Douaumont Fortress
"They come! See them, in their thousands! They are breaking from the
trees and the hollows!"
"Thousands of them! Hordes of them! Swarms of the Boches!"
Amidst the storm of shells which the German massed guns were pouring
upon that narrow front stretching from the Cote du Poivre past the Cote
De Talou to the River Meuse, heads popped up from battered trenches,
from shell craters, from fissures torn in the ground by high
explosives, and hardy, bristly, dirty _poilus_, stared down the slopes
through the wintry light and watched the enemy approaching. That
gallant band indeed, sadly thinned since the opening of the Verdun
battle--a battle destined to last longer than any recorded in all
history--looked on grimly and waited. Waited expectantly, not in fear
and terror lest they should be decimated, not even in doubt or
trembling, for the desperate conflict which had been waged so far had
taught the French one thing very thoroughly--man for man, they were as
good as, nay better than the Germans; gun for gun, their own artillery
was at least as dexterous and as exact in its ranging, and, so far as
it went, gave wonderful support to the infantry. All then that
remained was to withstand that terrible torrent of shells, and wait.
To discover shelter of some sort which would protect their bodies and
allow them to remain alive till that moment when those grey masses down
below got within reach of them.
"And then you shall see, my Henri and my Jules," the sergeant who had
spoken up for them on the previous day said, smiling grimly. "These
shells that fall about us--pooh! What are they?"
At that moment a 15-inch shell plunged into the ground just behind the
parapet--into ground already torn and plastered with shell
fragments--and, burrowing at least ten feet deep, at last exploded with
a muffled roar, setting the earth trembling, shaking in the sides of
the battered trench, and sending up tons of soil, which fell in a
cascade all round them.
"Poof! What are they?" he said again, saluting in the direction of the
exploded shell. "But nothing! But something to snap one's fingers at!
To laugh at! To chortle over! Something to avoid, though, my Henri
and my Jules! Not that a man is so careful of his body in these days.
Though he is anxious to retain his life, yet not for himself only, not
that he shall live on to see the end of this warfare and the victory of
the Allies. No, no! But so that he shall live to pull a trigger as
the enemy draws nearer, and so help to destroy the German effort."
You would have thought, to look at Jules's face, that he was listening
to quite a merry conversation; for that young man was smiling broadly,
and, though shells still pitched about them, though many a
shrapnel-burst high overhead plastered the ground with bullets, even
twitted his comrades. But Henri was stern and severe, and even looked
a trifle nervous: such was the difference in their characters. Yet
Jules knew, the Sergeant knew, all his comrades knew, that when it came
to the pinch, when it came to close fighting, there was no one more to
be trusted than the sterner of these two young fellows. Ducking now
and again, for somehow he could not help it, turning his eyes anxiously
every few minutes in the direction of the enemy, his fingers locking
themselves about his rifle and toying nervously with the buttons of his
tunic, Henri did indeed, at that moment, look ill at ease, to say the
least of it. And yet he too smiled as that shell burst, and, turning a
moment later, smiled once more as he pointed towards the enemy.
"Wait!" he told Jules and the Sergeant. "They give us shells here in
plenty, those Boches, they keep a torrent of them tumbling about our
ears both day and night; but wait, I say! For remember what we saw
from the forest, Jules! Those masses down below, the village of
Vacherauville and the road to it, the slopes of the Cote de Poivre and
of the Cote de Talou, are enfiladed by our guns across the river. Wait
then! The gunners have not opened yet, but when the word comes, such a
storm of shell will be poured upon the Germans that they too will learn
what shell-fire really means."
His words, indeed, proved to be almost prophetic, for though, for some
few minutes longer, the thinned garrison of the French trenches in
those parts waited and watched the enemy masses advance, almost
unobstructed, yet in a little while, and very soon after the
machine-gunners had got into action and rifles were speaking sharply
from every direction, there came sudden salvoes from across the river,
from Charny Ridge, from the hill of Mort Homme, and from that of
304--high ground, in fact, almost continuous with the Hill of Talou.
Taking a bird's-eye view of this particular position of the salient of
Verdun, one sees the River Meuse flowing from south to north, winding
in big bends through the hills which bound the valley, while, on those
same hills to west and east of the river, eminences project which form
the positions with which we are dealing. Running almost due east and
west, there are Hill 304 and the Mort Homme, with Charny Ridge closer
to the river and overlooking it. Then comes a flattened piece of land
which is marshy in the winter, and through which the river winds,
forming a big bend, and flowing in that part in an east-and-westerly
direction. At Vacherauville--lying close to the eastern bank of the
river--the next outcrop on the banks of the Meuse is the Cote de Talou,
and, still east of it, the Cote du Poivre, while a little farther east,
in the neighbourhood of Louvemont, the heights sweep round abruptly to
the south to Douaumont, and then to Vaux, towards which those outlying
parties of French who had held on so stubbornly to Herbebois, Ornes,
and Maucourt, and had retired towards Bezonvaux, were now being driven
by the enemy.
A glance at the sketch attached will show at once that the hills we
have mentioned to the west or left of the River Meuse, and those to the
right, form, as it were, a gateway through which the river passes,
entering the gateway at Vacherauville and emerging at Cumieres, where a
wood and a village nestle close to the river.
Then let us imagine troops marching along roads running parallel to the
river in a southerly direction, with the intention of forcing their way
through the gateway we have delineated, or rather of forcing their way
up the slopes of the Cote de Talou and on to the Cote du Poivre. The
roads which they must follow are clearly under command of the guns
posted on Hill 304, the Mort Homme, and Charny Ridge, which enfilade
the position.
[Illustration: MAP OF VERDUN SALIENT AFTER FOUR MONTHS OF CONTINUOUS
FIGHTING]
Such was the condition of affairs on this eventful morning, when,
having driven in the northern portion of the salient at Beaumont, and
shortened its baseline, the Germans once more threw their masses to the
assault in the desperate effort to drive in the wedge they had already
inserted, to stampede the French at that position, and, breaking
through their lines, to get behind the apex of the salient and entrap
the thousands of Frenchmen holding the trenches from Douaumont and Vaux
down to the southern portion of the salient.
"A brilliant stroke!" you will say. "The outcome of most able
generalship on the part of the Germans." But wait! Clever though the
enemy was, thoughtful though the German High Command had proved itself
to be, and tremendous though the preparations for this battle were,
there was yet something vital lacking in strategy. The Germans had
counted on their guns to smash a way through any sort of defence, and
though it is true that their plans had miscarried in one respect, and
they had discovered already, to their considerable cost, that guns
alone were not sufficient, yet guns and men together, they had learnt
during the initial stages of this battle, were enough first to pound
the enemy trenches, and then to drive out the defenders. Reckoning now
upon a similar course of events, and, having already pounded the French
position, they launched on this morning hosts of grey-coated infantry
at the Hills of Talou and Poivre, above which Henri and Jules were
fighting.
Posted on an eminence in the neighbourhood of Samogneux, the German
High Command, safe from the rifle-fire of the French, watched through
their glasses as those sinister lines of grey swept from the wood in
which they had been taking cover, and, marching steadily over the
ground, advanced upon their objective. And then they too heard that
sudden salvo of guns from across the river, and, turning their glasses,
surveyed the Mort Homme and Hill 304, positions to which they had given
but little consideration.
And see the result! 75's, machine-guns, howitzers, and rifles, all
concealed, all dug in or sheltered, and all amply provided with
ammunition, poured a storm of shot and shell and bullets upon those
advancing grey masses, sweeping them away, shattering the ranks,
treating them to a hail of steel beside which the fire of the defenders
of the higher slopes of the hill the Germans were attacking was but as
a shower compared with a tornado. German infantry melted away under
that terrible storm, masses of grey were levelled like corn at the feet
of the reaper, while even the forest, through which Henri and Jules had
penetrated on the previous day, was flattened or torn to shreds, was
converted into a species of smoking volcano. It was terrific! It was
a master-stroke on the part of the French Command, and a shattering
misfortune to the enemy. Indeed, it took the sting out of their attack
entirely; it sent those of their men who had survived this awful ordeal
racing back to cover; and it put a peremptory and sudden stop to the
cunning German effort to drive in that wedge they had already inserted
along the Meuse and so to shorten dangerously the base of the Verdun
salient.
"Fall in, men, fall in! We are going to move from the position,
handing it over to others of our comrades. Fall in there, men!"
"A move!" ejaculated Jules. "Then where to?"
Henri shrugged his shoulders.
"Anywhere--who cares?" he declared, with a species of desperation.
"There's fighting all round, so one place is neither worse nor better
than another. But there's one thing that is quite apparent; men are
hardly wanted here any longer, and a thin sprinkling of our soldiers
can hold these trenches quite as easily as hosts of them. For the guns
yonder, those guns on Mort Homme and 304, command the Cote de Talou and
the Cote du Poivre far better than could our rifles; so our commanders,
who no doubt want men in other places; are thinning out our lines and
are sending us to reinforce another portion of the salient."
Creeping along the battered trenches, crawling across masses of tumbled
earth, where communication-trenches had once existed, and, by slow
degrees, moving to a part where a fold in the ground gave some shelter,
though little enough, from the shells which the German guns still sent,
the depleted regiment to which Henri and Jules belonged was finally
massed in the hollow, and, having been fed there and rested for a
while, was marched to the east, towards the fort of Douaumont. That
night, indeed, after darkness had fallen, they once more repeated the
process of scrambling along shattered trenches, and when the morning of
the 25th dawned--a cold and bitter morning with snow-flakes filling the
air and whirling across the landscape--they found themselves looking
down the steep slopes of the plateau of Douaumont, towards the German
positions, and watching, spellbound almost, another demonstration of
the power and skill of the German gunners.
"Yes, my friends, they have been at that for hours past," a comrade
lying beside them in the trenches told them, as he pointed a finger at
the dull-grey outline of Douaumont fort, lying not so far from them.
"Believe me, one would have thought, from the number of shells they
have fired at the place, that there were thousands of Frenchmen
sheltering there whom they hoped to destroy completely. And so they
have dropped shells on the place, big shells--Mon Dieu! as big as I
am--middle-sized ones, and small ones--in fact, grandfathers, fathers,
and children--till the place has been pounded to atoms.
"And so you have come at last, you fellows," he went on when the three
had watched, for a while, more shells hurtling into the ruins of
Douaumont fort. "Well, you are wanted, wanted badly, for we've fought
our way back from Ornes and Bezonvaux, and there are precious few of us
left to do more fighting. You are fresh at the game--eh? my comrades."
"Fresh!" ejaculated Jules, looking quite indignant.
"Bien! But I hardly meant that," the _poilu_ told them. "In
appearance you are not fresh. No, certainly not; far from it. But
then, who of us can turn out nicely under such circumstances? Look at
me, I ask you; a mere mud-heap. And so I have been since the battle
commenced. And you?"
"And we," laughed Henri, "we are in a similar sort of position. But
what would you?" he declared, shrugging his shoulders in truly French
fashion. "For listen, mon ami! Like you, we have fought our way back
from Brabant, from the lines stretching along past Herbebois and Ornes.
We have been in the thick of the fighting, hiding in caves deep down in
the earth, in dug-outs which shook as the enemy shells burst above
them, crawling from shot-hole to shell-crater, living in earth battered
and shaken all day and all night, and thankful to get an hour's sleep
at any time, and a bite and a drink to keep us going. 'Fresh,' did you
say? Certainly, mon ami, we are fresh, if by fresh you mean we are
willing and ready for more fighting."
"Bravo!"
The _poilu_, his mouth wide open in a huge grin, gripped Henri's hand
and shook it heartily.
"Mais! Mon Dieu! That is your sort! That is our sort! That is the
French sort!" he cried loudly. "It's that kind of spirit which will
carry us on, and which will help us to beat these fellows. Then I was
right, you are 'fresh' men who have come to reinforce us, and badly do
we need your assistance."
Pulling their coats about them, turning up their collars so as to keep
out the whirling flakes of snow, beating their arms about their bodies
and stumbling up and down the trenches, the troops watching on the
heights above Douaumont, dodging the German shells still flung at them,
waited as the 25th February grew gradually older, and the light grew
stronger. Something in the air seemed to tell them that this was to be
a sterner day than any that had preceded it, and yet there was that
about the artillery-fire of the enemy which rather contradicted that
feeling. For while everything up to the 24th of the month had gone in
the favour of Germany, and while she had gained enormous
successes--thanks to her long-continued and secretly-made
preparations--yet now the elements themselves turned against her--and
in all conscience she had had difficulties enough before, considering
the terrific resistance shown by those French heroes. It was snowing,
banks of snow-clouds filled the heavens, while whirling flakes made
artillery-fire a matter of extreme difficulty. True, big guns, long
since established on concrete foundations and quite immobile, could
still register by the map as accurately as ever, and still poured
shells of large dimensions on Fort Douaumont and on other sectors; but
the smaller guns, mere babes compared with those 17-inch howitzers, yet
guns flinging missiles which pounded the French trenches, could now
only fire aimlessly, so that the torrent of shells was reduced and
became a mere nothing to that formerly experienced.
"They will not attack," a _poilu_ gave it as his decision, and very
decidedly. "These Boches never attack unless they have first cut up
the ground and smashed our trenches; therefore I vote for a brazier
here, something to cook, and a pipe of good tobacco."
"And perhaps a game of manne, too," laughed another. "Well, a little
rest, after what we have gone through, will do us no harm, and will fit
us all the more for what is to follow. Who cares! To-day, to-morrow,
or even later, we shall fight. If not to-day, well, let us make the
most of it."
Cheery groups collected in the trenches all along the line, men who
hardly took the trouble to peer out over the parapets and watch for the
coming of the enemy. It looked, indeed, as if this 25th February was
to be a day of rest--one sorely needed by our allies. And then, of a
sudden, an alarm spread along the trenches; men sprang to their arms
and gripped their rifles, while machine-gunners dived into cunning
approaches to hidden pieces out in the open, and, scuttling along,
manned those instruments which were to send death into the ranks of the
Kaiser.
For the enemy were not to be denied, were not to be put off even though
the elements were against them. Realizing now that guns alone were
insufficient, that losses must be sustained if they desired to capture
Verdun and its salient, they had hardened their hearts, and, determined
to risk all in this venture (for part of their success, if they
captured Verdun, would consist in the rapidity of such capture), now
launched the Brandenburg Corps against the Douaumont position,
convinced that if only they could capture what remained of the
shattered fort, and set foot on this upland plateau, they would command
the French positions along the heights of the Meuse, would command,
indeed, those guns, posted on Mort Homme and Hill 304, which had
assailed them so severely on the previous day, and would thereby easily
smash up further French resistance and gain their objective.
"Stand to your arms! Watch the ravines! For we have news that the
enemy are advancing up them. Hold your ground at all cost, no matter
what your losses, for these are the orders."
Without haste, without excitement, with that grim, steady courage which
had stood the French _poilu_ in such good stead already, the men
gripped their rifles and made ready for another German onslaught.
"Hold on, whatever the cost!" one man repeated to another.
"Till death, if need be," came the answer.