The Price of Glory (27 page)

Falkenhayn’s precise reply has not been recorded, but it appears to have satisfied the Crown Prince and General von Knobelsdorf. Preparations were set in hand for a major effort on the Left Bank on March 6th, for which a new Army Corps, the VI Reserve, was earmarked (representing, in terms of manpower, an outlay of rather more man the reserves Falkenhayn had withheld in February). Conjointly, a second attack was to be launched the following day on the Right Bank to capture Fort Vaux, whose enfilading guns had also
stopped the Fifth Army on its other flank. Until these two menaces were eradicated the centre, anchored on Fort Douaumont, would stand still. The so-called ‘Battle of the Wings’ was about to begin. Like a fast-growing tumour, Falkenhayn’s ‘limited’ offensive had already doubled in size.

At his headquarters behind the Somme, the astute Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria noted down in his diary: ‘I hear that at Verdun the Left Bank of the Meuse is to be attacked now, too. It should have been done at once; now the moment of surprise is lost.’

Geographically, the two banks of the Meuse stand in appreciable contrast to each other. The one is broken by frequent, sudden gullies and steep ridges thickly clad with woods; ideal, as it had proved, for the practice of German infiltration techniques. The other, the Left Bank, is open rolling country where sheep graze prosperously on the broad grassy slopes; valleys are wide, hills less crowded, the cover sparse, and views extensive. It is, in fact, not unlike Salisbury Plain. Of the features between Verdun and the front line, the chief objective designated by the German command was a long, bare barrow running at right angles to the river, and topped with twin hillocks. It was called
le Mort Homme.
Though its elevation was some three hundred feet lower than Fort Douaumont, the field of vision in every direction from it was remarkable. Capture of the Mort Homme would eliminate the most injurious of the French field gun batteries that were crouched behind it, and would effectively dominate the next ridge towards Verdun, the vital Bois Bourrus where the French heavies were concentrated. Just two miles from the German forward positions, the Mort Homme seemed hardly beyond the scope of a determined thrust — especially when it was recalled that the Fifth Army had advanced three times as far during the first four days alone on the Right Bank. But in fact the Mort Homme, with its sinister name acquired from some long-forgotten tragedy of another age, was to be the centre of the most bitter, see-saw fighting for the best part of the next three months.

When, each morning of that first anxious week, Colonel de Barescut attended the sickbed at Souilly to report on the events of the previous night, he had been asked the same question: ‘What’s new on the Left Bank?’ As still the expected attack did not materialise — despite constant intelligence warnings of long columns of troop transports, of construction of the now familiar
Stollen
on the Left Bank — Pétain was heard to remark, ‘They don’t know their
business.’ This time France would not, at least, be caught by surprise. Defences were feverishly reinforced, and unremitting artillery fire forced even the Crown Prince to admit that ‘our preparations for the attack were considerably interrupted’. By the morning of the 6th, when the thunderous German bombardment began to roll over the French positions, General de Bazelaire had four divisions up in the line on the Left Bank and a fifth in reserve. It was the nearest thing to a coherent defence system yet seen at Verdun.

Nevertheless, the new German onslaught at once chalked up some depressingly easy successes. With an intensity comparable to the devastating bombardment of February 21st, the heavy German shells rained down on a French division of mediocre calibre, the 67th, whose experience of this kind of thing had so far been limited to second-hand accounts from across the river. Within half an hour, all telephone lines to the rear were, as usual, severed. Morale was shaken. Then, with less delay this time, the German infantry attacked. In a driving snowstorm, the German 77th Brigade crossed the flooded Meuse at Brabant and Champneuville, redeeming its earlier failure. Ingeniously General von Zwehl had smuggled up an armoured train whose well-protected guns gave the infantry close support across the river. The watchful French gunners behind Bois Bourrus soon pin-pointed the train by the tell-tale smoke from its engine, and it was forced to retire, a little ignominiously. But the damage was done; von Zwehl’s men were established on the Left Bank, well behind the French first line. Now a quite unexpected calamity overtook the French; the Bois Bourrus gunners rained down a murderous hail on the advancing Germans but in the soft swampy ground bordering the Meuse many of the shell fuses failed to explode. Dismay spread among the defenders. Moving speedily up the Left Bank of the river, General Riemann’s 22nd Reserve Division joined up with von Zwehl’s men, to effect a neat pincer on the French hemmed within the bend of the river at Regneville. The defence was feeble. By nightfall the Germans had taken the villages of Forges and Regneville and the important Height 265 on Goose Ridge (Côte de l’Oie). At its western extremity this ridge merged into the Bois des Corbeaux that flanked the Mort Homme directly from the northeast. Already, the swift-moving German vanguard was groping its way into the Bois des Corbeaux; the only wood near the Mort Homme, where those well-tried infiltration tactics could be used to excellent advantage.

However the frontal, main attack towards the Mort Homme had barely moved from its point of departure; stopped by a veritable wall of gunfire from the French artillery that had been anticipating attack from this direction for many days. Repeatedly the hoarse-voiced Feldwebels tried to rally their men forward in one more supreme effort, but the result was always the same. Already an established feature in the fighting of Verdun, success or otherwise of the opposing artillery entirely predetermined the fortunes of the infantry.

On the French side, consternation. The 67th Division had given ground too readily. By the end of the second day’s fighting, over 3,000 of its men had surrendered; more than 1,200 from the 211th Regiment alone. The customary draconian edict was dispatched from General de Bazelaire’s HQ (alas, also to fall into German hands); the commander at Forges had failed in his duty and would be court-martialled; artillery and machine guns would be turned upon any unit retreating further. It was easy to divine German intentions, and how menacing they suddenly seemed. The crucial Mort Homme was to be taken by a flanking attack from the northeast, via the Bois des Corbeaux. By the afternoon of the 7th, to the accompaniment of barrages enveloping the whole sector that seemed to reach a crescendo of fury, the Germans captured the whole of the Bois des Corbeaux; including the wounded Colonel of the 211th, saved no doubt from savage disgrace himself by a spirited last-ditch defence.

At all costs the Bois had to be retaken. With a crack regiment drawn from the other end of his line, de Bazelaire decided to throw in at dawn on the 8th one of those swift counter-attacks.

Selected to lead this desperate attack was the elegant Lt-Coloncl Macker, whose upswept moustachios seem to epitomise all the pride, spartanism, tradition and fanatical courage that constituted the St. Cyrien of pre-1914 France. His action reads more like a page from Austerlitz or Borodino than from the grey annals of the First World War. Aroused by his orderly before dawn,
le beau Colonel,
under a tumultuous bombardment, composedly and meticulously groomed himself for the fray, washing his moustachios in
pinard,
in the absence of water. Like a Napoleonic formation, the regiment lined up shoulder to shoulder in three tight echelons, the colonel at its head brandishing his cane and calmly smoking a cigar. At a steady walk the regiment began to cover the 400 yards to the wood. Great holes were torn in it by the German machine guns and shrapnel,
but with a discipline that would have honoured the Old Guard, it closed ranks. At one hundred yards, Macker’s men fixed bayonets and charged. Inside the wood the somewhat precarious salient formed by the German advance had been inadequately reinforced. Thoroughly taken aback by the superb
élan
of the French attack coming at them with steel glinting grey in the snowy twilight, and further unnerved by the early death of their commander, the German force now fell back. By 7.20 a.m. virtually the whole of the Bois des Corbeaux was again in French hands.

News of its loss disjointed German overall plans on the Left Bank at a most critical moment. A bombardment of the Mort Homme that was to prelude an all-out final attack was abruptly called off, and all efforts switched to holding the territory conquered on the 6th against fresh French sallies. Seldom had an impromptu French counter-attack succeeded so well. By March 9th when the Germans were ready to make a renewed attempt on the Mort Homme, via Bethincourt to the northwest, the French were well-consolidated after their initial setback; the
Reichs Archives
chronicle the ‘tragedy of the first utterly collapsed assault on the Left Bank’. But
le beau Colonel,
alas, was barely to outlive his triumph. In yet a second, spirited dawn attack on the 10th, his regiment had pushed the Germans out of another small wood adjacent to the Bois des Corbeaux. Afterwards Macker moved forward to congratulate one of his battalion commanders. Both were struck dead by a German machine-gunner. At this very moment, the Germans attacked again and, as so often happens on the death of an inspired leader, Macker’s men lost heart. Once more the Bois des Corbeaux changed hands, but German losses were so high (one Silesian battalion was reduced to 300 men) that they could advance no further. For the next month the front on this approach to the Mort Homme barely shifted.

* * *

Meanwhile, on the Right Bank the renewed German endeavour had met with even less success. Up to the last minute the enormous problems of ammunition supply to the guns had not been overcome. Even the tough German infantrymen had been used as human mules, lugging the heavy shells up on their backs. But the gas shells to be used in the big trench mortars had displayed a nasty unreliability and troops were not unnaturally reluctant to carry them. In the end the attack had had to be postponed forty-eight hours, so that, once
again, the advantage of a sychronised effort on both sides of the Meuse was lost. The impetus of the initial onslaught carried it into the outskirts of Vaux village and to the very edge of the fort. But there it petered out in a welter of bloody, confused fighting. Amid the confusion (Vaux village is said to have changed hands thirteen times during the March fighting), word came back to the German Divisional Commander, bearing the imaginative name of von Guretzky-Cornitz, that the fort had actually been taken. Without bothering to confirm the report, Guretzky-Cornitz passed it on to Army HQ, embellished with a few boastful addenda of his own. Again without a query, the news was triumphantly relayed all over the world, with the simultaneous announcement that the Kaiser had bestowed the
Pour le Mérite
upon Guretzky-Cornitz. German troops marched off in column of four, without reconnaissance, to take over the fort. Like tin soldiers they fell; for none of their nation had yet set foot in Fort Vaux. At G.Q.G. the propagandists — still deflated from their bludgeoning over Douaumont — seized on the German blunder and ensuing attempts at justification with shrieks of joy. Joffre himself was jubilant at the news of the German attacks being held all along the line, proclaiming victory and standing by to take most of the credit himself. To the men of the Second Army he declared in a vibrant Order of the Day: ‘You will be those of whom it will be said — “they barred the way to Verdun!” ’ To the National Defence Council he asserted that of course there had never been any intention of abandoning the Right Bank. To an annoyed Pétain he began talking about an early major counter-offensive at Verdun.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE MORT HOMME

The enemy can renew his endeavours…. France, reassured and confident, knows that the barricades with which the army will oppose them will not be thrown over.—GENERAL GALLIÉNI

N
EITHER
Pétain nor any of the French commanders at Verdun entirely shared Joffre’s optimism. For the Crown Prince was far from having shot his second bolt. The promised reserves were flowing more freely this time, and on March 14th — the first radiant day of spring sunshine — a new all-out attack was launched frontally on the Mort Homme with no less than six divisions. Day after day it continued. To the French it seemed as if there were no limit to the amount of men and shells the enemy was prepared to expend in order to gain possession of this one desolate hill. A monotonous, deadly pattern was established that continued on this one tiny sector of the battlefield almost without let-up for the next two months. After hours of saturating bombardment, the German assault troops would surge forward to carry what remained of the French front line. One could not speak of trenches; they no longer existed. What the advancing Germans occupied were for the most part clusters of shell-holes, where isolated groups of men lived and slept and died defending their ‘position’ with grenade and pick-helve. For once the Germans were no better off; there were no materials with which to build their beloved
Stollen,
even had the French artillery provided a respite. When once the German impetus had exhausted itself, ground down by the lethal barrages from the Bois Bourrus guns, the inevitable French riposte would — within 24 hours — push the survivors back again. But always, always the movement was like that of the incoming tide; each wave in its flow and ebb brought the sea of
Feldgrau
a little further forward.

At what cost! In the fury of the battle casualties on either side were mounting appallingly. A contemporary cartoon in London’s
Land and Water,
entitled ‘Verdun. Storming Le Mort Homme’, depicted the Kaiser and the Crown Prince flogging German soldiers on into the arms of Death. By the end of March the totals had reached 81,607 Germans to 89,000 French. Compressed as the battle
arena had become, losses suffered among the senior commanders were every bit as grievous as among the rank-and-file; in one French division, three out of four full colonels were killed during the mid-March fighting.