The Price of Glory (16 page)

Near Haumont village, Lt.-Col. Bonviolle in the last anxious minutes before the attack observed thick masses of German infantry advancing out of the Bois d’Haumont, behind a heavy barrage. The German guns began to pound furiously at the village itself. It was at once obvious to the French commander that his project was far too late. There could be no question now of retaking the Bois. All his assembled forces would be needed to hang on to Haumont village. Shortly before 8.30 a.m., he gave the order calling off the attack. One young company commander, Lieutenant Derome of the 165th, never received the order. At zero-hour he charged into the German barrage, brandishing his sabre; one depleted French company against one of von Zwehl’s crack divisions. Badly wounded, he and fifty of his men were taken prisoners, sole survivors of the company.

Meanwhile, Major Bertrand, still at Hill 344, watched through binoculars the collapse of Bonviolle’s attack, and continued to stay where he was — waiting for new orders.

The Balaclava charge of Lieutenant Derome had not been entirely futile. It had astonished the Germans, and decided even von Zwehl’s troops to advance a little more prudently. Thus Bonviolle was now granted a momentary respite to detach a battalion for shoring up the sagging defences between the Bois de Consenvoye and Samogneux. But everywhere there were holes, and not enough material to plug them all. Closer and closer the grey mass crept towards Haumont village. Twice machine-gun fire from somewhere in its ruins made the storm-troops fall back until the bombardment could be renewed. Two of the monster 420s joined their voices to the fugue of destruction, and shells and heavy mortar bombs rained down on this small village, which in pre-war days had had a population of less than a hundred, at a rate of twenty a minute. Each moment its appearance was transformed. One concrete bunker collapsed under a direct hit from a 420, burying eighty men and two machine guns. By 3 p.m. Bonviolle had less than 500 effectives defending the village; most of his officers were either dead or wounded. At 4 p.m., the Germans moved in on three sides to deliver the final blow. Still they were mowed down by French
machine guns firing from the cellars of shattered houses. Up came the Pioneers with their flamethrowers, and the last brave defenders were consumed in their remorseless fire. Bonviolle himself had a miraculous escape. A flamethrower had already poked its nozzle into the vent of the cellar he was using as his Command Post and emitted its fiery blast before he and his staff decided to leave. Somehow he got out of the village, clothes singed and torn by bullets, but otherwise unscathed. He and five officers and some sixty men were all that remained of his regiment. Casualties had totalled 1,800 men. In capturing Haumont, von Zwehl’s Corps had captured the first village in the offensive; and a dangerous wedge had been driven into the French front. On one side it opened up a strategically important ravine leading directly to Samogneux; on the other, it exposed a flank of the Bois des Caures. In justifiable elation, the tired Westphalians celebrated this first notable conquest with French Army brandy that they had retrieved from the ruins of Haumont.

* * *

It could have been reckoned from its key position that the Bois des Caures would be the focus of German attention for the 22nd. Von Knobelsdorf had followed up his ‘rocket’ to XVIII Corps with instructions to both the other corps to lend their weight to this attack. Thus an overwhelming concentration of force was to be brought against the two reduced battalions of Chasseurs. Starting again at 7 a.m. the mass of the German artillery poured its fire into the wood. Aerial torpedoes from the heavy minethrowers blasted holes in the French barbed wire twenty yards wide. Chasseurs, driven from dugouts caved in by the shelling scurried about frantically looking for new shelters. One such frenzied figure ran to the edge of Lieutenant Robin’s post, babbling ‘
Mon Lieutenant,
the dugout …’ Disappearing in a blast of flame, he never finished the words. This time casualties were heavier than during the bombardment of the preceding day. The first line trenches were obliterated.

At midday, the precise moment forecast by Robin’s prisoner of the previous night, the bombardment lifted, and the whole weight of the German XVIII corps moved forward against the remnants of Driant’s two battalions in waves 500 yards apart. On either flank, developments rendered the Chasseurs’ position extremely precarious. The capture of Bois d’Haumont had been particularly disastrous.
Moving along the side of it, the German storm-troops slipped with dangerous ease through a gap in the defences left unfortified by the 165th Regiment. Their patrols had uncovered one of the Achilles Heels in the French system about which Driant had warned the Army Commission, in the letter that had so outraged Joffre. In the unfair way of war it was Driant, not Joffre, who was now to foot the bill for French neglect. To the right of the Chasseurs the Brandenburg III Corps, marching into battle behind regimental bands, had made a rapid conquest of the Bois de Ville through similar unprotected gaps, enabling the Hessians to swing round against Driant’s rear. From this new direction, a mass of some 5,000 Germans now appeared, plainly visible from Driant’s command post. Rocket after rocket was sent up to produce a 75 barrage. There was no response, but somehow the determined fire of the surviving French machine guns brought a halt to the advance from this flank. Again and again Driant’s skilfully sited defence works caught the Germans in a withering cross-fire, inflicting heavy casualties. In the chaos of the devastated wood, the Germans found the going far tougher than expected. Platoons became separated from their companies, platoon commanders lost sight of their sections, which then strayed and became entangled with the next oncoming assault wave. Soon the attackers were reduced to fighting in small isolated groups, fired on everywhere by invisible Frenchmen. The assault lost much of its impetus, but the odds were too great….

Up in the exposed northern pinnacle of the wood, the front-line companies were being wiped out piecemeal. A bitter grenade exchange took place. When the grenades ran out, the Chasseurs resorted to stones and rifle butts. Captain Séguin’s Company was reduced to forty, then to ten men, with only six serviceable rifles. A small shell blew off the Captain’s right arm, and while the Company Sergeant-Major was using his bootlace as a tourniquet they were overrun. For the fate of Lieutenant Robin, who had fought so valiantly during the first twenty-four hours, there are two versions. Grasset, who, though a Lieutenant with another company, is otherwise impeccable in his account of the battle, described him — having burnt his papers — as being captured by a German patrol, rifle in hand. Corporal Stephane, however, who was with Robin at the time, is less romantic. Robin’s bunker, he says, was suddenly surrounded almost immediately the bombardment stopped. ‘Shoot, for God’s sake shoot!’ cried Robin. ‘It’s impossible,’ shouted back a Chasseur, ‘They’re there, hundreds of them, six metres away.’ ‘Never mind, fire!’ ‘It’s mad, Lieutenant, they’re there, I tell you, more than a hundred have encircled the post!’ Stephane then claims that the young officer broke down in tears and asked, ‘What are we going to do then?’ While he was still making up his mind, Stephane heard a voice call out in good French, ‘Is anybody inside there?’ Almost immediately there appeared a man with a spiked helmet, gold-rimmed glasses and a pale face.

As Stephane was led back through the German lines his immediate reaction on emerging from the dust and debris of the Bois des Caures was to notice — for the first time in two days — that the sun was shining brightly. To his horror he also noticed German pioneers methodically cleaning out with their flame-throwers a trench still occupied by his company. Farther back he passed new German assault waves, formed up with the precision of peace-time manoeuvres and driven on by the raucous shouts of their
Feldwebel
. The fine blond young men, ‘all glittering with health and cleanliness … visibly the elite of the German Army’, were well shaven, wore clean new uniforms, and many puffed casually at cigars. If one had to be taken prisoner, perhaps these were worthy captors. Along the road Stephane’s eyes were further widened by the huge stacks of shells. A battery of the sinister 420s was in action, and it was curious, he thought, to be able to see the black spot visible in the air long after the piece had fired. Later an officer interrogated Stephane, remarking that it was a miracle anyone could have come out of the Bois des Caures alive, as an estimated 10,000 tons of shells had been dropped on it. But, he said, ‘We shall nevertheless have taken Verdun by Sunday.’

From his command post at R2 in the heart of the Bois des Caures Colonel Driant had observed with affliction the fire of the flamethrowers flickering over his forward companies. Soon the enemy were closing in on the ‘R-line’, the line of concrete redoubts that contained R2. Eight hundred yards to the right, R1 had been taken from the rear by the Germans debouching out of the Bois de Ville, and at 1 p.m. they tried to rush R2 itself. Rifle in hand, Driant took up an exposed position outside the redoubt, coolly directing and observing the fire of the Chasseurs around him. The air was thick with bullets, and when his men beseeched him to take cover he still stood there, remonstrating, ‘You know very well they’ve never hit me yet!’ The German attack was driven off, leaving behind several
prisoners. Employing their usual infiltration tactics, enemy detachments now crept in between R2 and R3 (to the left of R2), and opened fire from the rear. Again the attackers were repulsed, but this time a whole German regiment appeared through the Bois d’Haumont gap and attacked R3 frontally. By 4.30 the captain in charge of R3 was forced to abandon it, leaving R2 and Driant isolated.

The remnants of about eight platoons, numbering little more than eighty Chasseurs, were now concentrated around their Colonel. Yet a third attack on R2, this time in about battalion strength, was repulsed. But suddenly rapid gun-fire began to rake the position from the rear. At first the defenders cursed, assuming the shells came from their own artillery, firing at last in response to Driant’s rockets. In fact, an enterprising German field-battery commander, Captain von Wienskowski, had manhandled two of his 77s up the road from Ville and was shooting into R2 over open sights. When he realised the source of the shelling, Driant at once ordered a lieutenant to set up a machine gun and take on the two field pieces. Barely had it opened fire than a direct hit from one of Wienskowski’s pieces wiped out both weapon and crew. According to the German account, the crew of a second machine gun was then seen abandoning its post. The waiting infantry of the 87th Hessians, a regiment that had won battle honours at Sedan forty-six years earlier, now charged forward, cheering.

It was clear that R2 was no longer tenable. In a matter of minutes the sole escape route of its survivors would be cut. In the same calm manner that he had maintained throughout the battle, Driant now told his two battalion commanders, Renouard and Vincent: ‘I think it might be more prudent if we withdrew to a position further back.’ The Colonel burned his papers, and a thoughtful Chasseur punctured the RQMS’s rum barrel. Divided into three groups, the survivors were instructed to break out of the rear of the Bois des Caures towards the village of Beaumont. But as they emerged into open ground, a deadly enfilading fire from three German regiments met them. Vincent was hit twice. Leading the second group, Driant paused in a shell-hole to give first-aid to a wounded Chasseur. As he rose to move on again, a Pioneer Sergeant saw him throw up his arms and cry,
‘Oh! Là, mon Dieu!’
and fall to the ground. When the Sergeant reached him he was already dead, shot through the temple. A few minutes later, Major Renouard, the second of Driant’s battalion Commanders, also fell mortally wounded.

Driant and his Chasseurs had paid part of the bill for the neglect of the French General Staff. Of the two battalions, 1,200 strong, a handful of officers and about 500 men, many of them wounded, were all that eventually straggled back to the French lines. But the sacrifice was far from being in vain. The attackers had suffered heavily; in the course of the day, the two regiments in the first wave lost over 440 men, one company of the 87th alone reporting eighty casualties. The losses were the heaviest the Germans had experienced in the battle so far. Confidence was shaken. But, most important of all for France, Driant’s gallant stand had held up the Crown Prince’s offensive for one vital day; XVIII Corps could no longer attain its objectives set for the 22nd. On his death, Driant deservedly became one of France’s legendary heroes of the First War, and his defence of the Bois des Caures was acclaimed even on the other side of the Rhine. Though in the growing bitterness of the war, chivalrous gestures between the combatants had become rare, a German Baroness whose husband had found Driant’s body, sent his personal belongings back to Madame Driant, via Switzerland, together with a letter of sympathy.

* * *

It was now approaching 5 p.m. on the 22nd. Up on Hill 344, Major Bertrand, with the only force that could have given help to Driant was still waiting for his orders. Meanwhile, a courier despatched from R2 at 4 p.m. bearing a last desperate plea for relief was not to arrive at Colonel Vaulet’s Brigade HQ till 2 a.m. that night. All along the front the French had been battered back. By nightfall, except for Herbebois and Brabant, the anchor position on the Meuse, virtually the whole of the first line was in German hands. In Herbebois, where the only effective French artillery barrage of the day had disrupted the main attack, bitter fighting was still continuing. Shrilly the bugles sounded through the woods for yet another effort by the Prussians. But once again III Corps was pulled back to await a third softening-up bombardment the following morning, before the next systematic step forward. Accustomed to ill-equipped Serbs breaking at the first hammer blow, the day’s failure struck sorely at the prestige of the haughty Brandenburgers. Once again, only von Zwehl’s Westphalian reservists had achieved their objectives. The Germans’ overall losses for the day had totalled 2,350, quite moderate
by First War Standards, but they were nearly all inflicted upon the hard-to-replace, elite storm-troops. The defenders’ losses had been far more serious, a notable departure from previous experiences on the Western Front. After two days fighting, Colonel Grasset says of 72 Division: