THE CAURES WOOD IS SOLD AT A HIGH
PRICE.
The organization of the French
Machine-gun Corps -was a fine factor
in the eventual success. One gun
fired ten thousand rounds daily for
a week, most of the positions selected
being spots from which each German
infantry advance would be enfiladed
and shattered. Then the French
"75's" which had been masked during
the overwhelming fire of the enemy's
howitzers, came unexpectedly into
action when the German infantry
attacks increased in strength. Near
Haumont, for example, eight suc-
cessive furious attacks were repulsed by
three batteries of "75's."
Some of the Haumont guns got
through the German fire curtain, and (
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
helped in the defense of the Caures
Wood. Here there occurred some
memorable exploits. First of all, the
wood was lost by the smashing effect
of the German heavy shell fire. The
position was almost as strong as the
famous German Labyrinth near Arras,
and, knowing this, the enemy used
his 16.8 in. Berthas in addition to the
12 in. Skoda guns. The deep roofs
were driven down upon the men shelter-
ing beneath, and the wood had to be
air, and the Germans suffered very
badly.
APART OF THE WOOD TEMPORARILY
RECOVERED.
Soon afterwards, Lieutenant-Colonel
Driant, with two fine battalions of
Chasseurs, recovered by a counter-
attack the southern part of Caures
Wood. Driant was a magnificent
soldier. His heroic end saddened the
French people, and yet inspired them
with fresh courage. The day after
SOLDIERS ON THE WAY TO VERDUN
This picture shows a roadside halt of a "fleet" of motor omnibuses. German guns commanded the principal rail-
way communications, but a special committee had charge of the problem of road transport, and during the first
fortnight of the German offensive the traffic handled represented the capacity of fifteen trains a day in each direc-
tion. Many of the omnibuses used were taken from the streets of Paris and other cities of France.
abandoned. But the survivors of the
garrison held the enemy back, while a
lieutenant of engineers with his men
laid a large number of mines with
electrical firing wires. The German
general, after his skirmishers and bomb-
ing-parties had been beaten off, went
back to the old Prussian method of a
mass 'attack, and launched a division
against the wood. By arrangement,
the French covering troops fled in
apparent panic, and were hotly chased
down the trenches and communication
saps to the southern outskirts. As
the last man left the wood, the lieu-
tenant of engineers who was near
Beaumont waiting the signal, pressed
a button. Many of the trees rose in the
his fine victory, the forces on either
side of him were compelled to with-
draw, and the Germans closed round
him on both sides. Arranging his
two battalions in five columns, he
made a splendid fighting retreat be-
tween the two German divisions which
almost enveloped his force. With
only a hundred men he rearguarded
the retirement, and was found dead
by the Germans on the battlefield.
He was buried beside one of his cap-
tains close to the wood.
In spite of the vast forces em-
ployed by the enemy, the Germans
achieved but little on the first day of
battle, February 2ist. They won a
footing in the first-line trenches and in
443
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
some of the supporting trenches a
thing, any army could have done with
a large expenditure of shell. The
French still held Brabant and Hau-
mont, with Colonel Driant in Caures
Wood and the garrisons of Herbebois
Wood and Ornes holding their own.
But on the morning of February 22,
the Germans worked up a ravine be-
tween Brabant and Haumont by
means of burning liquids spurted from
flame-projectors. At the same time the
German artillery renewed its smashing,
intensive fire, wrecking and flattening
out Haumont village and breaking
up the French works for a depth of
three or four miles. Fortified farms
were bombarded south of Haumont
Wood and transformed into volcanoes
by the huge German shells, and when
night fell trench warfare had come to
an end, so far as the northern part of
the Verdun garrison was concerned.
THE EFFECT OF THE GERMAN ARTIL-
LERY.
All their earthworks had been swept
out of existence, and the troops fought
and worked in the open in a tragic
darkness lighted by the enemy's won-
derful star-shells. They had been
hammered out of Brabant, on the
edge of the Meuse, and their centre
had been driven in. On the right,
however, the garrison of Herbebois
Wood still clung on to part o their
original position, under an inter-
mittent hurricane of heavy shell, the
intervals of which were filled by in-
fantry attacks. Under the enemy's
fire the French troops linked their
Herbebois line with Hill 351, digging
all night in a rain of death to connect
the two positions for a fresh defense
against an enfilading attack on Beau-
mont. When morning broke, the
Germans began the attack on this
new French line. After a desperate
struggle lasting twelve hours, in which
the enemy commander continually
brought up fresh regiments, the French
retired from Herbebois and another
wood below it, but still held on to the
hill.
All along this side of the salient
hand-to-hand fighting went on, from
Ornes to Bezonvaux and the advanced
444
position of the Hill, of Vaux. Small
French garrisons held advanced posi-
tions in the plain stretching towards the
enemy's base of fitain. There was
terrible fighting at Maucourt, where
the French had some quick-firing
guns posted only five yards apart, and
unmasked against German columns
charging twenty men abreast in close
ranks. The French soldiers themselves
sickened at the slaughter they wrought.
From Ornes to Vaux the ground was
covered with dead or maimed men.
The French gunners suffered more in
proportion than their infantry, especial-
ly in the centre and the left wing,
where the guns had to fight a continual
rearguard action in the open. Though
they often caught German columns
at short range, they were in turn
smitten by the heavy German guns;
enemy airmen circling over them and
directing the fire.
THE ZOUAVES AND THE AFRICANS HOLD
FAST.
Ornes held out until the afternoon
of February 24, when the garrison
retreated to Bezonvaux, from which
a ravine ran up to Douaumont. Cov-
ering the country north of Douaumont
was a superb set of fighters composed
of Zouaves and African sharpshooters.
They recaptured part of the wood
between Herbebois and Hill 351, and
then withstood a prolonged bombard-
ment of terrific intensity. The din
and concussion of the heavy shells
were appalling; the blood at times
poured from the men's ears under the
shock of the pressure of air, and yet
they stuck to their job. They were
pushed out of Beaumont and out of
the wood they had recaptured, and
they lost Fosses Wood a little way
below the Douaumont Plateau, towards
which they retired.
Meanwhile, the centre and left
of the French salient were hammered
back with increasing rapidity. The
division close to the Meuse, which
had withdrawn from Brabant and
Haumont, tried in vain to counter-
attack from their second line at
Samogneux, Hill 344, and a fortified
farm near by. The enemy massed his
guns against them across the Meuse,
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
northward, and north-westward. They
could not move out to attack, and
by the evening of February 23, their
position was untenable. In the night
they withdrew from Samogneux
towards Pepper Hill (Cote du Poivre),
which was practically their last dom-
inating position. Pepper Hill was,
indeed, the critical position of the en-
tire defense of Verdun. Had the
enemy won it, he would have been able
to advance along the Meuse and cut
off a large part of the French forces in
the salient.
were thus shattered, their front was
hammered from the Pepper Hill posi-
tion. At Vacherauville, a village just
below Pepper Hill, the enemy's ad-
vance was definitely checked on Feb-
ruary 25. In one ravine near the
village, as day was breaking, some
French gunners on Pepper Hill espied
a grey mass of hostile forces, and
shelled it furiously. The Germans did
not move. When the light was clear,
it was seen that the figures were dead,
though many still stood upright. They
had been caught the evening before
THE KAISER AND HIS ADVISERS AT HEADQUARTERS
In the rear, standing, from left to right are: yon Billow, von Mackensen, von Moltke, the Crown Prince, von
Francois, Ludendorff, von Falkenhayn, von Einem, von Beseler, von Bethmann-Hollweg, and von Heeringen.
Seated from right to left: von Tirpitz, von Hindenburg, von Haeseler, von Emmich, von Kluck, the Duke of
Wiirttemberg, the Crown Prince of Bavaria, and in front, the Kaiser.
HE DEADLY DEFENSE OF PEPPER HILL, by the guns across the river and slain
wholesale, more by shell-blast, ap-
parently, than by shell fragments.
Von Haeseler had made a costly
mistake in driving up the Meuse
towards Pepper Hill before he cleared
the French from Goose Crest (Cdte de
I'Oie), Dead Man Hill (Mart Homme)
and Charny Ridge across the river.
He afterwards tried to remedy his
error by bringing his main artillery
forces against Goose Crest and Dead
Man Hill. But before thus widening
the scope of his attack, he tried to
preserve the intensive, narrow method
of assault in the von Mackensen style,
445
T
General Herr and his Staff, however,
devised a deadly system of defense for
Pepper Hill. Across the river at this
point the French held several lines of
dominating heights, from which they
poured a flanking fire into every hostile
force advancing from Brabant and
Haumont. The nearer the Germans
came to Verdun, on the Pepper Hill
sector, the more terribly they suffered
from the fire across the Meuse. They
came within range of rifles, machine-
guns, and light field-pieces, as well as
heavy howitzers, and while their flanks
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
by thrusting into the centre of the
flattened Verdun salient. That is to
say, he shifted the point of the phalanx
from Pepper Hill to the middle of the
Douaumont Plateau. This was the
right and plain course, for it removed
the attacking masses and their im-
mediate artillery supports from the
French flanking fire across the Meuse,
and brought them nearly within reach
of victory.
THE SNOWSTORMS HINDER THE GERMAN
ATTACK.
The great thrust into the French
centre also cleared the French out
of the eastern edges of the Heights of
the Meuse overlooking the Woevre
Plain, for the Zouaves and Moroccans
and the former garrisons of Herbebois
and Ornes were farthest from Verdun,
and most in danger of being cut off.
The Zouaves and Moroccans fell back
on Douaumont, while the troops from
Bezonvaux intrenched by the Douau-
mont Ravine and the Vaux Ravine.
Then the great snowstorm of Febru-
'ary swept over the hilly battlefield
and the lowland marshes of the
Woevre. The storm was a disaster
to the Germans. It robbed them in the
crisis of the struggle of their tremen-
dous power of artillery. Gunners and
aerial observers were blinded, and
from their point of view matters were
not much improved by the mist that
followed the snow. Snowdrifts in the
valley paths delayed the forward
movement of the guns and the bringing
up of ammunition and supplies to the
firing-line. This was when the original
German plan for economy in men went
all to pieces. The High Command
could not wait for its guns to resume
full action. The infantry had to
undertake, with diminished artillery
support, the terrible work of breaking
the French front by hand-to-hand
fighting. Verdun, after all, was to be
purchased with German blood and not
with German shells.
NEW FRENCH DEFENSES ARE HASTILY
PREPARED.
The great arc of artillery was still
able to work by the map and by ob-
servers in the firing-line. It could
pound villages, farms, and old forts,
446
in which French troops might be
sheltering, but it could not aim at the
manoeuvring columns and discern all
the paths of communication. On the
Plateau of Douaumont, some four
hundred feet above the Meuse, the
garrison of Verdun had the old in-
trenchments prepared at the outbreak
of the war and improved by long labor.
Then there were many improvised new
defenses masked batteries of quick-
firers, to be unmasked only against
mass infantry attacks, hundreds of
machine-guns detached from battalion
service and acting as a sort of secondary
artillery corps. And far behind the
flaming, smoking plateau there was a
superhuman outburst of activity in
France, veiled from enemy air scouts
by the -falling snow.
General Joffre, General de Castelnau,
and their Staffs were now convinced
that Verdun was the enemy's first
objective. The British army took
over all the line where the second
grand German offensive was expected,
thus liberating important French rein-
forcements for the battle on the
Heights of the Meuse. All lines and
roads leading, round-about or direct,
towards Verdun, were crowded with
men and material. The main French
force was driving towards the enemy.
The only matter of doubt was whether
it would arrive in time to hold Verdun,
or whether the supreme contest be-
tween French and German would take
place on the western side of the Meuse.
''pHE ORIGINAL GARRISON OF VERDUN
1 HOLDS FAST.
This depended upon the staying
power of the small original garrison
of Verdun. At heroic sacrifice they
had to cover the massing of the great
new forces. The situation had become
very critical on the afternoon of
February 24, when large enemy
forces debouched between Louvemont
village and the hill in front of the
Douaumont Plateau. General Herr
flung all his remaining reserves into
the fight, with the order that the line
between Douaumont and Haudro-
mont was to be held. at any cost. Von
Haeseler in turn, brought all his avail-
able infantry and employed them in
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
mass attacks of great ferocity and
persistence. His aim was to wear down
the physical power of endurance of the
French. On February 25, the Ger-
mans, after a long hand-to-hand wres-
tle, took all the village of Louvemont
at the slope of the plateau, and
climbed up the ridge, but were thrown
down.
defenses. Meanwhile, before General
Petain could get to work, there was the
immediate task of checking the massed
infantry attacks which the enemy was
employing until the air cleared and his
guns were sited on the new Beaumont
position. General de Castelnau could
not bring up a large force time and
means were lacking. A picked body
FRENCH FIGHTING IN IMPROVISED DEFENSES
Around Verdun the German heavy artillery pounded the strongest forts into fragments, but in shell-holes, in tunnels
dug into the sides and strengthened by sandbags, the French outposts took refuge and held on grimly. The uncon-
querable tenacity exhibited by the French soldier has never been surpassed in the annals of warfare.
About this time General de Castel-
nau came to Verdun to see how
things were going on. He was not
contented with what he saw. The
Germans had won a magnificent artil-
lery position on the high land at
Beaumont, towards which they were
dragging the main group of their
heavy guns. The command of the air
had been almost lost, and there were
not enough pontoon bridges, across
the flooded Meuse, to bring up quickly
the needed reinforcements. General
Herr was relieved of his command, and
a very fine engineer, who was also a
specialist in handling heavy artillery,
General Petain, was entrusted with
the reorganization of the Verdun
of fighters was needed, and the General
wired for the Bretons who had won the
Battle of Nancy for him the Bretons
of the Twentieth Army Corps, under
General Balfourier.
THE KAISER ARRIVES TO SEE THE VIC-
TORY.
They arrived just in time on the
plateau on February 26. As was
the case at Nancy, the Kaiser was
present, watching the development of
a "grand German victory." He stood
on one of the hills near Ornes, with
the Crown Prince by his side, and von
Falkenhayn and von Haeseler. For
reasons of domestic politics, a purely
Prussian force the Brandenburgers
had been chosen to deal the decisive
447
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
stroke. All the previous day and the
previous night ordinary German divi-
sions carried out the real work of
smashing against the Zouaves and
Moroccans, and bringing them to the
limit of human endurance.
The Zouaves were perfect. They
were in front of Douaumont village,
with the Moroccan Division and two
infantry regiments; they fought for
two days and two nights without eating
or sleeping. On February 26, when
Douaumont Fort was lost, the Zouaves
and their comrades still held the
village, and on February 27, without
help, they broke the long prepared
attack by part of the German Fifteenth
Army Corps. They let their foes come
within two hundred yards and then
put a shrapnel curtain behind them to
prevent retreat or reinforcement, and
smote them down with "75's", ma-
chine-guns, and rifles. The struggle for
the village went on to the end of the
month, by which time the Germans had
made eighteen attacks in force, all of
which were broken. When the ap-
proaches to Douaumont were covered
with dead and wounded, the French
made a counter-attack, and won a
footing in a redoubt north-west of the
village, from which the enemy had
been pouring an uncomfortable ma-
chine-gun fire.
''pHE BRETON CORPS SAVES THE DAY.
Stubborn, however, as was the stand
made by the Zouaves, they would
have perished on the critical day of
the Douaumont fight but for the
arrival of Balfourier's Bretons. On
the afternoon of that day they were in
extreme peril of being enveloped on
their right. The dismantled fort had
been taken by three thousand Branden-
burgers during the heavy fog. Still
working by the map, the gunners of
the long-range German and Austrian
artillery massed with remarkable pre-
cision against the fortress works, and
then poured great shells about it, in a
blind profusion which was expensive
but effective. After thi^s bombardment
had made the trenches of the troops
untenable, the Brandenburgers, who
had come in the night up the ravine
448
from Bezonvaux and gathered in a
wood, charged under cover of the fog,
and won a footing on the plateau.
Reaching the dismantled fort, that
crowns a swell of ground some 1,200
feet above sea-level, the men of the
Brandenburg Mark tried to break
through the French rearguard. But
after withdrawing for a mile and a
quarter, the French line remained un-
broken, bent away from the fort, but
still curving round the village.
Friday night (the 25th), and Satur-
day morning, were a period of extreme
crisis. Open field fighting of the most
desperate nature went on continuously.
The Germans fought with great brav-
ery, according to the best tradition of
Prussian discipline. But the French,
French Colonial, and African troops
still bore up against the superior num-
bers of fresh enemy forces. Fighting
and working, our allies strove -to estab-
lish themselves solidly on their new
line of defense, while the Germans,
with victory apparently well within
their reach, tried to break through by
overwhelming weight and unfaltering
driving power. They took, without
breaking, heavier punishment than
their own theorists before the war
expected modern national armies to
stand. But firm as they were, the out-
numbered French soldiers were firmer,
and as twilight was falling, Balfourier,
with the famous Twentieth Army
Corps, came into action.
THE BRANDENBURGERS FAIL TO BREAK
THROUGH.
The vehemence of attack of the
fresh French force was terrific. The
men went forward with such speed that
the enemy was surprised. The Bretons
smashed onwards for more than a mile,
joining on to the Zouaves at Douau-
mont village, and enclosing part of a
Brandenburg regiment in the fort.
The Germans on the slope of the ravine,
however, managed to hold on to a sap
running through a coppice and con-
necting with the fort. The enemy thus
retained a valuable observation station
on the plateau, from which he could
direct his main batteries at Beaumont.
But for the rest he was trapped.
The Kaiser, in person, had sustained
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
a more disastrous defeat than he
had received at Nancy, for at Verdun
he could not retire. He had telegraphed
to Berlin news of his great victory over
the "hereditary enemy"; his officials
had filled the German and neutral
press with glorious anticipations of
the capture of Verdun, of which the
principal fort was alleged to
have fallen. Rumania, accord-
ing to Teutonic opinion, was
only being restrained from
following the example of Italy
by the tremendous energy with
which the Germans were re-
newing their drive in France.
The Kaiser's telegram concern-
ing the conquest of Douau-
mont had been sent to Berlin
as a transmitting station; its
true destination was Bucharest.
THE KAISER ORDERS VERDUN
TAKEN AT ANY COST.
I cannot think of any par-
allel in history to this phase
of the situation at Verdun.
The War Lord of Germany was
entangled in the web of his
own prestige. To General de
Castelnau and General Joffre
the operations at Verdun as-
sumed a new complexion. If
they could bring up and or-
ganize their forces in time,
they had the enemy so fixed
that they could bleed white
one of his largest armies. They
might also sap the strength of
movements he was preparing
to a defeat. Two hundred thousand
German casualties are alleged to have
been the Kaiser's estimate of the
worth of Verdun.
PETAIN, A MASTER OF ARTIL-
\J LERY.
All this, however, greatly aggra-
vated the burden on the mind of the
GENERAL HENRI PHILIPPE PETAIN
in othpr Hirerfiorm bv com- Though only a colonel at the outbreak of war, in April 1917 he was
11 appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the French armies in France.
pelling him continually tO During the three years' interval the most brilliant page in his career
r 11 !- \T was the defense of Verdun.
reinforce at all costs his Ver-
dun army. Only so long as they new defender of the French frontier
kept the Crown Prince out of Verdun town, General Petain, who, never-
could they hold the Kaiser trapped in theless, carried his burden easily,
his own boasts, with all his people Tall, fair, blue-eyed, of the northern
waiting for the fulfillment of their stock of France that has absorbed
high hopes, in an intensity of spirit much Flemish blood, Petain was ra-
that might be an important moral diant with energy of both character
factor if cheated of success. Verdun and mind. He was only a colonel of the
had become more than a military engineers in August, 1914, but while
objective. For Germany, its political developing his own special branch of
and moral value had become even knowledge and showing a fine gift
greater than its strategical importance, of leadership in the handling of in-
It was worth capturing at a cost of fantry, he became also a master-gunner
life that made the capture equivalent the new French heavy howitzers
449
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
being his favorite weapon. It was as
the master-gunner of France that he
was brought by General de Castelnau
to Verdun to fight against the two
thousand guns of the German phalanx,
the largest pieces of which carried
farther than the French heavy howit-
zer immediately available.
General Pe"tain, however, had a
method of getting more out of his
howitzers than the manufacturers ex-
pected. Even with his medium pieces
he could often overpower heavy enemy
guns. He had, besides, worked out a
method by which he could use these
medium pieces with the flexibility of
light field-artillery. But until he had
constructed his telephone service, re-
covered the command of the air, and
got his guns into the special positions
required by his system, he had a
desperately hard struggle to maintain
his line and win time for completing
his preparations.
^HE LULL AFTER THE GREAT STORM.
After breaking against the Douau-
mont Ridge on February 26, the
German attack seemed to weaken.
Fierce infantry fighting continued at
Douamuont village till the end of the
month. Then came an ominous period
of calm, lasting three days. The enemy
was moving his enormous parks of
guns closer to Verdun. But the time
thus spent by the Germans was like a
gift from heaven to General Petain.
He threw bridges over the Meuse; he
augmented his gun power on the west-
ern heights at Dead Man Hill and
Charny Ridge, making his flanking
fire from this direction more deadly