_The following article, issued by the British Press Bureau, London,
March 18, 1915, is from a British observer with the French forces in the
field who has the permission of General Joffre to send communications
home from time to time, giving descriptions of the work, &c., of the
French Army which will be of interest to the British reader._
I propose to give some account of the operations which have been in
progress for the last three weeks in Champagne. Every day since Feb. 15
the official communiqués find something to say about a district which
lies midway between Rheims and Verdun. The three places which are always
mentioned, which form the points of reference, are Perthes-lez-Hurlus,
Le Mesnil-lez-Hurlus, and Beauséjour Farm. The distance between the
first and the last is three and one-half miles; the front on which the
fighting has taken place is about five miles; and the French have been
attacking at one point or another in this front every day for the last
three weeks. It is, therefore, an operation of a different kind to those
which we have seen during the Winter months. Those were local efforts,
lasting a day or two, designed to keep the enemy busy and prevent him
from withdrawing troops elsewhere; this is a sustained effort, made with
the object of keeping a constant pressure on his first line of defense,
of affecting his use of the railway from Bazancourt to Challerange, a
few miles to the north, and of wearing down his reserves of men and
ammunition. It may be said that Feb. 15 marks the opening of the 1915
campaign, and that this first phase will find an important place when
the history of the war comes to be written.
We must first know something of the nature of the country, which is
entirely different to that in which the British Army is fighting. It is
one vast plain, undulating, the hills at most 200 feet higher than the
valleys, gentle slopes everywhere. The soil is rather chalky, poor,
barely worth cultivating; after heavy rain the whole plain becomes a sea
of shallow mud; and it dries equally quickly. The only features are the
pine woods, which have been planted by hundreds. From the point of view
of profit, this would not appear to have been a success; either the soil
is too poor, or else it is unsuitable to the maritime pine; for the
trees are rarely more than 25 feet high. As each rise is topped, a new
stretch of plain, a new set of small woods appear, just like that which
has been left behind.
[Illustration: ELEUTHERIOS K. VENIZELOS
The great Greek statesman who recently resigned as Prime Minister.
_(Photo from Medom Photo Service.)_]
[Illustration: LORD HARDINGE OF PENSHURST
Who, as Viceroy, rules England's Indian Empire during the critical
period of the war.]
The villages are few and small, most of them are in ruins after the
fighting in September; and the troops live almost entirely in colonies
of little huts of wood or straw, about four feet high, dotted about in
the woods, in the valleys, wherever a little water and shelter is
obtainable. Lack of villages means lack of roads; this has been one of
the great difficulties to be faced; but, at the same time, the movement
of wagons across country is possible to a far greater extent than in
Flanders, although it is often necessary to use eight or ten horses to
get a gun or wagon to the point desired.
From the military point of view the country is eminently suitable for
troops, with its possibilities of concealment, of producing sudden
surprises with cavalry, and of manoeuvre generally. It is, in fact, the
training ground of the great military centre of Châlons; and French
troops have doubtless been exercised over this ground in every branch of
military operation, except that in which they are engaged at the present
moment.
What commander, training his men over this ground, could have imagined
that the area from Perthes-lez-Hurlus to Beauséjour Farm would become
two fortress lines, developed and improved for four months; or that he
would have to carry out an attack modeled on the same system as that
employed in the last great siege undertaken by French troops, that of
Sebastopol in 1855? Yet this is what is being done. Every day an attack
is made on a trench, on the edge of one of the little woods or to gain
ground in one of them; every day the ground gained has to be transformed
so as to give protection to its new occupants and means of access to
their supports; every night, and on many days, the enemy's
counter-attacks have to be repulsed.
Each attack has to be prepared by a violent and accurate artillery fire;
it may be said that a trench has to be morally captured by gun fire
before it can be actually seized by the infantry. Once in the new
trench, the men have to work with their intrenching tools, without
exposing themselves, and wait for a counter-attack, doing what damage
they can to the enemy with hand grenades and machine guns. Thus the
amount of rifle fire is very small; it is a war of explosives and
bayonets.
Looking at the battle at a distance of about 2,000 yards from the
enemy's line, the stillness of what one sees is in marked contrast to
the turmoil of shells passing overhead. The only movement is the cloud
of smoke and earth that marks the burst of a shell. Here and there long
white lines are visible, when a trench has brought the chalky subsoil up
to the top, but the number of trenches seen is very small compared to
the number that exist, for one cannot see into the valleys, and the top
of the ground is an unhealthy place to choose for seating a trench. The
woods are pointed out, with the names given them by the soldiers, but it
needs fieldglasses to see the few stumps that remain in those where the
artillery has done its work. And then a telephone message arrives,
saying that the enemy are threatening a counter-attack at a certain
point, and three minutes later there is a redoubled whistling of shells.
At first one cannot see the result of this fire--the guns are searching
the low ground where the enemy's reserves are preparing for the
movement, but a little later the ground in front of the threatened
trench becomes alive with shell bursts, for the searching has given
place to the building up of a wall of fire through which it is
impossible for the foe to pass without enormous loss.
The attached map may enable us to look more closely at what has been
achieved. The lowest dotted line, numbered 15, is the line of the French
trenches on Feb. 15. They were then close up to the front of the German
line with its network of barbed wire, its machine-gun emplacements,
often of concrete, and its underground chambers for sheltering men from
the shells. Each successive dotted line shows the line held by the
French on the evening of the date written in the dotted line. Thus the
total gain of ground, that between the most southerly and the most
northerly dotted lines, varies between 200 yards, where the lines are
close together northeast of Perthes, and 1,400 yards, half way between
Le Mesnil and Beauséjour Farm. But the whole of this space has been a
series of trenches and fortified woods, each of which has had to be
attacked separately.
[Illustration: Map of the French Operations in the Champagne
Some of the severest fighting on the western battle front took place in
this little section of about four miles of trenches, lying between
Rheimes and Verdun. For a whole month from Feb. 15, the attacks were
kept up by the French forces almost continuously, and the sketch gives
the graphic result of changes for three weeks of that time. Ostensibly
the purpose of the French was to pierce the German line and cut the
railway a few miles to the rear. Incidentally, the French aimed to keep
their opponents busy, and thus prevent any reinforcements being sent to
von Hindenburg in the east.
The total gain of ground--that between the most southerly and most
northerly dotted lines--varies from 200 yards northeast of Perthes to
1,400 yards, half way between Le Mesnil and Beauséjour Farm. But the
whole of this space has been a series of trenches and fortified woods,
each of which had to be attacked separately.
The letters (A to G) in the sketch indicate the points of the severest
fighting. A (the "little fort") was taken and lost three times before
the French finally held it. B saw some of the stiffest encounters, the
Germans attacking the hill nearly every day after the French captured
it, and even the Prussian Guard being put in. The woods at C, D, and E
were centres of terrific combats, in which trenching and mining were
continuous tasks. The redoubt at F was captured only after large losses
on both sides. At the extreme west is still another wood, (G.) which the
French attacked three times before they were successful in getting a
foothold there.]
Some of the points where the fighting has been heaviest are shown in
letters on the map. A is the "little fort," a redoubt on an open spur,
holding perhaps 500 men. This was first attacked in January; it was
partly taken, but the French in the end retained only the southern
corner, where they remained for something like a fortnight. On Feb. 16
it was again taken in part, and lost the same day. On the 17th the same
thing happened. On the 23d they once more got into the work; in the
evening they repulsed five separate counter-attacks; then a sixth
succeeded in turning them out. On the 27th they took all except a bit of
trench in the northern face, and two days later they made that good, as
well as a trench about fifty yards to the north of the work.
B is a small hill, marked 196. The capture of this, with its two lines
of trenches, was one of the most brilliant pieces of work done. Since
this date, the 26th, the enemy have continued to counter-attack nearly
every day. It was here that the Prussian Guard was put in; but they have
failed to get it back, and their losses have been very high. The
prisoners stated that one regiment had its Colonel and all the superior
officers killed or wounded. C is a wood, called the "Yellow Burnt Wood."
It is still in the hands of the Germans, a regular nest of machine guns,
which command the ground not only to the front but also down valleys to
the east and west. The French are just in the southwest corner.
At D there are two woods; the southern we will call No. 3, the northern
No. 4. On the 16th our allies got a trench just south of No. 3; they got
into the wood on the 18th, and fought backward and forward in the wood
that day and all the 19th and 20th; by the evening of the 20th they had
almost reached the northern edge. On the 21st a stronger counter-attack
than usual was repulsed, and in pursuing the retiring enemy they
secured the northern edge. On the 22d there was more fighting in No. 3,
but in the end the French managed to make their way into No. 4 as far as
a trench which runs along a crest midway through the wood. The next six
days saw continuous fighting in No. 4, sometimes near the northern end,
sometimes at the crest in the middle, and occasionally back near the
southern end. The French now hold the northern edge, and have pushed
troops into the "Square" wood just north of the line of the 25th.
At E again there are two small woods; these were both captured on the
26th, but the trenches in the northern one had been mined, and the
French had no sooner seized them than they were blown up. At F there was
another small redoubt; part of this was taken on the 19th from the east,
but the work was not finally captured till the 27th, when 240 corpses
were found in it. On the extreme west, at G, is a wood which has twice
been unsuccessfully attacked. On the first occasion troops got into the
wood, but a severe snowstorm prevented the artillery from continuing to
assist them, and they were driven out. The second was an attempt to
surprise the enemy at 2 A.M. on the 25th; this also failed. A third
attack was made on March 7 and was successful; the French line now runs
through the wood.
The above will serve to show the tenacity which is required for an
operation of this kind. Up to the present the French have made steady
and continuous progress, and their success may be best judged from the
fact that they have not been forced back on any day behind the line they
held in the morning, despite innumerable counter-attacks. And this is
not merely a question of ground, but one of increasing moral
superiority, for it is in the unsuccessful counter-attacks that losses
are heavy, and these and the sense of failure affect the morale of an
army sooner or later.
Will the French push through the line? Will a hole be made, or is the
enemy like a badger, who digs himself in rather faster than you can dig
him out? I cannot tell; it would indeed be an astonishing measure of
success for a first attempt, and the enemy may require a great deal more
hammering at many points before he has definitely had enough at any one
point. But these operations have brought the day closer, and turn our
thoughts to the time when we shall be able to move forward, and one
finds the cavalrymen wondering whether perhaps they, too, will get their
chance.