles, and
many affections. The infantry soldier has so many and many occasions to
die that he only gives himself up to it on real occasions, and this calm
and conscientious self-denial which irritates those who would like to
find the troops ever responsive to their orders is of a supreme
grandeur. When one has seen the death and suffering of the soldier at
close range, one ties to him as to one’s self and does not expose him
for every whim. The soldier understands this thoroughly, and when he is
told that it is “_pour la Patrie_,” he then goes in for all he is worth,
and so it is that the chief who has not stormed and fumed in vain is
rewarded for his wisdom.
The coming of the generals who know how to talk to the men who will meet
their death with simplicity and conviction, has a profound and decisive
influence on the open-hearted mass of infantrymen. Handling soldiers was
formerly the greatest accomplishment of commanders, who did not confine
themselves to the brief and abstract formulas of their orders. _Today as
formerly, the word of the great chief, rational and assured, is graven
in ineffaceable letters in the hearts of the combatants._ Beyond the
chief, the soldier clearly sees his native country, whose supreme will
still claims the sacrifice, and in himself he feels his courage harden.
Toward the 15th of April, returning from Belgium, our regiment passed in
review before General F—, our former Corps Commander, who assembled the
officers and said to them: “We are going to attempt another
maneuver ..., the waiting has come to an end, we are going after them
..., we have today cannon and ammunition in abundance, we will crush
their shelters, we will destroy their machine guns.... Then the infantry
will be launched and will crush them; after the first ones, there will
be others ..., then others ...; if we do not succeed, we shall have no
one to blame but ourselves.” These words sank into the hearts of the
company officers, and they repeated them with conviction to their
soldiers, and the latter heard them so well that they surpassed all that
could have been expected; they are not the ones whom General F— might
blame.
Thus the troops see clearly the object, but the moral preparation would
be insufficient if the man felt himself incapable of accomplishing it.
Each day the officers should instil in the troops the idea of the effort
and show them how it may be realized; there are even questions
concerning the instinct of preservation that it is well to bring into
play. Thus instead of fearing the ordeal, the man little by little gets
accustomed to the idea of facing it.
It remains now to complete and exalt the offensive spirit by an intense
period of appropriate exercises. Trench life has a tendency to kill the
offensive spirit of the troops. They think only of protecting
themselves, they are always under cover, they circulate in the _boyaux_,
and all this creates a horror of the open ground. Daily experiences,
such as not being able to show one’s head without running the risk of
receiving a bullet in the face, create a very acute sensation of danger.
They dare no longer stir, and to attack the terrible trenches of the
enemy which one cannot look at even for a second seems a mad and
irrealizable project. The service in the trenches creates terror of the
hostile trench.
_The Man Must Be Put into Forward Movement_
Make him run, jump, and rush in the open spaces; let him get intoxicated
with air and movement; the attitude creates the mentality. As soon as he
has lost the habit of hanging his head and hunching his back, he has
also lost his exaggerated prudence and the fear of unsheltered spaces.
At the cantonments at Fiefs and Berles, where we passed a fortnight
before the 9th of May, the afternoons were entirely given up to sport.
We organized “field days” in the woods, obstacle races, and the men,
recruits and old reservists, galloped through these spring days with
absolutely unbounded animation. To give the men the habit of moving
without anxiety over open ground where the bullets whistled, I took
advantage of the nights when we were working on saps and parallels to
make them march in patrols a short distance in front of the lines. If I
saw that the workmen were thinking of crouching down, I made them stand
up for a while; as for me, I fortified myself by walking up and down in
front of the working party.
We wished for an irresistible assault and therefore tried to inculcate
in the men the instinct of hand-to-hand fighting, at which they
ordinarily hesitate with the result that the close combat is stopped for
days and months at a few score metres from the enemy. We had bayonet
fencing, but it was a demoniacal fencing, the fencing of the chargers of
Froeschwiller.
The fencing exercises, carried out by the company to prepare for the
attack, were as follows: first, a brief review of the movements, then
immediately fencing on the run; the men were formed at a few paces
intervals and then started on a run; it was “Halt! Thrust! Thrust
again!” They started again, climbed the embankments, lunged and relunged
furiously; they got winded, so much the worse.... “Right face!” and
everyone ran to the right, descended the slope stabbing and stabbing
again, getting excited and feverish, the officers and sergeants
galloping more furiously than the rest.
Afterwards fencing with the dummy. We had stuffed sacks full of straw
and made them smaller each day to make a smaller target and oblige the
men to be more accurate in their thrusts.
Each man attacked the dummy individually, shouting with all the frenzy
of which his imagination was capable, and those who attacked the best,
with the greatest _élan_, went over it again to show their comrades how
to do it. It was no play, they knew enough of the Germans to believe
them in front of them, and I recall that among those from Gascony,
Toulouse, and Provence, who formed the basis of the company, some
shouted with frenzy, “Piquo, Piquo!”
In order to give more movement, the exercise against the dummy was
arranged in the following manner:
In a quite tangled wood, we established obstacles by cutting down bushes
over a course of 80 metres. Then here and there we placed the dummies.
Thus on a fairly short course the man was obliged to run, jump, bend
down, attack, and this in every manner, for we placed the dummies in
such a way that the man had to combine his attack with right face, left
face, face to the rear, or with crossing an obstacle. This exercise
particularly interested the men, and as we measured the time taken by
each one to run the course, in a few days it had developed in an
astonishing manner their agility and suppleness, and gave nerve to those
who had none. I know that as concerns myself the knowledge of having
covered the course in the shortest time, in addition to other
experiences, contributed greatly to developing my confidence in my vigor
and my good legs, which were the most precious of my offensive qualities
on the 9th of May.
Afterwards we attacked in groups and then passed to charges by section.
Here we sought, while giving the greatest impulsion and fury possible,
to maintain cohesion and give to each one the confidence of the touch of
elbows, and to the enemy the terrifying impression of a wall that
nothing could stop. We marched at charging pace,[12] aligned, with a
lengthened and furious step—not restrained and without conviction—up to
50 metres; then we charged, lowering the bayonets in a single movement
to the height of the waist.
We were working to get the charge of the skirmishers and Zouaves at
Froeschwiller; now we have had it with loss of the majority of our
officers over three successive trenches on two kilometres of a single
rush to the cemetery of Neuville-Saint-Vaast.
V.
MATERIAL PREPARATION OF THE TROOPS.
The fight does not consist in getting killed but in getting out of it by
thrashing the enemy. Therefore do not go at it in a hurly-burly fashion;
one should be careless only about the inevitable fatality over which one
can have no influence. Let us prepare our business down to the slightest
details in order to conquer and live.