nights. One reason for this is that raiding craft, which are
comparatively slow machines, are so heavily laden with bombs that they
are only able to perform straight flying and hence are easily brought
down by the fast and quick-turning battle-planes. Daylight raids,
moreover, necessitate an escorting fleet of fighting craft in order to
protect the bombing machines, just as a dreadnought has to be
protected by a screen of destroyers. Though the dangers of flying are
considerably increased by darkness, the French believe this is more
than compensated for by the fact that, being comparatively safe from
attack by enemy aircraft or from the fire of anti-aircraft guns, the
raiders can fly at a much lower altitude and consequently have a much
better chance of hitting their targets.
One of the extremely important uses to which airplanes are now put is
the destruction of the enemy's observation balloons, on which he
depends for the regulation of his artillery fire. An airplane which
is to be used for this work is specially fitted with a number of
rocket tubes which project in all directions, so that it looks like a
pipe-organ gone on a spree. The rockets, which are fired by means of a
keyboard not unlike that of a clavier, are loaded with a composition
containing a large percentage of phosphorus and are fitted with gangs
of barbed hooks. If the rocket hits the balloon these hooks catch in
the envelope and hold it there, while the phosphorus bursts into a
flame which it is impossible to extinguish. During the fighting before
Verdun, eight French aviators, driving machines thus equipped, were
ordered to attack eight German balloons. Six of the balloons were
destroyed.
But the very last word in aeronautical development is what might be
called, for want of a better term, an aerial submarine. I refer to
seaplanes carrying in clips beneath the fuselage specially constructed
18-inch torpedoes. In the under side of this type of torpedo is an
opening. When the torpedo is dropped into the sea the water, pouring
into this opening, sets the propelling mechanism in motion and the
projectile goes tearing away on its errand of destruction precisely as
though fired from the torpedo-tube of a submarine. It may be recalled
that some months ago the papers printed an account of a Turkish
transport, loaded with soldiers, having been torpedoed in the Sea of
Marmora, the accepted explanation being that a submarine had succeeded
in making its way through the Dardanelles. As a matter of fact, that
transport was sunk by a torpedo dropped from the air! The pilot of a
Short seaplane had winged his way over the Gallipoli Peninsula, had
sighted the troop-laden transport steaming across the Marmora Sea,
and, volplaning down until he was only twenty-five feet above the
water and a few hundred yards from the doomed vessel, had jerked the
lever which released the torpedo. As it struck the water its machinery
was automatically set going, something that looked like a giant cigar
went streaking through the waves ... there was a shattering
explosion, and when the smoke cleared away the transport had
disappeared. Whereupon the airman, his mission accomplished, flew back
to his base in the Ægean. There may be stranger developments of the
war than that, but if so I have not heard of them.
France is now (April, 1917) turning out between eight hundred and a
thousand completely equipped airplanes a month, but a considerable
proportion of these are for the use of her allies. I have asked many
persons who ought to know how many airplanes France has in commission,
and, though the replies varied considerably, I should say that she has
at present somewhere between five thousand and seven thousand machines
in or ready to take the air.[D]
* * * * *
Leaving Chalons in the gray dawn of a winter's morn, we fled southward
again, through Bar-le-Duc (the place, you know, where the jelly comes
from) the words "_Caves voutés_" chalked on the doors of those
buildings having vaulted cellars showing that air raids were of
frequent occurrence, and so, through steadily increasing traffic, to
Souilly, the obscure hamlet from which was directed the defense of
Verdun. In the centre of the cobble-paved Grande Place stood the
Mairie, a two-story building in the uncompromising style
characteristic of most French provincial architecture. At the foot of
the steps stood two sentries in mud-caked uniforms and dented helmets,
and through the front door flowed an endless stream of staff-officers,
orderlies, messengers, and mud-spattered despatch riders. In this
village _mairie_, a score of miles behind the firing-line, were
centred the nerve and vascular systems of an army of half a million
men; here was planned and directed the greatest battle of all time. On
the upper floor, in a large, light, scantily furnished room, a man
with a great silver star on the breast of his light-blue tunic sat at
a table, bent over a map. He had rather sparse gray hair and a gray
mustache and a little tuft of gray below the lower lip. His eyes were
sunken and tired-looking, as though from lack of sleep, and his face
and forehead were deeply lined, but he gave the impression,
nevertheless, of possessing immense vitality and energy. He was a
broad-shouldered, solidly built, four-square sort of man, with cool,
level eyes, and a quiet, almost taciturn manner. It was General Robert
Nivelle, the man who held Verdun for France. He it was who, when the
fortress was quivering beneath the Germans' sledge-hammer blows, had
quietly remarked: "They shall not pass!" _And they did not._
I did not remain long with General Nivelle; to have taken much of such
a man's time would have been a rank impertinence. I would go to
Verdun? he inquired. Yes, with his permission, I answered. Everything
had been arranged, he assured me. An officer who knew America
well--Commandant Bunau-Varilla, of Panama Canal fame--had been
assigned to go with me.[E] As I was leaving I attempted to express to
him the admiration which I felt for the fashion in which he had
conducted the Great Defense. But with a gesture he waved the
compliment aside. "It is the men out there in the trenches who should
be thanked," he said. "They are the ones who are holding Verdun." I
took away with me the impression of a man as stanch, as confident, as
unconquerable as the city he had so heroically defended. A few weeks
later he was to succeed Marshal Joffre to the highest field command in
the gift of the French Government.
It is twenty miles from Souilly to Verdun, and the road has come to be
known as La Voie Sacré--the Sacred Way--because on the uninterrupted
flow of ammunition and supplies over that road depended the safety of
the fortress. Three thousand men with picks and shovels, working day
and night, kept the road in condition to bear up under the enormous
volume of traffic. The railway to Verdun was so repeatedly cut by
German shells that the French built a narrow-gauge line, which
zig-zags over the hills. Beside the road, at frequent intervals, I
noted cisterns and watering-troughs, and huge overhead water-tanks;
for an army--men, horses, and motor-cars--is incredibly thirsty. This
elaborate water system is the work of Major Bunau-Varilla, who,
fittingly enough, is the head of the _Service d'Eau des Armées_.
Half a dozen miles out of Souilly we crossed the watershed between the
Seine and the Rhine and were in the valley of the Meuse. On the other
side of yonder hill, whence came a constant muttering of cannon, was,
I knew, the Unconquerable City.
While yet Verdun itself was out of sight, we came, quite unexpectedly,
upon one of its mightiest defenders: a 400-millimetre gun mounted on a
railway-truck. So streaked and striped and splashed and mottled with
many colors was it that, monster though it was, it escaped my notice
until we were almost upon it. Suddenly a score or more of grimy men,
its crew, came pelting down the track, as subway laborers run for
shelter when a blast is about to be set off. A moment later came a
mighty bellow; from the up-turned nose of the monster burst a puff of
smoke pierced by a tongue of flame, and an invisible express-train
went roaring eastward in the direction of the German lines. This was
the mighty weapon of which I had heard rumors but had never seen: the
great 16-inch howitzer with which the French had so pounded Fort
Douaumont as to cause its evacuation by the Germans.
The French artillerists were such firm believers in the superiority of
light over heavy artillery, and pinned such faith to their 75's, that
they had paid scant attention to the question of heavy mobile guns.
Hence when the German tidal wave rolled Parisward in 1914, the only
heavy artillery possessed by the French consisted of a very few
4.2-inch Creusot guns of a model adopted just prior to the war, and a
limited number of batteries of 4.8-inch and 6.1-inch guns and
howitzers; all of them, save only the 6.1-inch Rimailho howitzer of
1904, being models twenty to forty years old. These pieces were, of
course, vastly outclassed in range and smashing power by the heavy
guns of the Central Powers, such as the German 420's (the famous
"42's") and the Austrian 380's. Undismayed, however, the French set
energetically to work to make up their deficiencies. As it takes time
to manufacture guns, large numbers of naval pieces were pressed into
service, most of them being mounted on railway-trucks, thus insuring
extreme mobility. The German 42's, I might mention in passing, lack
this very essential quality, as they can be fired only from specially
built concrete bases, from which they cannot readily be moved. The two
German 42's which pounded to pieces the barrier forts of Antwerp were
mounted on concrete platforms behind a railway embankment near
Malines, where they remained throughout the siege of the city.
[Illustration: Verdun's Mightiest Defender: a 400-mm. Gun.
This was the great 16-inch weapon with which the French so pounded
Fort Douaumont as to cause its evacuation by the Germans.]
[Illustration: A Gun Painted to Escape the Observation of Enemy
Airmen.
"So streaked and striped and splashed and mottled with many colors
was it that, monster though it was, it escaped my notice until we
were almost upon it."]
Some idea may be had of the variety of artillery in use on the French
front when I mention that there are at least eleven calibers of guns,
howitzers, and mortars, ranging in size from 9 inches to 20.8 inches,
in action between Switzerland and the Somme. All of these, with a very
few exceptions, are mounted on railway-trucks. In fact, the only large
calibered piece not thus mounted is the Schneider mortar, a very
efficient weapon, having a remarkably smooth recoil, which has a range
of over six miles. It is transported, with its carriage and platform,
in six loads, each weighing from four to five tons, about four hours
being required to set up the piece ready for firing. Nearly all of
these railway guns are, I understand, naval or coast-defense pieces,
some of them being long-range weapons cut down to form howitzers or
mortars, while others have been created by boring to a larger caliber
a gun whose rifling had been worn out in use. For example, the
400-millimetre, already referred to as having proved so effective
against Douaumont, was, I am told, made by cutting down and boring out
a 13.6-inch naval gun. But the master gun, the very latest product of
French brains and French foundries, is the huge 520-millimetre
(20.8-inch) howitzer which has just been completed at the Schneider
works at Creusot. This, the largest gun in existence, has a length of
16 calibers (that is, sixteen times its bore, or approximately 28
feet), and weighs 60 tons. It fires a shell 7 feet long, weighing
nearly 3,000 pounds, and carrying a bursting charge of 660 pounds of
high explosive. Its range is 18 kilometres, or a little over eleven
miles, though this can probably be increased if desired. This is
France's answer to the German 42's, and, just as the latter shattered
the forts of Liége, Antwerp, and Namur, so these new French titans
will, it is confidently believed, humble the pride of Metz and
Strasbourg.
So insistent has been the demand from the front for big guns, and yet
more big guns, that new batteries are being formed every day.
Generally speaking, the French plan is to assign short-range howitzers
and mortars to the division; the longer range, horse-drawn
guns--_hippomobile_ the French designate them--to the army corps;
while the tractor-drawn pieces and those mounted on railway-carriages
are placed directly under the orders of the chief of artillery of each
army.
A new, and in many respects one of the most effective weapons produced
by the war is the trench mortar. These light and mobile weapons, of
which the French have at least four calibers, ranging from
58-millimetres to 340-millimetres, are under the direction of the
artillery, and should not be confused with the various types of
bomb-throwers, which are operated by the infantry. The latest
development in trench weapons is the Van Deuren mortar, which takes
its name from the Belgian officer who is its inventor. Its chief
peculiarity lies in the fact that its barrel consists of a solid core
instead of a hollow tube like all other guns. Attached to the base of
the shell is a hollow winged shaft which fits over the core of the
gun, the desired range being obtained by varying the length of the
powder-chamber: that is, the distance between the end of the barrel
and the base of the shell proper. The gun is fired at a fixed
elevation, and is so small and light that it can readily be moved and
set up by a couple of men in a few minutes. In no branch of the
artillery has such advancement been made as in the trench mortars,
which have now attained almost as great a degree of accuracy as the
field-gun. Such great importance is attached to the trench mortars by
the Italians that they have formed them into a distinct arm of the
service, entirely independent of the artillery, the officers of the
trench-mortar batteries, who are drawn from the cavalry, being trained
at a special school.
The city of Verdun, or rather the blackened ruins which are all that
remain of it, stands in the centre of a great valley which is shaped
not unlike a platter. Down this valley, splitting the city in half,
meanders the River Meuse. The houses of Verdun, like those of so many
mediæval cities, are clustered about the foot of a great fortified
rock. From this rock Vauban, at the order of Louis XIV, blasted
ramparts and battlements. To meet the constantly changing conditions
of warfare, later generations of engineers gradually honeycombed the
rock with passages, tunnels, magazines, store-rooms, halls, and
casemates, a veritable labyrinth of them, thus creating the present
Citadel of Verdun. Then, because the city and its citadel lie in the
middle of a valley dominated by hills--like a lump of sugar in the
middle of a platter--upon those hills was built a chain of barrier
forts: La Chaume, Tavannes, Thiaumont, Vaux, Douaumont, and others.
But when, at Liége and Namur, at Antwerp and Maubeuge, the Germans
proved conclusively that no forts could long withstand the battering
of their heavy guns, the French took instant profit by the lesson.
They promptly left the citadel and the forts nearest to it and
established themselves in trenches on the surrounding hills, taking
with them their artillery. This trench-line ran through certain of the
small outlying forts, such as Tavannes, Thiaumont, Douaumont, and
Vaux, and that is why you have read in the papers so much of the
desperate fighting about them. Thus the much-talked-of fortress of
Verdun was no longer a fortress at all, but merely a sector in that
battle-line which extends from the Channel to the Alps. Barring its
historic associations, and the moral effect which its fall might have
in France and abroad, its capture by the Germans would have had no
more strategic importance, if as much, than if the French line had
been bent back for a few miles at Rheims, or Soissons, or Thann. The
Vauban citadel in the city became merely an advanced headquarters, a
telephone exchange, a supply station, a sort of central office, from
the safety of whose subterranean casemates General Dubois, the
commander of the city, directed the execution of the orders which he
received from General Nivelle at Souilly, twenty miles away. Though
the citadel's massive walls have resisted the terrific bombardments to
which it has been subjected, it has neither guns nor garrison: they
are far out on the trench-line beyond the encircling hills. It has, in
fact, precisely the same relation to the defense of the Verdun sector
that Governor's Island has to the defense of New York. This it is
important that you should keep in mind. It should also be remembered
that Verdun was held not for strategic but for political and
sentimental reasons. The French military chiefs, as soon as they
learned of the impending German offensive, favored the evacuation of
the city, whose defense, they argued, would necessitate the sacrifice
of thousands of lives without any corresponding strategic benefit. But
the heads of the Government in Paris looked at things from a different
point of view. They realized that, no matter how negligible was its
military value, the people of other countries, and, indeed, the French
people themselves, believed that Verdun was a great fortress; they
knew that its capture by the Germans would be interpreted by the world
as a French disaster and that the morale of the French people, and
French prestige abroad, would suffer accordingly. So, at the eleventh
hour and fifty-ninth minute, when the preparations for evacuating the
city were all but complete, imperative word was flashed from Paris
that it must be held. And it was. Costly though the defense has been,
the result has justified it. The Crown Prince lost what little
military reputation he possessed--if he had any to lose; his armies
lost 600,000 men in dead and wounded; and the world was shown that
German guns and German bayonets, no matter how overwhelming in number,
cannot break down the steel walls of France.
It was my great good fortune, when the fate of Verdun still hung in
the balance, to visit the city and to lunch with General Dubois and
his staff in the citadel. Though the valor of the French infantry kept
the Germans from entering Verdun, nothing could prevent the entrance
of their shells. Seven hundred fell in one day. Not a single house in
a city of 40,000 inhabitants remains intact. The place looks as though
it had been visited simultaneously by the San Francisco earthquake,
the Baltimore fire, and the Johnstown flood. But once in the shelter
of the citadel and we were safe. Though German shells of large caliber
were falling in the city at frequent intervals, the casemate in which
we lunched was so far beneath the surface of the earth that the sound
of the explosions did not reach us. It was as though we were lunching
in a New York subway station: a great, vaulted, white-tiled room
aglare with electric lights. We sat with General Dubois and the
members of his immediate staff at a small table close to the huge
range on which the cooking was being done, while down the middle of
the room stretched one of the longest tables I have ever seen, at
which upward of a hundred officers--and one civilian--were eating.
This lone civilian was a _commissaire_ of police, and the sole
representative of the city's civil population. When the Tsar bestowed
the Cross of St. George on the city in recognition of its heroic
defense, it was to this policeman, the only civilian who remained,
that the Russian representative handed the badge of the famous order.
The _déjeuner_, though simple, was as well cooked and well served as
though we were seated in a Paris restaurant instead of in a besieged
fortress. And the first course was fresh lobster! I told General
Dubois that my friends at home would raise their eyebrows
incredulously when I told them this, whereupon he took a menu--for
they had menus--and across it wrote his name and "Citadel de Verdun,"
and the date. "Perhaps that will convince them," he said, passing it
to me. By this I do not mean to imply that the French commanders live
in luxury. Far from it! But, though their food is very simple, it is
always well cooked (which is very far from being the case in our own
army), and it is appetizingly served whenever circumstances permit.
After luncheon, under the guidance of the general, I made the rounds
of the citadel. Here, so far beneath the earth as to be safe from even
the largest shells, was the telephone-room, the nerve-centre of the
whole complicated system of defense, with a switchboard larger than
those in the "central office" of many an American city. By means of
the thousands of wires focussed in that little underground room,
General Dubois was enabled to learn in an instant what was transpiring
at Douaumont or Tavannes or Vaux; he could pass on the information
thus obtained to General Nivelle at Souilly; or he could talk direct
to the Ministry of War, in Paris. I might add that one of the most
difficult problems met with in this war has been the maintenance of
communications during an attack. The telephone is the means most
generally relied upon, but in spite of multiplying the number of
lines, they are all usually put out of commission during the
preliminary bombardment, the wires connecting the citadel with Fort
Douaumont and Fort de Vaux, for example, being repeatedly destroyed.
For this reason several alternative means of communication have always
to be provided, among these being flares and light-balls,
carrier-pigeons, of which the French make considerable use, and
optical signalling apparatus, this last method having been found the
most effective. Sometimes small wireless outfits are used when the
conditions permit. On a few occasions trained dogs have been used to
send back messages, but, the pictures in the illustrated papers to the
contrary, they have not proven a success. In the final resort, the
most ancient method of all--the despatch bearer or runner--has still
very frequently to be employed, making his hazardous trips on a
motor-cycle when he can, on foot when he must.
In the room next to the telephone bureau a dozen clerks were at work
and typewriters were clicking busily; had it not been for the uniforms
one might have taken the place for the office of a large and busy
corporation, as, in a manner of speaking, it was. On another level
were the bakeries which supplied the bread for the troops in the
trenches; enormous storerooms filled with supplies of every
description; an admirably equipped hospital with every cot occupied,
usually by a "shrapnel case"; a flag-trimmed hall used by the officers
as a club-room; and, on the upper levels, mess-halls and
sleeping-quarters for the men. Despite the terrible strain of the
long-continued bombardment, the soldiers seemed surprisingly cheerful,
going about their work in the long, gloomy passages joking and
whistling. They sleep when and where they can: on the bunks in the
fetid air of the casemates; on the steps of the steep staircases that
burrow deep into the ground; or on the concrete floors of the
innumerable galleries. But sleeping is not easy in Verdun.