fought for strenuously and eventually taken long before the fort
itself. I tried to find some sign of its existence; its site is
certainly somewhere in the centre of Plate 101, but such remains as may
exist are entirely blotted out by the growth of the rank herbage which
fills the whole valley from side to side.
The fort of Douaumont (Plate 102) was that of which the name was most
familiar in this country, owing to its partial capture in the early
attack and also to the absurd boasting of the Emperor, already alluded
to, in connection with it. It lies to the north-west of Vaux, upon
a parallel ridge. The fort was taken on the 25th of February, the
fifth day of the great attack in which the French troops had been
fighting continuously against "five times their strength in men and
ten times their strength in guns." The Kaiser was at Ornes, waiting
for its fall; men's lives were to form no hindrance to the attack;
the Brandenburgers[41] succeeded in getting into it, and a few of
them held on in the ruins, with the French on both sides of them. But
Pétain had arrived, and the Germans were beaten, although at that time
neither side knew it, and although thousands of lives had still to be
sacrificed before the end arrived.
[41] They are said to have worn French Zouave uniforms.
In the following May the French retook the fort, but were driven
out after two days by an overwhelming attack. In October, 1916, it
passed finally to the French under General Mangin, after a heavy
bombardment. The troops for this attack had been trained on a complete
model, constructed behind the lines, of the ground and of the fort, to
familiarise them exactly with the position to be dealt with.
The earlier Verdun attacks were made upon the east side of the river,
but after these were fought to a standstill fighting shifted to the
western side, where it eventually reached an even greater intensity
than before. The Mort Homme Ridge (Plate 103), about eight miles
north-west of Verdun, lies about two miles in front of the original
German positions of the 21st of February, and its possession was
essential to the Germans if they were to be any more successful in
reaching Verdun from the north-west than they had been from the
north-east. Its highest point is about 300 feet above the city. The
artillery attack commenced on the 2nd of March, and the advance four
days later, but the progress made was very slow, and although the
slaughter was absolutely terrific, when the fighting died down on the
9th of April--forty-eight days after it had started--the Mort Homme was
still untaken. Onwards from this date the fighting at Verdun was--at
least, in comparison with what had gone before--only desultory. In May
the highest point ("304") on the ridge had to be abandoned, and by the
21st of May the Germans had gained the north-east slopes of the Mort
Homme. But the battle as a whole had been lost long before this, and no
local gains could change its result. Plate 103 shows the monument put
up by the French on the southern slope of the Mort Homme to which they
had been driven, a little below point 295. It is very difficult in a
photograph taken from ground-level to give any idea of the surface of
shell-holed ground, but something of it can be seen in this view and
something also in Plate 104, which shows the last French front-line
positions near the top of the southern slope of the ridge, where the
final attack occurred on the 28th of May, 1916. But the French front
still remained unbroken; they had never even been pushed back to their
main positions of defence. The great counter-attack on the left of the
Meuse came in August, 1917, when the Mort Homme and Cumières Wood were
retaken on the first day, and the whole original front restored in a
week.
* * * * *
The Argonne Forest, in which the Americans had such stiff fighting
in pushing back the Germans in 1918, lies about twenty miles west of
Verdun and covers an area of some 150 square miles up to the line
where the Aire River cuts across it on its way to the Aisne. Its huge
dimensions, and the fact that only a portion of it was the scene
of actual fighting for any considerable time, have saved it from
undergoing the total destruction of so many of the smaller woods.
Plate 105 shows some of the southern portion between St. Menehould and
Clermont, which is practically uninjured, although the village of Les
Islettes (faintly seen in the valley, which here separates the forest
into two sections) is in ruins. Along the road from St. Menehould to
Verdun through the forest (from which the view was taken) there were in
1919 long lines of fruit-trees quite uninjured, an unusually cheerful
sight. In September, 1914, after the first battle of the Marne, the
Germans in their retreat held the northern part of the forest,
practically on the cross-road from Varennes to Vienne-le-Château. From
that time until the end of 1915 there was continuous and very severe
fighting in the section of the forest between that road and the St.
Menehould road. Fighting in the depths of the forest among thick trees,
on wet and slippery ground traversed by endless ravines, was incessant
by day and night, often hand to hand, and below ground as well as on
the surface. The French did not succeed in dislodging the enemy, but
they were successful in defeating two powerful attacks by the Crown
Prince, in June and July, 1915, directed at the St. Menehould-Verdun
road. The enemy got within five or six miles of Les Islettes, and the
little town was destroyed, but they never got to the road, and were
promptly driven back to their old lines. The town of Clermont, farther
east on this road, had been sacked and then burnt by the Germans in
their retreat in 1914.
Varennes (Plate 106) is on the eastern edge of the forest, where it
is crossed by the River Aire, which up to that point had been flowing
northwards east of the Argonne, as the Aisne does on the west. It was
the headquarters of the Crown Prince's army in 1915, and his attacks in
that year started from it. It is only a few miles west of Avocourt and
Malancourt, from which started the March attack on the Mort Homme Ridge
from the west in 1916.
After the end of 1915 the Argonne quieted down, but trench fighting
and mining was always going on until the commencement of the
Franco-American offensive on the 26th of September, 1918, following
the American success at St. Mihiel. Among other forms of defence the
Germans here used steel-wire net-screens, 3 metres high, fixed to the
tree-trunks. The Americans had very hard work in getting through the
forest--how severe may be judged from the fact that there are over
25,000 graves in the great American cemetery near Montfaucon; but
eventually the Germans were compelled to retreat, and on the 9th of
October the French from the west and the Americans from the east met at
Grandpré, at the northern extremity of the forest.
[Illustration: _PLATE CI._
VAUX VILLAGE.
_The village lies in a hollow below the fort; its site is somewhere
close to the place from which the photograph was taken. But all
signs of the buildings--which were reduced to fragments early in the
siege--have absolutely disappeared._]
[Illustration: _PLATE CII._
DOUAUMONT FORT.
_The fort of Douaumont was entered, but not held, very early in the
Verdun battle, and the Kaiser telegraphed to Berlin the capture of
the "key to Verdun." But the lock would not open, Verdun was not
taken, and the Kaiser left it to prophesy elsewhere with equal want of
success._]
[Illustration: _PLATE CIII._
THE MORT HOMME.
_The photograph gives only a faint idea of the shell-marked ridge
whose name became so familiar to us in the Verdun campaign. Eventually
a considerable part of it was taken, but the gain was useless--Verdun
was as far off as ever._]
[Illustration: _PLATE CIV._
THE MORT HOMME.
_The French front lines on the southern slope of the Mort Homme Ridge.
From these ridges the view in all directions seems to cover nothing
but shell-pocked wastes, the grave of 400,000 Frenchmen and probably
of very many more Germans._]
[Illustration: _PLATE CV._
THE ARGONNE FOREST.
_This southern part of the forest, on the road from St. Menehould to
Verdun, has not been fought over, so that the trees are still in their
natural condition. In the central valley, seen over the trees, lies
Les Islettes in ruins. It was the farthest point of one of the Crown
Prince's fruitless attempts to get south in 1915._]
[Illustration: _PLATE CVI._
VARENNES.
_Vavenues, on the margin of the Argonne Forest, and now in ruins, was
the Crown Prince's headquarters during a considerable period, when
there was every day fierce fighting with the French, of which at the
time we heard very little in this country._]
Varennes itself (the little town where Louis XVI. was arrested in
1791 on his attempted flight from France) is very nearly destroyed.
The Americans took it on the first day of their advance, when it was
defended by a division of Prussian Guards, and on the next day they
captured Montfaucon, the headquarters of the Crown Prince for his
Verdun attack. The ground here is high, and the Germans had built
themselves an excellent O.P. from the materials of the church. Here
also, according to General Maurice, the Crown Prince had directed
operations from a "palatial dugout."
Traces of the American occupation of this district were still visible
months afterwards in the shape of road notices, "Do your bit! Obey the
traffic regulations!" and it was in the familiar accent of a young
American officer that we received instructions as to getting our car
through the narrow streets of Verdun.
XIII--THE MARNE TO MONS
(PLATES 107 TO 124.)
On a bright and quiet Sunday morning, the 23rd of August, 1914,
General Smith-Dorrien's men were aligned along the Mons-Condé Canal
(Plate 107), west of the town, on the northern edge of a thickly
populated industrial district, with the great spoil heaps of the mines
(Plate 108) like a range of miniature extinct volcanoes lying behind
them. They had only just arrived from home, and with the failure of
"Intelligence," of which they knew nothing, they were entirely ignorant
of the strength and movements of their opponents. The Sabbatic quietude
was broken with startling suddenness soon after noon, and very shortly
the unexpected action became general along the whole front. The Germans
outnumbered us by two to one both in guns and men; they were fresh from
their successful outrages in overrunning Belgium, and they were full of
contempt for the British "mercenaries." Their advance was excellently
well covered by the terrain until they were within fairly short range,
and they advanced wave on wave in close formation. They were decimated
again and again by our rifle-fire, but again and again advanced in
spite of it. Our men were sick of the slaughter, and their fire was
so deadly that the German writers have afterwards attributed it to
the enormous number of machine-guns which we were using, although we
were in fact all too short, at that time, of this particular arm. The
defence held out for six hours in face of the overwhelming odds, but
at night we were compelled to retire, Mons itself having been entered
by the enemy. So commenced the Mons retreat, so far as our men were
concerned. The French retreat, unfortunately, their men being equally
outnumbered, had commenced twelve hours before. On the next two days
the retreat continued, Smith-Dorrien's army on the west of the Mormal
Forest towards Le Cateau, and Haig's on the east of the forest towards
Landrecies. The great Mormal Forest itself (some ten miles long and
from three to five miles wide) has been very much thinned during the
war by the Germans for the sake of its timber (Plate 109). Even now,
although traversed by many woodland roads, it would be an impossible
undertaking to take through it a great army in retreat, and this made
the separation of the two armies unavoidable. On the 25th of August
Haig's men had reached the old fortified town of Landrecies, on the
Sambre. Fifty years or so before this, R. L. Stevenson--boating down
the river on his "Inland Voyage"--had passed through the old-world
fortifications, and wrote of the town, singularly enough:
"It was just the place to hear the round going by at night in the
darkness, with the solid troop of men marching, and the startling
reverberation of the drum. It reminded you that even this place was
a point in the great warfaring system of Europe, and might on some
future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and make
itself a name among strong towns."[42]
[42] "Inland Voyage," p. 69.
Hardly a "strong town" in these days, but certainly it made itself a
name both at the beginning and the end of the war. At 10 o'clock on the
night of the 25th of August an alarm was given; the Germans had made
their way through wood roads, and tried to rush us in the camouflage
of French uniforms and French words of command. Happily the 4th Guards
Brigade was on the spot, although only just arrived, and received
the enemy in unexpected fashion, so that by midnight the attack had
collapsed, and a little more much-needed breathing-time was gained. A
Landrecien told us, in 1919, how he had seen the Germans coming down
"in their thousands," and how the Guards had stood up to them at the
railway and road corner at which my photograph (Plate 110) was taken.
In 1918 the tables were turned, and it was the German Guards who were
trying to hold up our infantry, who captured the town on the 10th of
October, after crossing the Sambre on rafts. It is of this attack that
the story[43] is told of three _tractor_ tanks, which made a bluff at a
moment when the infantry were held up, and of which two got through and
successfully made a way for the rifles.
[43] Major Williams Ellis, "The Tank Corps," p. 268.
South-west of the forest lies Le Cateau (Plate 111), at one end of the
straight fifteen-mile road to Cambrai, south of which lie the villages
of Caudry, Esnes, Ligny, and many others whose names we heard first
in August, 1914, and again four years later. It was here that General
Smith-Dorrien made the great stand of the 26th of August, which has
been the subject of so much discussion, but which certainly gave the
opportunity for most gallant fighting, both of infantry and artillery,
while it held back--and, better still, greatly exhausted--the enemy.
By the afternoon the position became untenable, and then followed the
all-night march of the tired men towards St. Quentin. Le Cateau itself
appears to be very little damaged.
On the "Roman road," running south from Le Cateau to the Cambrai-St.
Quentin road, the villages are now much damaged, probably rather in
1918 than in 1914, and notices were still standing--"Do not halt on
this road"--at places towards the south. Another souvenir of 1918 was
a notice near Maurois, "Pip Squeaks 6.30 to-night!" A less agreeable
reminiscence was a sugar factory, thoroughly gutted by the Germans in
characteristic fashion, beside the road near Estrées, a village itself
in ruins. Along this road, as in many places on the Somme, the route,
now destitute of trees, is marked by short wooden posts on each side
placed at short distances apart, their object being, of course, to keep
lorries on the track in the dark, or at least to give them notice if
they strayed from it. Here and there many of the posts on one side of
the road seemed to be sloping in one direction, and those on the other
side in the opposite direction. The obvious inference was that the
slope of the posts was due to the frequency with which the lorries had
run into them!
The Le Cateau battlefield was so quickly crossed both in 1914 and 1918
that many of its villages, some of which I had the opportunity of
visiting while fighting was going on only a few miles farther north,
are very little damaged, and the land surface generally is almost
uninjured in comparison with its condition both farther north and
farther south.
The 1st of September was the anniversary of Sedan, and the Germans had
apparently hoped to celebrate the day in Paris. But on or about that
day, perhaps the day before, Von Kluck had made the great turn to the
south-east, which (whatever its original motive) eventually allowed the
French to get on his flank across the Ourcq, and paved the way for the
great victory on the Marne.
The Germans had progressed so far as to cross the Marne by the 4th of
September, and had reached their farthest south position on the Petit
Morin, which joins the Marne at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. On the next day
Joffre gave his orders for the commencement of the advance on the 6th,
which at one blow turned the much-vaunted advance into a retreat, and
postponed for ever the triumphal march of the Emperor through the Arc
de Triomphe which was found to have been so elaborately arranged for.
The bridge over the Marne at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre--close to which
the photograph in Plate 112 was taken--was blown up, and we failed to
cross the river until two days later, after which came the great and
complex battle which ended with the Germans back to the Aisne. But they
still succeeded in holding, and were still to hold for four more years,
all the hilly country between Rheims and Verdun, as well as Laon, St.
Quentin, Péronne, and Cambrai, and also, for much of that time, the
whole Somme region.
And so the war went on, until in May of 1918 Ludendorff played his last
shot and swept down across the Aisne and the Vesle and the Tardenois
country to the Marne once more,[44] and finally, in the _Friedensturm_
(for the opening of which the Emperor came down specially on the
15th of July), crossed the river between Château Thierry (which is
badly damaged), Dormans (Plate 113), and Montvoisin, and for a few
days held a precarious and unhappy[45] footing on the south bank, his
pontoon bridges being exposed to continual enfilade firing, and his
communications only kept up very imperfectly in consequence. The ruin
of the villages along the river here shows how hard the shelling had
been at this time.
[44] See p. 66.
[45] An intercepted pigeon message from a German officer is said to
have described the situation south of the river as "worse than hell."
At length came the day when Foch could let his armies off the leash.
No one can forget the thrill of that 18th of July, when the news came
through in the early afternoon in the clubs and the newspapers that the
advance for which we had hoped so long--and which we somehow knew with
a singular certainty that Foch would make in his own time--had actually
commenced. Some of us, whether more sanguine or more wise than others
I cannot say, seemed to understand at once that the end had really
begun, and the horrible black clouds of four years were broken up as
suddenly and finally as when the sun bursts out after a thunderstorm,
and the storm which was overhead a moment before is suddenly seen to
be rolling away to the horizon. And when the late news at night and
the early news the next morning allowed us to see something of Foch's
intention, and how well things were progressing, we might well have
ordered "joybells" if it had not been for our painful recollection of
too early rejoicing over the Cambrai battle of 1917. But the joybells
were within everyone, all the same. No doubt there is justification
for the special celebration every year of Armistice Day. But to many
of us the real day of relief, the day when the sun once more broke out
on France and Britain and all the Allied lands, was the day on which
Mangin astonished the Germans by suddenly walking through the western
boundary of the salient which they had captured with so much effort and
so much boastfulness.
The scheme of the _Friedensturm_ was to encircle Rheims by simultaneous
advances east and west of the impassable Montagne de Reims, the
advances to meet at Epernay (Plate 114), and thereafter the valley of
the Marne to provide the long-deferred route to Paris. On the east
the advance was held up on the Vesle from the very start by General
Gouraud's skilful "false front" tactics. Prunay was taken and retaken,
and attempts made to secure a bridge-head at Sillery (Plate 115), six
miles from the city, and due south of the Nogent de l'Abesse fort,
while slight gains were made farther east; but practically no progress
at all was effected.
South of Rheims and away to the south and east from Epernay towards
Bar-le-Duc, the war-struck ground ceases. Pleasant avenues and
undamaged villages are delightful to the eye after days of wandering in
the desert of the north-west. In places we even passed through avenues
of fruit-trees in full blossom.
Having failed in the east, Ludendorff redoubled his pressure on the
west of the Montagne, but British troops and Italian Alpini joined the
French in holding up the critical points; and although the salient
round Rheims itself was narrowed, the Marne was not reached and Epernay
could only be shelled from a distance of seven or eight miles. Near
Château Thierry, at the western end of the great salient, American
troops aided the French in preventing advance. Already on the 18th
of July, the first day of the advance, the French reached positions
commanding the road and railway at Soissons, on the 21st Château
Thierry was recaptured, and the next day saw the Germans back, for
the last time, north of the river which had been the turning-point in
1914. The 26th of July saw an engagement which earned very special
appreciation from Haig,[46] the taking of the Buzancy Château (Plate
116) and the little plateau on which it stands, about 300 feet above
the River Crise, some four miles south of Soissons. Buzancy had been
the object of an attack by the French and another by the Americans
within a week from the commencement of the advance, but had been
pertinaciously held by the Germans. It is in effect a narrow promontory
between two deep valleys, and an almost unassailable position. On the
28th of July the 15th Scottish Division were told off for the attack,
and the Highlanders succeeded after a fight so notable that, although
the position was not permanently held until a day or two later, the
17th French Division erected a memorial (Plate 117) in commemoration of
it on the spot where the body of the foremost Highlander was found. The
monument, simple and dignified, bears the inscription: "Ici fleurira
toujours le glorieux Chardon d'Écosse parmi les Roses de France."
Five days later the French entered Soissons once more, and on the 5th
of August the Aisne was again crossed, and Fismes (Plate 95), on the
Vesle, was taken by the Americans on the same day. But Foch's plan led
him to leave this district for a time while equally important advances
were made elsewhere.
[46] Haig's Despatches, vol. ii., p. 256.
On the 10th of October the troops were back again on the old Le Cateau
battlefield, and Le Cateau was retaken, and on the next day the whole
length of the Chemin des Dames plateau was again in the Allies'
possession.
On the 4th of November we were again at Landrecies,[47] and right
through the Mormal Forest, while on the next day the ancient
fortifications of Le Quesnoy (Plate 118) were taken by assault and the
garrison surrendered.
[47] See p. 77, _ante_.
Meantime French and Americans were advancing farther to the east,
outside the lines of the 1914 retreat, through extremely difficult
country, and meeting with strenuous opposition. Near Varennes one saw
still in 1920 the American notice, "Road under control; split your
convoy" (see p. 75).
The Germans, retreating, naturally cut down all the trees on the
roadsides in order to lay them across the roads to hinder our advance;
there now remain only stumps a few feet above the ground. It must be
long before the old avenues can reappear, but cultivation seemed to
be going on normally everywhere. The destruction of fruit-trees in
the German retreat of 1917 was a different matter, the justification
of which on military grounds seems somewhat strained. Plate 119
is copied from a photograph in a captured German Report from the
Hirson district. It was intended specially to show the blowing up of
a railway-bridge at Mennessis, but serves also to show exactly the
thorough and deliberate way in which the orchards were destroyed.