VIII
FROM MARCH 30 TO MAY 31

In order to gain possession of the town, the enemy, after taking Douaumont—the resounding syllables of whose name boom like a great bell through his communiqués—tries to approach the main line of defence: Froideterre, Fleury, Souville. Vaux fort and village is one of the mainstays of that line. From March 9 he pounds the slopes of the fort and the approaches to the village. He continues to make frontal attacks on them and at the same time attempts his usual manœuvre of envelopment, on the one side debouching in La Caillette Wood, and on the other side outflanking us in the village of Damloup.

Damloup, to the south-east of the fort, runs out like a pier-head between two ravines, the gap of La Horgne which separates it from the fort, and the gap of La Gayette which sweeps down from La Laufée Wood. To the north-east, Vaux village, the eastern portion of which has been lost, lies at the side of the Dieppe road, in the ravine of Le Bazil, the entrance to which it commands. As you go up the ravine, you find, after traversing a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards, a dyke, then a little lake: the Pool of Vaux. At this point is the end of the ravine of Fontaines, called by our men “the Ravine of Death,” which cuts across Vaux-Chapître Wood. The enemy lays siege to the village, but at the same time he also tries to get down into the ravine of Le Bazil by advancing through La Caillette Wood. In this wild country, broken up by clumps of trees, brushwood, narrow glens and gorges, a dim, dogged struggle will be waged, dragging on for weeks and even months.

The enemy, at the end of March, has brought back the 121st Division from the Woevre front. On March 21, after having made an important reconnaissance on the previous evening, he overwhelms the fort, the village, and the ravine of Le Bazil with shells. These are the harbingers of an assault. The telephone communications are cut and the connection service is kept up by means of scouts, since the broken ground makes signalling impossible, except on the plateau of the fort. A liquid fire attack precedes the three waves of the onset, each a battalion strong, which dash in succession against the village. The first is battered down; the two others, at a terrible cost in lives, manage to encircle the three companies which still occupy the western section.

On April 2 the 1st Battalion of the 149th Regiment (under Major Maganiosc), which occupies the shelters of the Les Fontaines ravine, is ordered to reoccupy the village. At daybreak it makes for the dyke, where it breaks up into three detachments, each consisting of a company, with the fourth as a support. One company has the main road for its objective; another will operate farther north, between the railway and the brook, in conjunction with the 31st Battalion of Light Infantry; the third farther south, through the gardens.

In a few strides our men have reached the village and advanced as far as the church. An artillery barrage, however, cuts them off and prevents reinforcements from coming up to them. The liaison officers who succeed in crossing this incessant curtain fire bring news that at first cheers us, but then becomes more and more alarming. The assailants have had to face a counter-attack and have been swept away by the storming party. On the right bank, in the gardens, the company commander, Lieutenant Vayssière, has been killed, and his men have been thrown back. In the village there is hand-to-hand fighting. All the officers of the third detachment have been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, among them Captain Toussaint, commanding the 2nd Company, who, though seriously wounded, was still exhorting his men not to surrender. Non-commissioned officers take their places. The enemy sets fire to the houses by means of petrol. Sergeant Chef has rallied the survivors, and, stationing them with a machine-gun section at the exit by the side of the pool, has barricaded himself in the last house, dug a trench, and brought the enemy to a halt. To the north, Sergeant Chapelle holds out in the same way with some details until nightfall. The men work in pairs; one makes a dug-out while his comrade fires. The German losses are heavy. A private who saw them said, “Yes, there were a good many of them laid out!”

Although the village is lost, but for the last house, the dyke road is blocked up. On the northern side of the ravine, however, the Germans have managed to get near the railway.

Early next day the 74th Regiment retakes the lost trenches of La Caillette, and, continuing his advance, pushes his listening-posts up to the ridge of far-famed Douaumont.

How can we tell the full story of all these fights, scarcely interrupted for a moment, and all these feats of valour? On April 11 the enemy attacks with two divisions placed side by side on a front of 1¾ miles, from Fort Douaumont to Fort Vaux; he is driven back. On the 15th we attack him (with three battalions of the 36th Regiment and details of the 120th) between the ravine of La Caillette and that of La Fausse-Côte, and take nearly 200 prisoners. On the 19th the attack is resumed; the 81st Brigade carries a small fort crammed with dead and wounded, captures 260 prisoners (among them 9 officers, 4 cadets,2 and 16 non-commissioned officers), and seizes machine-guns and a large quantity of flame-throwers. In vain the enemy tries to renew the offensive three days running; he is unable to rob us of the trenches we have captured after so severe a struggle. All this month of April is favourable to us in the Vaux region. General Nivelle, who is in command of the sector, in accordance with instructions received from the Commander-in-Chief and from General Pétain, the leader of the army of Verdun, has given orders for an active defence, which raises the morale of the troops and baffles the purpose of the foe. Satisfied with the results obtained on both banks of the Meuse during the recent operations, General Pétain, summoned by the Commander-in-Chief on April 30 to take command of the central group of armies, before handing over to General Nivelle the command of the Second Army, addresses the troops in an army order in which he says:

“One of the greatest battles recorded in history has been raging for more than two months round Verdun. Thanks to all, officers and men, thanks to the devotion and self-denial shown by the various branches of the service, a notable blow has been struck at the military power of Germany.”

During the month of May a definite goal is aimed at, a task likely to provide us with many thrills—the recapture of Fort Douaumont. What a slap in the face this would be for German pride! Douaumont, which has made the Teuton blow a loud trumpet-blast of victory; Douaumont, a conquest won by surreptitious means and emblazoned with the glory of a fictitious assault; Douaumont lost again would mean an outcry of astonishment and wrath over the whole Empire. And on May 22 our gallant lads re-enter Fort Douaumont. Soldiers of Mangin’s Division, battalions of the 36th, 129th, 74th, and 54th Regiments, you will remember that hour and that date when you matched the most daring conquerors!

Fort Vaux followed them from its observing stations and saw them break through by the southern breach. It aided them with its guns in the direction of Hardaumont and La Caillette. And its walls, which resounded under the enemy’s bombardment, seemed to tremble with joy, even as the hills of Israel leapt, at the deliverance of its old comrade.

From the fort of Vaux to the pool the defences staked out on the slopes of the hill are connected by three redoubts or entrenchments more or less knocked to pieces, R¹, R², and R³ in the abbreviated style of the reports. Captain Delvert, who from May 17 to 24 has occupied R¹ with the 8th Company of the 101st Regiment, and who will occupy it again from May 31 to June 5, during the critical period, is one of those officers whom the war has revealed to themselves by abruptly withdrawing them from the civilian careers in which they had earned distinction. A student and a thinker, with a fellowship in history, he is the contemporary and was the close friend of Emile Clermont, the tender, subtle, and pathetic novelist of Laure and Amour Promis, who before he was killed in a trench was able to draw lessons favourable to his inner development from the scenes of bloodshed which he held in instinctive horror.

His generation was at that meeting-place of all the roads of the new age which has been marked by a certain indecision in all, or nearly all, of us in our turn: the war, making him a leader of men, will have prepared him for leadership in the intellectual world. He wears the Legion of Honour and the War Cross. Of middle height, with a sunburnt complexion, his eyes full of glittering fire behind his pince-nez, his voice low and his gestures eloquent, he has acquired the habit of looking at himself from outside recommended by Stendhal and his followers. He analyzes himself while he acts. He sees himself in action without being inconvenienced by the presence of this clear-sighted eye-witness. Accordingly he has a precise notion of all that is happening, and realizes the full significance of each event. The background of the canvas does not escape him; he can easily reproduce the stage-setting of the episodes, which he paints like an artist, with rapid, sweeping strokes and warm colours. Men of this type will later on make admirable chroniclers. At the most tragic moments he notices the statuesque pose of a bomb-thrower, or is capable of feeling the warm caress of a sunbeam. More than once I shall have recourse to the notes which he has allowed me to consult: the concise yet passionate style of his personal comments must be left to the imagination.

During the night of May 17–18, Captain Delvert, with his company, reaches the entrenchment R¹ by way of the ravine of Les Fontaines. On the way, the commander of the battalion which he is relieving receives him in his quarters and conveys his instructions to him. “He is a tall man,” writes Captain Delvert, “slim, about fifty years of age, his face clean-shaven. This face is lighted up by a pair of fine, intelligent eyes, and his lips pucker up into an ironical smile.”

There is a portrait in a few lines.

“He receives us,” continues the Captain, “in a charming manner. A conversation is struck up with our battalion commander.

“‘We are going to the dyke. Has it been much shelled with heavies?’

“‘Well, well,’ answers the major, very coolly, ‘one of my officers counted in his sector an average of four shells a minute in a whole day.’

“‘And the major? what about his headquarters?’

“‘Still in pretty good condition, but you can’t get out of the place. It opens out on to a ravine which is constantly being shelled.’

“‘And where do these shells fall?’

“‘On the north, west, and east. It is only on the southern side that we don’t get any, except when our 155’s fire short.... (A pause.) ... And then, you know, you will have totos!’

“‘Totos?’

“‘Yes—well, fleas, if you like! Everybody has them.’

“‘We emerge from the major’s quarters and pass into the gallery which leads to the ravine of Les Fontaines. The country becomes more and more dismal and desolate. The trees are already nothing more than stumps. To make matters worse, since we have had a lot of rain, the gallery changes into a canal, with water a foot or more deep.”

And now the rain of shells begins. What the Captain said is right; it comes from every direction except the south.

At last Captain Delvert reaches his post. Every day he draws up his balance-sheet, just as the officer of the watch on a cruiser writes out his log. Here is the record of his days from May 18 to 24. It is a picture of the life our men lead in the Vaux region:

Diary of Captain Delvert (May 18–24)

“Thursday, May 18.—My trench by the side of the railway commands the ravine of Vaux, which is riddled like a sieve with shell-craters full of water.

“That ruin in front, some sixty or eighty yards from the village, is the ‘western house of Vaux’ mentioned in the communiqués.

“The village is now nothing more than a mass of crumbling walls, which our 155 mm. guns are constantly battering.

“In front of headquarters is Fort Vaux. To the north and east it is surrounded by the Boche trenches.

“The dreariness of the landscape is beyond description. At this moment (7 P.M.) it is bathed in the soft, warm, purple light of the setting sun. The ridges of the hill are bare, without a blade of grass. The Fumin Wood is reduced to a few tree-stumps ranged like the teeth of a comb along its summit, like that wood of ‘the Hand of Massiges’ which our troopers have nicknamed ‘the Cock’s Comb.’ The soil has been so much churned up by the shells that the earth has become as shifting as sand, and the shell-holes make the place look like a range of dunes.

“All of a sudden the cannonade, which had slackened off a little, breaks out in all its fury. In one minute we count eight Boche shells whistling over our heads.

“On the ridge of Vaux, which shows up purple against the setting sun, the black clouds of our 155’s rise in every direction. It is an orchestra of Hell.

“The Commandant’s office is a shell-hole covered with a few beams and a little earth. Under the floor are corpses, perhaps those whom the shell has buried.

“The occupants go to sleep on the floor, their heads resting on their knapsacks.

“The men are crowded together in recesses that certainly would not shelter them from the rain.

“Let us wait!

“Friday the 19th.—The cannonade never stops day or night. It deafens our ears and clouds our brains.

“To-day, since 6 P.M., the hillsides of Vaux have been disappearing under our shell-fire.

“From here one can see them falling right on to the white lines formed in the ground by the Boche trenches and communication passages.

“At night, in the starlight, green rockets shoot up from our front lines at the bottom of the ravines. ‘Lengthen the range! Lengthen the range!’ cry our poor comrades.

“Other shouts are then heard from all sides.

“Red rockets on the Hardaumont plateau. We are attacked. Fire, lads, fire! Bar the way in front of our trenches!

“Red rockets from Fort Vaux. Red rockets down there, far off, behind Fumin. How many desperate appeals all over this gloomy countryside!

“Meanwhile, the Boches from their lines send up other kinds of rockets, trench flares or ‘star-shells.’ These flash forth from the darkness every moment in order to ensure that no shovelful of earth shall be removed by the victims marked out for annihilation by the shells.

“The whistling of the projectiles which cross each other above our heads is so loud that you might imagine yourself to be by the sea, with the swell of the waves, as they rise and fall, crashing in your ears. The explosions, with their tremendous uproar, produce the effect of a continual thunderstorm, accompanied by periodic flashes of lightning.

“Saturday the 20th (11 P.M.).—The lake, with its dreary waters and its sombre setting, runs right up to the three ridges that shut in the horizon. The moon hangs over this distant quarter like a silver veil, dotted with darker specks along the summit of the hills. At the foot of our trenches she sheds her shimmering light over the marsh of the ravine, so that it forms a burnished island amid the ripple of the waters.

“To the right, on the dyke, a procession of funereal shadows glides past in silence.

“It is the relief that is going by.

“At a steady pace, never stumbling, it climbs up towards the Hardaumont plateau, where our shells are crashing, and the white, red, or green cones rise unceasingly into the sky—a firework display given by men marked out for death.

“Sunday, May 21.—The fine weather continues. So does the cannonade.

“Midnight.

“This evening, at nightfall, the Boche sent us tear-shells. These gases are extremely unpleasant. Your eyes smart, you weep, you choke, you get a splitting headache. What a torment!

“The cannonade becomes fast and furious.

“The 24th will soon have to attack on the hillsides of Vaux in front of R¹. All my men are at their posts. The hill that commands Fort Vaux stretches out its dark line beneath the half-red disc of the moon. It is reflected down below, a motionless shadow, in the marsh at the foot of our trenches.

“The horizon, the fort, the ravine, and the distant dip of the Woevre are wrapped in a silvery mist.

“Near me, right and left, I see in the darkness, above the trench, the dim glint of the men’s helmets. I think of the terrace of Elsinore and of the sentries relieving each other there during the night.

“Here the sentries get no relief. Under those helmets their eyes are watchfully sweeping the ravine, the embankment slope and the ballast of the railway. On all sides there spurts up the lurid flame of the crashing shells. The splinters fall like a heavy shower of rain into the marshes; others come humming like a top and land in the trenches.

“The half-hidden, sinister struggle goes on.

“At ten minutes to two the cannonade grows more intense. Rifles and machine-guns spit and crackle. The night is made hideous with a confused uproar that re-echoes in the valley.

“Red rockets dart up incessantly from the German lines. On the parapet, with straining eyes, our rifles in our hands, dumb with horror, we witness a mysterious duel, in which we hear the din without seeing the actors. Green rockets flare up from our trenches. ‘Lengthen the range!’ is the cry, while a Boche machine-gun emits its crisp, abrupt note.

“Another machine-gun that the artillery preparation has forgotten.

“The valley is filled with a dense vapour, a blend of dust and smoke, which hides everything from view.

“On the Hardaumont plateau dawn begins to appear.

“But the struggle goes on without respite. It rages more and more furiously in the fog, a fog through which the rockets cleave a fiery trail and the red flames of the shell-bursts are constantly darting up. From all sides the bullets whistle around us. The youngsters of the 1916 class, now receiving their baptism of fire, cluster round the sides of the parapet. We officers and N.C.O.’s, our rifles in our hands, spur them on to fight. Very soon each finds his mark among the Boches, who can be seen—now that day has risen—gradually receding all along the hillsides of Vaux.

“Monday, May 22.—A cartridge-base of 130 mm. has entered my dug-out, broken my bâtman’s leg, and flattened itself out on the wall near my head.

“11 o’clock.—German counter-attack on the trench taken this morning by the 129th. Boche detachments are crossing the slopes. We fire at them; they can be seen lying down flat on the ground, then proceeding again at the double. There is one who still lies prone. He must have been hit. One must admit that they are brave soldiers, these fellows.

“They have reached the trench. A hand-grenade duel begins. An appalling fire is directed at Fumin, through which other units of the 124th are to come as reinforcements.

“To our left, Douaumont has been recaptured since this morning.

“Wednesday, May 24—1 o’clock in the morning.—This time it is Hell indeed. The night is as black as ink. The little valley now seems a gigantic chasm girdled by fantastic hills, great sombre masses with vague outlines. At the bottom of the chasm the pools of the marsh glitter mysteriously in the dark. Dim vapours rise incessantly, accompanied by a terrific noise; red and white gleams cut athwart each other, so that out of the shadows there suddenly leap up mountains of darkness which appear for a moment to be encircled with light, then vanish at once into the night.

“Through the heavy air, in which one can scarcely breathe for dust and smoke, there is all the time an invisible gliding to and fro, a frightful whistling, roaring, and crackling, and a spurting of flames that seems endless.

“Is it the Twilight of the Gods? the Götterdämmerung which haunted the sublime imagination of their barbarian giant? Is the earth yawning, and is that savage world whose monstrous maw wellnigh devoured humanity sinking into a fiery pit? No. It is merely an episode of the war: the German counter-attack on R¹.

“Perhaps it will get a line in the communiqués.

“8 o’clock.—The hillsides of Vaux seem more sinister than ever.

“All along the German trench that is being fought over, rigid bodies stiff and stark in blue greatcoats, black trails. The soil, in places, looks as if it were burnt. One corpse has been stripped of its greatcoat.

“We can see that naked back in the sunlight.”...

Each episode of the combat is linked up with the operation as a whole. The attack on Douaumont will have an immediate effect on the rest of the fighting. The battle on the Verdun front is a part of the single battle that is being waged on all the fronts. Accordingly the beleaguered islet of Vaux is about to rivet the attention of the entire globe.

Our troops have been unable to hold their ground in Fort Douaumont, of which they only occupied the superstructure and a part of the casemates. On May 24 a German counter-offensive has succeeded in enveloping and retaking the earthwork. It seems as if the daring enterprise of May 22 had aroused their anger as a strip of red cloth excites a bull. They nearly lost Douaumont; so outrageous an insult decides them to rush on Verdun with redoubled fury. They devote to the onslaught a new force, the 1st Bavarian Corps. On May 25, 26, and 27 they pounce upon Thiaumont Farm, in the direction of Froideterre. From May 31 onwards they move slantwise on their left and, flinging themselves at Fort Vaux, will not resign themselves to abandoning the prey which they covet and which they thought was in their grip eight months ago.

Their plan will be to outflank the fort to the west by way of the ravines of Le Bazil and Les Fontaines, and to the east by way of Damloup.

On May 31 our line is carried up again beyond the Le Bazil ravine so as to wind round the Hardaumont salient, which belongs to us, through La Caillette Wood. Then it runs back, crossing the ravine by the dyke, passes in front of the entrenchments R³, R², and R¹, envelops the fort at a distance of barely 200 yards from the counterscarp, sweeps down into La Horgne bottom, is thrust out into a point at Damloup village, and bends back into La Gayette bottom in front of La Laufée.

The Hardaumont salient and Damloup village run out from the line like spires, and their defence is a hazardous business. The entrenchments have been broken up. What sort of a barrier can the fort still provide?