THE LAST DAYS OF FORT VAUX
BOOK I
I
THE FORT
In the great squadron of forts which shield Verdun from a distance, like a fleet marshalled on the open sea in front of a harbour, Fort Vaux might claim the rank of a cruiser. More modern than Souville and Tavannes, which are caponier forts, not so vast or so fully equipped as Douaumont, whose girdle contains a vast quantity of turrets, cupolas, casemates, barracks, and strongholds, it plants its levelled walls more firmly in the soil.
Built of masonry about 1880, it was reconstructed in concrete after the invention of the torpedo-shaped shell (1885), then in reinforced concrete, and was not finished till 1911.
To the north of the main road from Verdun to Metz, via Étain, it mounts guard over the fortress, facing Thionville. At one end of a tableland which is framed by the Douaumont range and the wooded knolls of La Laufée, and is sundered from them by narrow dales, it seems to emerge from the mouth of a river fringed with hills, to cleave with its prow the Woevre plain. The sea of Woevre washes its north-eastern slopes, these being at first precipitous and making dead ground, then they change to a gentle gradient up to the ditch bordered by its transverse galleries.
Two villages built along the bottom, Vaux-devant-Damloup in the north and Damloup in the south, escort it as merchantmen escort a great battleship.
Accordingly, Vaux-devant-Damloup commands the entrance to a valley: this valley is the ravine of Le Bazil, which a little farther on passes by a pool preceded by a dyke—the pool of Vaux. The road (from Verdun to Vaux) and the railway (from Fleury to Vaux) follow the course of this ravine. It receives as tributaries, from the tableland on which the fort is situated, the ravine of Les Fontaines, which cuts across the Vaux-Chapître forest in the direction of Souville; and from the Douaumont range the ravines of La Caillette and La Fausse-Côte, which pierce the forests of La Caillette and Hardaumont. These are the natural trenches, the routes of approach which lead from one break in the ground to another. A soil so well-wooded and so uneven is eminently suited to a war of surprises, of traps, of ambuscades, of bold strokes, of slow and treacherous penetration. It lends itself admirably to the ebb and flow of hand-grenade duels. The forests of La Caillette and Hardaumont, the ravines of La Caillette, of La Fausse-Côte, of Le Bazil—those dark, half-savage retreats where the summer holiday-maker once loved to lose himself, although now they have been drawn from their obscurity and are bathed in a blood-red splendour—the destiny of that fort whose advanced works they form is linked with their lot.