In order thoroughly to appreciate the heroic steadfastness and the
patient endurance shown by our troops, which transcended all praise,
and to appraise properly the difficulties which beset leaders and men
alike during the long, bitter weeks of the battle, we must remember
certain facts.
When the French offensive was begun on a large scale on February 16,
our troops had already seen months of the hardest sort of service in
repulsing the French First and Seventeenth Army Corps, with only a few
very short intervals of rest--our Eighth Army Corps having been engaged
in this region since December 8, and the Eighth Reserve Corps since
December 19, 1914.
Our regiments, therefore, were far from unfatigued at a moment when
they were called upon to enter the severest phase of a struggle into
which our foes hurled the flower of their troops. Moreover, the French
had at their command an almost inexhaustible supply of ammunition, and
were able, therefore, in a steadily ascending scale, gradually to reach
the full amplitude of their fighting capacity in their efforts to break
through our lines. If we fully visualize this fact then we must realize
that an almost incredible glory accrues to the work done by our troops.
Only an iron will, a discipline which had become second nature and
utter forgetfulness of self could lead to victory in the face of such
odds. That these qualities did ultimately assure us the victory will
redound to the undying glory of all the troops which did active service
in this great engagement.
The prodigious masses of iron and humanity which our foes hurled
against us day and night, their marvellous ingenuity in making attacks,
their doggedness in defense, all this was admirably calculated to crush
larger numbers than those of our Third Army. It was a struggle between
iron and steel. It is true that a heavy mass of iron can through sheer
weight bend and indent a narrow band of steel, but it cannot break
the steel. Thus, through continually renewing their attacks and by
training upon us an artillery fire the violence of which beggars all
description, the French succeeded in bending back our lines here and
there. Sometimes at one part, sometimes at another they took several
hundred mètres of intrenchments; but they paid a horrible, a ghastly
price in blood for these minor and valueless successes, which profited
them nothing save that they taught them the bitter lesson that German
will power and German discipline can be broken by nothing. The French
had scornfully proclaimed that they had broken the backbone of our
resistance, but we broke their attack and imposed upon them our own.
In the end the French attempt to break through our lines was utterly
foiled, and the Third Army was victorious.
During this time the French attacks were directed principally against
the left, i. e., the eastern half of the Third Army, so that the Eighth
Army Corps and the Eighth Reserve Corps bore the brunt of the attacks,
most of which took place along the line between the position of Perthes
and Beausejour.
This is a rolling, open country, in which narrow fields alternate with
small patches of woodland, covered with pine trees. The country is not
dissimilar in character to the country near Jueterberg and Doeberitz,
in Germany, and instead of soil or sand the surface of the earth is
covered with white chalk. It is a desolate, barren country. The French
themselves call it the "louse Champagne" country, and never was a name
more aptly given. It boasted of only a few settlements, and these have
now been destroyed by the artillery fire.
During the entire time that the battle lasted the weather was vile.
For weeks it rained day and night, so that the chalky soil was
transformed into a grayish, soapy, slimy mire. In consequence the
by-roads became almost impassable for vehicles and the main roads,
connecting our trenches and camps, owing to the continuous use to which
they were put by marching troops and rolling provision wagons, were
soon in a condition which was almost as bad. The work of our munition
and commissary columns, upon which this battle, which lasted for
months, entailed particularly difficult service, was thereby rendered
exasperatingly hard. The horses also suffered severely through the
long enforced marches, the dreadful roads, the general wetness and the
insufficient food.