BOOK II
THE BATTLE
I
THE FLIGHT OF THE RAVENS
The observers on aeroplanes or balloons who saw the volcano burst into flame declared that they could not mark on their maps all the batteries that were in action. The woods of Consenvoye, Moirey, Hingry, and Grémilly, the forests of Spincourt and Mangiennes, the hillsides of Romagne and Mormont, breathed fire like myriads of monstrous dragons.
The commander of a company of light infantry, who was wounded in the foot in Caures Wood, stated: “The intensity of the firing was such that when we came out into the open we no longer recognised the country which we had known for four months. There was scarcely a tree left standing. It was very difficult to walk about, because the ground was so broken up with the holes made by the shells. The defences were very much damaged, but there was such an entangled mass of barbed wire and broken branches that the whole still formed a serious obstacle to the offensive. The communication trenches no longer existed. The main trenches, on the other hand, had been badly knocked about, but were still serviceable; they were instantly manned.”
“They were instantly manned”—this remark proves the superiority of the human will to all the mechanical forces that science can let loose. The supreme command drew from it this deduction: “What the artillery achieves is the weakening of the material resources of the defence and the wearing down of its morale, not its complete overthrow.”
Of this hurricane of fire the fort received its full share.
“Those are 150 mm. shells. Here come some 210 mm. Ah, these are surely 380 mm. My vaults are ringing. My vaults are still sound. How are my transverse galleries? They’re resisting. And my turret? It is still standing. The observing stations? One has been touched. I can see quite well with one eye. Besides, the damage can perhaps still be made good. A breach in the counterscarp? They’ll make it firmer when they stop it up. My big neighbour, Douaumont, has come off even worse than I. He attracts the lightning like some stately oak on a hilltop. I should like to know what is going on. My telephones are no longer working. I am cut off from the rest of the world. Such a storm cannot last. Let us wait for the end.”
The end does not come, the storm continues to roar and rumble, but bad news comes up the hillsides, no one knows how. On both banks of the Meuse villages are burning, forests crackling, stones crumbling.
The nearer one is to things that are happening, the less information one can glean about them. The ration fatigue parties are still the best source of news. But these cooks certainly draw the long bow; they tell some alarming tales.
“Caures Wood was lost the second day.”
“Caures Wood? Impossible! Driant is there!—unless Driant is dead.”
“They don’t know what has become of him. And if it were only Caures Wood that was lost!”
If they are to be believed, Herbebois and Chaume Wood, the village of Ornes and, in the Woevre, Fromezay and Herméville—the last two abandoned intentionally, in order to gain support on the Meuse Heights—are in the enemy’s hands. Confound those croakers! They are trying to sow the seeds of panic. Their work is certainly carried on under great difficulties. There is no job like it, except that of the scouts. And even the scouts have no load to bear: they jump lightly from shell-hole to shell-hole; they lie down, burrow themselves in, disappear, get up again, dart off like arrows, and again lay themselves out flat when the hail of bullets cuts off their road. You cannot get along very fast with twenty bowls on your back and water-bottles slung across your shoulders, or a whole grocer’s shop of tinned food, or bags filled with every kind of provender, and, to crown it all, a mask on your face which half stifles you. (The mask is worn because of all the poison-gases which linger long in the ravines and rifts in the ground, and lie in wait for you, like footpads to seize you by the throat.) The bottoms of the valleys are all but impassable. The enemy have got the range of all the roads and have battered them. The second and third lines have suffered as badly from “Jack Johnsons” as the first. Never, within the memory of men who went out on the first day of the war and have come back, Heaven knows how, from the Marne and the Yser, from Artois and Champagne, have we had to face such a deluge of fire and steel. So a cook here is a soldier who comes from the back to the front with honour as well as his burden.
On the fourth day a liaison officer assures us that Les Fosses Wood and Les Caurières Wood have been lost.
“They are already in the La Vauche ravine.”
“In the La Vauche ravine? Then Douaumont will see them.”
And now the news grows more abundant, with more men coming and going: reliefs, wounded, stragglers, fatigue parties meet on the hillsides, under the never-ending shower of shells which is aimed particularly at the fort and its immediate approaches. One needs a sober head to extract a certain measure of truth from these alarming and often contradictory reports. They have been seen at Dieppe, they have been seen quite near Damloup. In the end, they are seen everywhere. The fort, which cheerfully digests its daily ration of projectiles, listens philosophically to these unsettling rumours. It now knows how solid its walls are. What interests it more than anything is the fate of Douaumont.
Well, on the evening of February 25, a Friday, an evening when all who go out are soaked with snow and numbed with cold, comes a wounded man looking for his way. He has hobbled up the hill, the blood from his thigh-wound staining the hasty dressing, and reaches the postern, red-eyed and spattered with blood and mud. He dares to announce that they have entered Fort Douaumont. Now, really, that is hard to believe. However much you may want your neighbour to get a few hard knocks, you cannot hear of his sudden death without a protest! A fort is not swallowed up like that. And a fort is not a place of refuge. It does not receive any guest without question. Go your way, you trafficker in bad tidings! Still, before you go, give some details, if you have any to give.
“They were seen on the banquettes. It was even thought that they were Zouaves. Zouaves in their khaki uniforms.”
“Why, it was the Zouaves. They passed here yesterday to go and take up their position.”
“Zouaves would not have fired at us with their rifles.”
“They mistook you for Boches.”
Night is a bad time for clearing up a mystery. It is better to count on to-morrow. But our hopes are doomed to be shattered. Next day some riflemen who have drifted back confirm the news. The Germans are at Douaumont.
Vaux no longer dreams of talking lightly about the misfortunes of an old comrade. For years they had mounted guard together before Verdun. They lived the same life, a life that was rather sad and lonely. They saw each other at a distance, they signalled to each other. One relied on the other in battle as on a trench-mate. If one is dying, the other is in danger. And from the observing-station which is still intact the fort inspects the slopes of Hardaumont and La Caillette, the treacherous ravines and the bare plain of the Woevre.
On Sunday, February 27, its little garrison is strengthened. The reinforcements, Territorials from Verdun, bring us no end of rumours. Are they laying on the colours too thick? We shall know later on or never. They say that the Boche has flung himself at Verdun with Hell’s own artillery (that we knew already, and besides, consider the country round the fort!); that he expected to smash, kill, destroy everything and to advance, shouldering arms, over a cleared terrain; that he has found his match instead of the dead whom he hoped to trample on, and that now fresh troops of ours are coming up: the stroke has failed, the road is blocked. Joffre has been watching and waiting, to strike at a time and place of his own choosing. What is more, Castelnau has come, and Pétain is there, getting ready to take over command. If Castelnau has come and Pétain is in command, all will be well.
“And Douaumont? Tell me about Douaumont.”
“The fort is taken. Didn’t you know?”
“I knew, but I wouldn’t believe it.”
“They won’t be left in possession. We are preparing to retake it from them.”
“That’ll be a tough job. Those birds like to settle in strange nests. Before you can look round, they have dug themselves in. Tell me anything else you know.”
The fort whispers to itself, “And even what you don’t know.” For stones have experience, and therefore irony.
“Well, the Iron Division is there. Others, too, which are unfamiliar to me. At Douaumont village there is a colonel who says, ‘So long as I have breath in my body, the Boche won’t get in.’”
“It’s always risky to say things like that.”
“The Boches have not got in. They were stopped in front of the village. Our machine-guns mowed them down there by hundreds.”
“And that colonel is still alive?”
“Yes. He was picked up, and I met him. He has a calm face and fiery eyes. He never raises his voice, yet you hear that voice inside you, controlling you and making you march. It was in his regiment that in Brulé Wood, towards St. Mihiel, an adjutant shouted, ‘Arise, ye dead!’”
“And did the dead answer?”
“What would you expect them to answer?”
“The dead always answer when they are called. The dead have made the nation which the living carry on. It is the dead who have built me. And the dead are bone of thy bone and flesh of thy flesh, as they are stone of my stone.”
The sentries, however, have been doubled. Since the enemy is at Douaumont, since he has descended into the Woevre, he is likely to attempt the assault any day. On March 8 he attacks Vaux village; on the 9th and 10th he hurls himself against both village and fort.
The fort, on its hill, resists the storm, like a ship battered by the waves.
Above the battlefield, in the plains of the air, electric waves started from afar are recorded in signs at the receivers and by wireless telegraphy transmit the war news to headquarters, to the nation, to the whole world. They cross each other like flocks of migrant birds, and engage in mysterious conflicts.
On February 26 Germany lets loose a first raven, bearing this message:
“To the east of the Meuse, in the presence of His Majesty the Emperor and King, we achieved some notable gains. Our gallant troops seized the heights to the south-east of Louvemont, the village of Louvemont and the fortified position farther to the east. With a vigorous push forward some Brandenburg regiments reached the village and the armoured fort of Douaumont, which they took by storm. In the Woevre, the enemy’s resistance was shattered on the whole front in the Marchéville district (to the south of the Paris-Metz road). Our troops are pressing hard upon the enemy in his retreat.”
No assault was made upon Fort Douaumont; it was taken by surprise. All the German attacks on Douaumont village were a complete failure. The Woevre was evacuated by a strategic manœuvre, and the enemy, in a distrustful mood, only ventured upon it with considerable qualms, had to stop in front of Manheulles on February 27, and was unable to enter Fresnes until March 7. But how much better it looks in a communiqué to represent those worthy Brandenburgers as scaling the glacis of a fort under fire, putting ladders to the counterscarp, climbing to the assault, crossing the ditches, happy to conquer or die under the benign gaze of His Majesty the Emperor and King, who was no doubt present at the ceremony with a golden helmet on his head and a golden sword in his hand! A taste for romantic visions prevails in the German Great General Staff.
The second raven is more daring. It is sent forth on March 9 and announces to an eagerly listening world the capture of Fort Vaux. It is the pendant to Douaumont: a diptych offered to the nations.
“To the east of the river (Meuse), in order to shorten the connections to the south of Douaumont with our Woevre lines, the village, the armoured fort of Vaux, and the numerous neighbouring fortifications belonging to the enemy were seized after the way had been vigorously cleared by our artillery, in a brilliant night attack by the Posen reserve regiments, Nos. 6 and 19, under the direction of Infantry General von Guretsky-Cornitz, Commander of the 9th Reserve Division.”
How could the attentive world dare to cast doubts on the veracity of a wireless message so definite and so inspiring? The day and hour are given, the numbers of the regiments, the name and title of the General who held command. Such details cannot be invented. Detail is the strong point of the German method. Learning is nothing but a knowledge of details. History? Details or a series of detailed statements.
Has Fort Vaux been taken? How should it not have been, seeing that it is General von Guretsky-Cornitz, commanding the 6th and 19th Posen regiments, who took it? Obviously, on the one side, there is the General with his two regiments, and on the other there is Fort Vaux. How could Fort Vaux fail to lodge the General and his two regiments with him? “Is that trunk ours?” asked Robert Macaire of the faithful Bertrand. And he at once concluded: “It must be ours.” “Is the fort ours?” the Boche asks himself. “It must be ours.” And he at once announces the fact.
The only drawback is that the fort is not his. It takes this liberty on March 8, and again on March 9, and again on the 10th. General von Guretsky-Cornitz, Commander of the 9th Reserve Division, gains nothing by vigorously clearing the way with his artillery and by making a brilliant night attack. Yet the German supreme command dares not confess to the world that the haughty General von Guretsky-Cornitz has befooled it. Hastily, on March 10, it sends out a third raven, with this message under his wing:
“The French have made violent counter-attacks on our new front to the east and south of the village, as well as near Fort Vaux. In the course of these engagements the enemy managed to regain a footing in the armoured fort itself. Everywhere else the enemy were repulsed with heavy losses.”
That is how the game is played. “Let us give back the fort to the French, since they are there and have always been there. Let us give it back, for we are honest and loyal: we give back what we haven’t got. What ground have the French for complaint? We have given them back a fort by a counter-attack. We credit them with a counter-attack which they have never made. We ascribe to them a success which they have not obtained. The world will admire us. The world will say: ‘There is true Teutonic frankness. The Germans had taken Fort Vaux. It was a splendid gain. Next day they lost it. Well, they don’t hesitate to proclaim the fact. We can certainly rely on the German communiqués. They confess the truth when things go against them. They play the game.’”
But lying requires a continuity of effort of which the most cunning impostors are rarely capable. It is only the man who tells the truth that never burns his fingers. Three months later—measure those three months later: exactly eighty-eight days, in other words the whole interval between the announcement of March 9 and the real fall of the fort, June 7 in the early morning, eighty-eight days of heat and cold, of weariness, of thirst and lack of sleep, of bombardments and assaults—three months later Fort Vaux is really taken. The German High Command knows what the cost is. It proudly announces the news. It forgets its wireless message of March 9. It says, “The armoured fort Vaux is occupied by us....” It does not say, it does not dare to say, “The armoured fort of Vaux is reoccupied by us....”