The world--our side of it--held its breath and felt its own heart-beat
when, in February of that year '15, the armies of the German Crown
Prince launched their offensive against the French at Verdun. It was the
biggest offensive since their first drive down to the Marne; and as the
days passed and they hurled fresh masses of men against the French and
brought up new guns to replace their losses, there was no doubt that in
this battle the Germans were trying by all their weight to smash their
way to victory through the walls which the French had built against them
by living flesh and spirit.
“Will they hold?” was the question which every man among us asked of his
neighbor and of his soul.
On our front there was nothing of war beyond the daily routine of the
trenches and the daily list of deaths and wounds. Winter had closed down
upon us in Flanders, and through its fogs and snows came the news of
that conflict round Verdun to the waiting army, which was ours. The news
was bad, yet not the worst. Poring over maps of the French front, we in
our winter quarters saw with secret terror, some of us with a bluster
of false optimism, some of us with unjustified despair, that the French
were giving ground, giving ground slowly, after heroic resistance, after
dreadful massacre, and steadily. They were falling back to the inner
line of forts, hard pressed. The Germans, in spite of monstrous losses
under the flail of the soixante-quinzes, were forcing their way from
slope to slope, capturing positions which all but dominated the whole of
the Verdun heights.
“If the French break we shall lose the war,” said the pessimist.
“The French will never lose Verdun,” said the optimist.
“Why not? What are your reasons beyond that cursed optimism which
has been our ruin? Why announce things like that as though divinely
inspired? For God's sake let us stare straight at the facts.”
“The Germans are losing the war by this attack on Verdun. They are just
pouring their best soldiers into the furnace--burning the flower of
their army. It is our gain. It will lead in the end to our victory.”
“But, my dear good fool, what about the French losses? Don't they get
killed, too? The German artillery is flogging them with shell-fire from
seventeen-inch guns, twelve-inch, nine-inch, every bloody and monstrous
engine. The French are weak in heavy artillery. For that error, which
has haunted them from the beginning, they are now paying with their
life's blood--the life blood of France.”
“You are arguing on emotion and fear. Haven't you learned yet that the
attacking side always loses more than the defense?”
“That is a sweeping statement. It depends on relative man-power and
gun-power. Given a superiority of guns and men, and attack is cheap.
Defense is blown off the earth. Otherwise how could we ever hope to
win?”
“I agree. But the forces at Verdun are about equal, and the French have
the advantage of position. The Germans are committing suicide.”
“Humbug! They know what they are doing. They are the greatest soldiers
in Europe.”
“Led by men with bone heads.”
“By great scientists.”
“By the traditional rules of medievalism. By bald--headed vultures in
spectacles with brains like penny-in--the-slot machines. Put in a penny
and out comes a rule of war. Mad egoists! Colossal blunderers! Efficient
in all things but knowledge of life.”
“Then God help our British G.H.Q.!”
A long silence. The silence of men who see monstrous forces at work, in
which human lives are tossed like straws in flame. A silence reaching
back to old ghosts of history, reaching out to supernatural aid. Then
from one speaker or another a kind of curse and a kind of prayer.
“Hell!... God help us all!”
So it was in our mess where war correspondents and censors sat
down together after futile journeys to dirty places to see a bit of
shell-fire, a few dead bodies, a line of German trenches through a
periscope, a queue of wounded men outside a dressing station, the
survivors of a trench raid, a bombardment before a “minor operation,”
a trench-mortar “stunt,” a new part of the line... Verdun was the only
thing that mattered in March and April until France had saved herself
and all of us.