Charge of the Gallant Bretons
Let us for the moment leave Henri and Jules in the centre of the ruins
of Fort Douaumont, and return for a few brief seconds to that gallant
yet dangerously small force of Frenchmen, who, until this moment, had
been fighting to check the advance of the Germans about the town of
Verdun.
Five days of the most terrific fighting had passed. Five days of
incessant bombardment from massed German guns, which had literally
blown the defenders out of their trenches. And during those few days,
when the French lines to the north of the salient and to the east of
the River Meuse were driven in till they rested near Vacherauville, on
the Meuse, and ran from thence to Thiaumont and Douaumont Fort and
Vaux, and so back to the Meuse again, French efforts had not been
confined alone to local fighting.
On the very first day, indeed, what had been strongly suspected before
became abundantly apparent, and it was clear that a German attack of
unprecedented force and violence on the salient of Verdun was to be
expected. The weight of artillery alone which for all those hours had
been pouring a torrent of shells on the heights of the Meuse was
sufficient to indicate the nature of the German preparations. A
thousand guns, directing their missiles on one sector of the long line
of trenches wriggling across the north-eastern provinces of France, was
no unusual feature of this extraordinary and gigantic warfare, but here
there were not one thousand guns alone but many more, many hundreds
more, probably even in excess of two thousand; while, moreover, the
troops of the Kaiser, debouching from the woods, marching up those
ravines giving access to the plateau of Douaumont, and massing behind
evergreen firs farther away, as discerned by the air-pilots of our
ally, disclosed the fact that those massed guns were to be supported by
an equally enormous concentration of troops--a concentration which
could have been effected only for one purpose. In short, and in fact,
it was clear that this was to be no ordinary attack on the salient of
Verdun, but a gigantic offensive--one which would demand a numerous
defending force and guns in proportion.
But the movement of troops from one area of the field to another is a
comparatively slow process at the best of times, for it must be
remembered that, behind the fighting-lines of such an army as opposed
the Germans, rails are always more or less congested, while an enormous
mass of vehicles ply the roads, bringing up ammunition and food, and
hundreds of other articles necessary for the fighters. Time, then, was
required in which to gather French forces, and time in which to rush
them over the rails, and by motor-transport along the roads, to the
neighbourhood of Verdun, and then to push them up to the fighting-line.
Those gallant fellows who had faced the first rush of the Germans, who
had stood under a tornado of shells, and who had held on to their
positions so desperately, were fighting all the while, not so much to
hold the particular positions in which they were, as to gain time, to
resist as long as possible, to thwart the enemy in his intentions, to
delay his advance, and to keep him away from the main line of defence
till such time as reinforcements could reach them. Very gallantly had
the thin line of heroes carried out their purpose, holding on, often
enough, till they were killed to the last man. They had made the
Kaiser's troops pay dearly for every inch of ground; and, whereas the
German High Command had confidently expected to reach Verdun within a
day or two, five days had passed, and yet, in spite of overwhelming
gun-fire and masses of troops, the French had only just retired to
their main defensive position.
Douaumont stood on that line. Douaumont, which the Kaiser had told his
people was the corner-stone of the salient which he hoped to capture;
and Douaumont, as we know, had fallen already to the Brandenburgers.
Yet behind Douaumont, behind the Cote du Poivre and the Cote de Talou,
there existed yet miles of upland plateau before the city of Verdun
could be reached--miles which the Germans must cross before they could
hope to complete its capture.
We have seen how, attempting to follow up their drive to the north, the
French guns on Mort Homme and Hill 304 had outflanked the Germans, and
had driven them from the Cote de Talou and the Cote du Poivre. We have
followed their movements later, when, abandoning the drive in a
southerly direction over the slopes of the Cote du Poivre, the German
war lords caused their armies to swerve to the east to face the fort of
Douaumont and to march towards it. Let us anticipate their movements
by a little, and say that, having captured the fort--a mere empty and
cracked vessel--they found themselves still faced by the French, who
had retired only a short distance beyond it; and who, reinforced that
very night by the 20th Corps--as dashing a corps as ever
existed--counter-attacked with furious energy, and advanced their lines
till they surrounded the captured fort on three sides, and held,
indeed, a portion of the interior. There, in that position, they dug
themselves in firmly, and though the Germans continued to attack that
portion of the line with a fury never before exceeded, and with utter
disregard of the losses they suffered, not for weeks did they so much
as dent it. Like the Cote de Talou, and the approaches from the north,
Douaumont and the neighbouring trenches defied them; and, tiring, as it
were, of the venture in that direction, yet determined as ever to
capture Verdun and the salient, they once more changed their line of
attack. Crossing the Meuse, they flung their details against the Mort
Homme and Hill 304, hoping to capture those positions and sweep away
the guns which enfiladed the Cote du Poivre. The removal of these
would allow them to continue that advance from the north which
threatened to shorten the base of the salient and to capture its
defenders.
If we were to venture to describe every attack made by the Germans,
every gallant defence of the French _poilus_, and the course in detail
of the terrific conflict which raged--and, indeed, still rages as we
write--round the salient of Verdun, we should require a multiplicity of
chapters. For, indeed, foiled at the outset by the failure of their
giant attack to do more than drive the French on to their main
positions, in spite of the huge advantage of a surprise effected on the
21st February, and forced, as it were, by public opinion--the opinion
of Germans at home, of their Austrian allies, and of every neutral
country in the world--the Kaiser's war lords kept desperately at the
task of subduing the salient. Not one, but dozens of assaults were
made either upon the Mort Homme and Hill 304 positions, or upon the
plateau of Douaumont, extending at times to the farm of Thiaumont, and
later, after weeks and weeks of conflict, to the fort of Vaux and the
trenches south of it. The most gigantic attack on any one position
that has ever been recorded in the history of the world was accompanied
by other facts hitherto never seen in warfare.
The hosts of German troops concentrated on the face of the salient
approached at times three-quarters of a million, and needed constant
replenishment; for French 75's, machine-gun and rifle-fire bit deep
into the ranks, and soldiers--hundreds of them, nay, thousands--fell,
till the slopes leading to Mort Homme and to the gentle wooded heights
of the Meuse became a mere shambles. Four months of fighting, indeed,
found General Joffre and his brave troops still holding the line, still
selling inches of the hills when the pressure became too great or the
enemy gun-fire too fierce to be withstood--selling those inches at a
price which can only be termed grisly and exorbitant--and now and again
counter-attacking, when pressure from the enemy had forced them to
yield ground of vital value.
Yes, after four months of terrific fighting, Verdun, that sleepy old
town down by the River Meuse, and the lines of trenches surrounding it
which formed that historic salient of which we have written, were still
in the hands of the French, still denied the Germans; while the losses
inflicted upon the latter, the increasing pressure of the British, now
in crowded ranks along the Western Front--so crowded, indeed, that
already a fourth army had taken over lines from the French, thus
yielding reserves for further fighting at Verdun--that increasing
pressure and a sudden brilliantly successful offensive on the part of
the Russians in Galicia were putting the Kaiser and his war lords in a
sad predicament. They, too, needed reserves: reserves to feed those
horrible gaps at Verdun; reserves to march against the British Front;
reserves to rail to Russia, there, if it were possible, to stem the
tide of Muscovite troops pouring through the broken Austrian lines on
their way to Vienna and Berlin.
Let us leave the combatants there to return to Jules and Henri.
Pandemonium reigned in that huge battered hall of the fort of Douaumont
when the bomb which Henry had thrown had done its work in the midst of
the Germans. The fire hitherto burning so cheerfully in the centre of
the darkened hall was scattered in every quarter, leaving glowing
embers in odd corners and crannies. Had there been more light upon the
surroundings, many of the men, seated but a moment or so before, would
have been seen stretched on the ground, killed by the explosion. That
big officer, who, still chuckling, had looked on at the preparations
for Jules's execution, might have been seen leaning against the outer
wall of the fort, his tunic torn and burned, a red pool collecting on
the flags beside him, his jaw dropped, his eyes wide open, insensible
and dying. And of Max, that little snappy officer, not a sign would
have been found. For, like every surviving man who had stood in the
hall, he had bolted. A hand gripped Jules suddenly, as he lay gasping
against the wall.
"Who's that?" he demanded breathlessly. "Hands off, or I'll choke
you," and, shaken though he was by the explosion, he prepared to throw
himself upon the individual who had accosted him.
"Jules, is that you, Jules?" came a feeble voice, and almost at the
same moment a heavy form flopped down beside him and straightway rolled
across him.
It was Henri, as unconscious at that instant as was the big German,
chuckling but a minute earlier.
"Henri!" Jules shouted; "Henri, what's happened? Are you killed like
the rest of them?"
Evidently the gallant Henri was nothing of the sort, for, opening his
eyes and staring out into the darkness, he growled a denial.
"Dead? Not much! but soon shall be if we stay here long enough for
those fellows to bring lights," he grumbled. "If they bring lights
they'll get us, and then----"
"You needn't mention the rest of the details. Pull yourself together!"
Jules told him. "Here, wait a moment!"
Freeing himself from the dead weight of his chum, he dashed across the
hall, feeling giddy and shaken by the explosion, and, scrambling on
hands and knees amongst the bodies lying around the spot where the fire
had been burning, he soon secured a water-bottle, and, hastening back,
first dashed some of the contents into Henri's face, and then lifted
the metal cup to his lips and let him drain it.
"Wanted that--eh?" he asked, having himself gulped down a draught.
"Let's have another. Now, here we are! My word, what a bust-up! How
did it happen? I saw you over there, just outside the hall, and
wondered whether you'd do anything. You did--eh? Was that your bomb?
Tell me about it."
Henri scoffed at him--scoffed angrily.
"Let's take a seat in the very centre, search for food, and sit down to
a leisurely dinner," he said, his voice choked with satire. "Better
still, let's ring a bell, if there's one, and ask that Max individual
to come in and join us; he'd enjoy it, wouldn't he?"
"The demon! He'd have shot me in another minute. But still, here we
are!"
"And the sooner we get out of it the better. That water's made me feel
far better, and I can stand now, I believe. Yes, giddy a bit, but I
can still stick to my pins, and that's something. What do we do--eh?
Here, pull off the uniforms of a couple of these fellows, they'll not
miss them, and let's change clothes as quickly as we can. Don't
forget, too, that once we've changed we are Germans--Brandenburgers,
6th Brigade fellows, who've attacked the fort and helped to capture it.
No more French after we've got into our disguises."
The suggestion came glibly enough, and sounded extremely simple; yet
when the two--shaken after that terrific fight on the stairway, and
once again by the explosion which Henri had manoeuvred--came to attempt
the task they found it almost beyond them, for your German, as a
general rule, is of no mean stature. Even in days when rations may be
reduced owing to the British blockade, which holds up supplies destined
for the German Empire, German recruits are still plump and fat, and
Brandenburgers not less so than their fellows. Thus the task of
turning dead men over and filching their garments, hard enough in any
case, was made more difficult in the darkness, particularly so for
young fellows such as Jules and Henri, who were not stoutly built like
the Germans.
"Slip on any sort of an old coat and helmet at first," Henri advised,
"then if that Max comes back we can push our way in amongst the bodies
of the fallen, and he'll be none the wiser. Later, when we have the
opportunity, we can make a more leisurely search, and perhaps we shall
be lucky in finding garments that fit us."
It was a fortunate thing, indeed, that they decided on such a plan.
For as they went about the hall, stooping over the bodies of the
fallen, endeavouring to select and discover clothes likely to suit
their own stature, a loud order was heard from behind the battered end
of the hall, and presently some twenty men inarched in, the short and
snappy officer leading them.
"Pull out the fellows who are still alive, or not too seriously
injured," he commanded. "Leave the dead till later on. Now hurry!"
Parties of stretcher-bearers followed the soldiers, and, starting at
once, began to bend over the fallen forms lying about the hall, turning
men over, dragging the dead aside, and lifting those who were wounded
out of the mass. Coming to a distant corner, not so far indeed from
the exit leading to the stairway which Jules and Henri had defended, a
party of bearers discovered a pack of Germans lying in all directions,
their limbs stretched in the most fantastic postures, some on their
sides, their heads resting on an arm as if they were sleeping; others
on their faces, their arms doubled up beneath them; and others, again,
on their backs, stiff and stark already.
"Dead!" said the commander of the party, a junior non-commissioned
officer. "On one side with him!"
"Dead!" repeated one of the bearers, leaning over another figure.
"Here, he's not a big man, I can manage him single-handed."
"As dead as any," cried a third, and seemed quite jovial about it.
"Here we are! He's no weight at all--quite a puny fellow for a
Brandenburger."
They dragged perhaps half a dozen bodies away from the corner to the
far wall, and laid them in a row beside others already collected; then,
gathering up the wounded and carrying them outside, they returned
again, completing their task after some few minutes.
"Light up!" Max, that short and snappy German officer, commanded. "Get
a fire going, and let us resume the meal. One moment though! Have any
of you seen a sign of those Frenchmen--the two whom we were about to
shoot?"
"One there, sir," came the answer, while a bearer holding a torch lit
up that part of the hall by the wall against which Jules and his
fellow-prisoner had been stationed. "He's dead--a piece of masonry,
dislodged by the explosion, fell on him."
Max seized the torch from the man, and, striding forward, bent over the
figure of the _poilu_, and, turning the body with his foot--for this
German was an individual possessed of little feeling, indeed a
heartless wretch, a callous fellow--he placed the torch nearer, and
stared at the face of the Frenchman.
"Burr! Not my man! And no one has seen the other?"
"No one!"
"Then we will wait till morning and search the place. Now, let the men
turn to at their meal. Sergeant, wake me in an hour's time, when I
will go round and inspect the sentries."
Gradually the fire in the centre of the hall died down, while men
nodded as they sat on blocks of fallen masonry, or on forms which had
been dragged into the hall. Darkness slowly penetrated to every corner
of the place and almost hid the Germans. Then a figure stirred, one of
the dead sat up slowly and nudged another of the dead beside him. One
of the nodding figures seated upon a form on the far side of the fire
yawned, stretching his arms widely, kicked the ashes from the dying
embers with a heavy boot, and looked about him. Then his hair rose on
his head, while his eyes protruded in the most horrible manner.
Perspiration dropped from his forehead, his hands shook, and his limbs
trembled, as he gaped at those two dead figures sitting up and
regarding him closely.
"Dead men sit up and look at me! Dead men!" he spluttered, and slowly
rose to his feet.
There was a frozen look on the wretch's face now, and he kept his eyes
on those two figures as if he had no power to turn them away, as if,
like a serpent, they fascinated him. Then of a sudden he gave vent to
a loud scream and dashed from the hall, upsetting his comrades as he
did so.
"Down! Dead men again! Lower! What a business!" groaned Jules as he
flopped himself on to the flags once more, his face turned towards
Henri.
"S--s--sh! Shut up! They are all on their feet again. Confound that
fellow! It was bad luck his suddenly looking up and finding us sitting
here staring at him. We've got to move," whispered Henri.
"Soon too," Jules told him, "precious soon. My, isn't that Max in a
rage, and aren't the lot of them bothered!"
Yet not so bothered that the noise which followed that piercing scream
did not subside quickly. After all, screams were not unusual in those
days of strenuous combat, when Germans were driven to the assault, time
and again, and death and destruction were so near them--that terrible
shell-fire which smote them from the missiles of the French 75's, the
raking hail of bullets from machine-guns, the detonation of exploding
missiles, the roar, the crash, the smoke, the ever-present danger. All
had told on the nerves, not of one man here and there, but on hundreds
of the Kaiser's soldiers. Men went mad in those days of attack on
Douaumont, just as they went mad in the onslaught at Ypres in October,
1914; just, indeed, as they had lost their reason during other terrible
periods. Yes, your German war lord is no sympathetic commander.
Losses, frightful losses, do not frighten or trouble him so long as he
is reasonably sure of obtaining his objective.
And German losses had been frightful enough in all conscience since the
war started. Those losses were telling upon the German ranks now--had
been telling for a considerable period--and were likely in the months
coming, towards the end of 1916, to tell so severely, that it might be
beyond the power of the Central Empires to hold their lines any longer.
Yes, men went mad often enough, and no doubt the man in question was
another such unfortunate individual.
"Confound him!" growled Max. "Why didn't he get shot as we came to the
fort, or in the attack on that stairway? What's he want to disturb our
rest for when we want every minute of rest we can get? for soon those
Frenchmen will be returning. Turn in again, you men. We'll search for
that rascal in the morning."
But would they? For listen: as the night grew older, as darkness
became denser above the shattered fort of Douaumont, and the fire died
down so that the Brandenburgers holding that central hall were no
longer visible, figures began to collect behind the French
trenches--the active, eager figures of gallant Bretons of the 20th
Corps, a crack corps, to whom the task had been assigned of recapturing
the fortress. A gun opened far behind, a rocket soared, and then a
wave of figures poured over the parapet of the trenches and ten
thousand shouting, furious Frenchmen streamed down upon the debris of
Douaumont--that "corner-stone" of the defences of the salient, of the
capture of which the Kaiser had boasted so loudly.
"What's that? French shouts! French bugles! A counter-attack! Get
up," Henri whispered in Jules's ear. "We've got to take our chance to
join them'."