Verdun 1916

by J E Kauffman

  On the east bank, the XVIII Reserve Corps, which had withdrawn to refit on 21 March, received new units to replace its infantry, while General Mudra planned another attempt at taking Fort Vaux. To prepare for the assault, he ordered the pioneers to push the saps and trench positions of the V Reserve Corps to within about 50m of the glacis of Fort Vaux. The troops also hauled up mountain howitzer batteries for close support. On 26 March, while the fighting was nearing a stalemate on the left bank, the 121st Division (V Reserve Corps) took control of Vaux village. Mudra selected Caillette Wood and Fort Vaux as the objectives of a limited attack scheduled for 2 April. The V Reserve Corps was to take the Ouvrage of Thiaumont, the village of Fleury and the Ouvrage of Laufée on 6 April. Considering that Mudra had intended only small operations, these moves were still more than his troops could handle, especially when the French were growing stronger every day. As it happened, his planned offensive never materialized because the French struck first.

  Courage, on Les Aura!

  The French offensive opened on 2 April with a heavy bombardment of the front held by the 9th Reserve Division and 121st Division. The French infantry – recalled the Crown Prince – came on in four successive waves into the Vaux Valley, but ran into devastating fire from German cannons and machine guns. The German 58th Division repelled an advance up one of the slopes of the valley wall. On 3 April, the French regiments attacking in Caillette Woods were pushed back as well. Mudra reorganized his forces during the next few days. The X Reserve Corps had reformed in March with the 19th Reserve Division and 113th and 58th divisions.9 However, the 58th, except for its artillery, was relieved by the 21st Division of the XVIII Corps (21st and 25th divisions) on 9 April. Falkenhayn pulled the 113th Division out of line on 12 April.10 The 19th Reserve Division remained at the front taking heavy losses in the days that followed.

  The French attacks against Mudra’s positions near forts Douaumont and Vaux early in April depleted several of Mudra’s divisions, which had to be replaced so they could refit and recoup their losses. This assault and the German counter-attacks gave Pétain enough confidence to issue one of his rousing orders of the day on 10 April. ‘April 9th was a glorious day for our armies – he declared – the furious attacks of the soldiers of the Crown Prince broke down everywhere.’11 He closed this order with his favourite motto, ‘Courage, on les aura!’ – ‘Courage, we will get them!’

  When his troops were ready, Mudra opted for single divisional operations. The first of these attacks on 11 April involved the 21st Division (XVIII Corps). The 21st advanced on Caillette Woods, but French artillery stopped it in its tracks. Knobelsdorf, impatient with Mudra and highly critical of his small methodical attacks, sent him back to his old corps in the Argonne and replaced him with General Ewald von Lochnow of III Corps who opened an offensive on 17 April with the VII Reserve Corps to gain control of Poivre Ridge.12 The XVIII Corps captured a ridge and Thiaumont Farm, recalled the Crown Prince, and the 21st Division fell back in the face of enemy counter-attacks. The V Reserve Corps was down to only four battalions on the front line and the 50th Division had to reinforce it. The 1st Division had to relieve the 121st Division as casualties continued to mount. The 25th Division faltered in its attempt to clear Caillette Woods on 20 April. The III Corps with its 5th and 6th divisions had to relieve the XVIII Corps. The Eastern Attack Group under Lochnow’s leadership made few gains and showed that continued attacks would only increase German losses at Verdun. Crown Prince Wilhelm concluded that Operation Gericht was no more effective than Mudra’s small-scale methodical attacks had been, and decided to end it. He refused to accept a strategy of attrition, despite the fact that Knobelsdorf ‘with that steadfastness which was his finest characteristic adhered to his view that whatever happened we must hold fast to the idea of attacking and wearing down the enemy’ (My War Experiences, pp. 194–5).

  The actions on the left bank during April also contributed to the Crown Prince’s pessimistic view of the situation. On 1 April on the west bank, the VI Reserve Corps made some gains near Béthincourt. However, the French hung on to Béthincourt and Haucourt until 5 April when they were pushed out of Haucourt by the German 192nd Regiment. This presented a threat to the left flank of the French VII Corps and Hill 304, which, the Germans realized, was a key point for domination of Le Mort Homme. Fighting continued in the Forges Valley until the 11th Reserve and 11th Bavarian divisions began to make some progress on 7 April. The 12th Reserve Division took Béthincourt on 9 April and the 22nd Reserve Division pushed up the slopes of Le Mort Homme. His divisions, claimed the Crown Prince, ‘melted away fast in stubborn fighting for trenches, which were usually badly damaged by constant rainstorms’ and often crumbled in the saturated ground (My War Experiences, p. 201). Before long, the 192nd Brigade and the 11th Bavarian Division, followed by the 11th and 12th Reserve divisions were exhausted and needed to be relieved.13 Renewing the assault on 22 April, the VI Reserve Corps fired a 3-hour barrage and sent in the 43rd Reserve Division to plough through the muddy ground in front of their objective. Gallwitz assigned the newly arrived 4th Division to the XXIII Corps to relieve the 12th Reserve Division.14 The objective was Hill 304. The Germans renewed their bombardment on 24 April. On the evening of 29 April, the French launched a strong assault on the front of the XXII Reserve Corps which stretched from Le Mort Homme to north of Les Caurettes. The fight for both Le Mort Homme and Hill 304 continued into May. The 4th Division moved against Le Mort Homme between 4 and 8 May and captured some positions, but it retreated in the face of numerous French counter-attacks. It suffered heavy losses, but also took 1,500 weary French prisoners. On 15 and 18 May, the 38th Division broke up several French attacks on Hill 304 that had repelled the 4th Division. On 20 May, the 43rd and 44th Reserve divisions of the XXII Reserve Corps stormed the crest of Le Mort Homme taking 1,300 prisoners as the Crown Prince watched from a vantage point. ‘Mort Homme – he recalled – flamed like a volcano and the air and earth alike trembled at the shock of thousands of bursting shells.’* As he watched, the barrage lifted and his troops emerged from their trenches and charged the enemy. Before long, streams of French prisoners were being marched down the slopes. Knobelsdorf, who was observing the operation from the eastern side of the Meuse, thought the prisoners were retreating German troops and telephoned the Crown Prince to halt the attack. After the Crown Prince disabused him, the assault continued. On 24 May, the 22nd and the 44th Reserve divisions made concentric attacks and completed a line from Le Mort Homme to the south edge of Caurettes Woods and Cumières. Gallwitz ordered the corps to hold their ground and fortify the line. The 56th Division came to reinforce the XXII Reserve Corps. The Germans’ small victory in taking Hill 304 and Le Mort Homme at the end of May cost them 69,000 casualties.15 However, on the west bank, between the new line and the Marre Ridge there were more hills and ridges followed by the forts of the northern part of Verdun’s defences. This terrain favoured the French allowing them to inflict even greater losses on the Germans. The Germans never reached the Marre Ridge and they did not give up their attempts to retake and hold Le Mort Homme.

  The Crown Prince realized the futility of continuing the campaign, but he had no choice in the matter. March, April and May were three of the bloodiest and most futile months of the battle. They characterize the senselessness of Falkenhayn’s strategy more than any other period of the battle.

  The rift between the Crown Prince and his chief-of-staff deepened before the end of April. On 21 April, General Knobelsdorf replaced Lieutenant Colonel von Heymann, a senior staff officer who had been able to mediate between him and the Crown Prince, with Colonel Count Schulenburg. Heymann was given command of a regiment. This change, however, did not help Knobelsdorf because it did not take long for Schulenburg to concur fully with His Highness about ending the offensive. Knobelsdorf and Falkenhayn agreed at a meeting that the campaign must go on. The Crown Prince had no recourse but to follow orders. The tremendous losses at that time forced Falkenhayn to send additional
reinforcements to the Crown Prince’s army.

  Poor weather plagued both sides during the month of April. Heavy rains turned roads, trenches and shell craters into a muddy morass and some valleys and ravines into veritable swamps. The French remained in possession of their forts even though the Germans falsely bragged that they had taken Fort Vaux in March. When weather permitted, the soldiers tried to improve their positions; they also often used shell craters as foxholes. The French infantry regiments increased their firepower since the number of machine guns allotted to each of them went from six to twenty-four at the beginning of 1916. Now, the advancing Germans had to face numerous machine-gun positions that survived their artillery barrages. Since the battle had begun in February, the French had had learned to use their 75mm guns to deadly effect in support of their infantry. Pétain continued to receive additional artillery to replace his losses and slowly began to reach parity with his enemy. Although they were relieved more frequently than their opponents, the French troops often marched to the front in high spirits only to return haggard, ragged and exhausted from their experiences. The nearly unceasing heavy artillery barrages left many a soldier shell-shocked and suffering from combat fatigue. More often than not, the French troops were relieved before the Germans could take advantage of their condition. The German troops often had to stay on line longer than the French did, and when they came off the front line to recover, they generally rested for a short period before being thrown back into the battle. In addition, the intolerable living conditions at the front took a heavy toll on their health and their morale.

  Although the Germans continued to dominate the sky, their hold was slipping. They began the campaign in February with almost complete superiority, but beside spotting for the artillery, photographing French positions, and keeping their enemy from doing the same, they accomplished little else. The 5th Army entered the campaign with four Zeppelins and several aircraft with limited bombing capability. The Germans engaged in some strategic bombing and targeted a few railroad stations with little effect. Their inadequate bomb loads could not cripple rail traffic from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun and any damage they inflicted was quickly repaired (see ‘Pétain’s Road to Victory’ on p. 194ff.). The Germans did not attempt to bomb any of the numerous Marne bridges that supported the French forces on the right bank, but it is questionable whether their bombs could have caused any significant damage.16 Both sides resorted to nightly bombing raids where pursuit aircraft were not a factor, but the French aircraft did not carry large bomb loads either.

  The French, however, were making progress in using aviation for artillery coordination and mapping enemy positions, a field in which the Germans had held the advantage. In April, it was still common for a single Fokker monoplane fighter to escort several two-seater observation aircraft. During the year, the Germans grouped fighter aircraft into fighter squadrons. The German fighter aircraft, mainly the Fokker Eindecker, had been equipped with synchronized machine guns that fired through the propellers since mid-1915. Pétain encouraged and promoted the development of French aviation and the French army adopted the nimble Nieuport 11, which regained control of the air by the summer of 1916.

  In April 1916, Pétain reorganized his forces. He replaced General Bazelaire’s group (VII Corps) on the west bank with three formations: General Alby’s XIII Corps, General Balfourier’s XX Corps and General Berthelot’s XXXII Corps. On the east bank, he formed two commands: General Descoins’ XII Corps and General Nivelle’s III Corps. He retained the VII and XXI Corps as a reserve claiming that their four divisions were in no condition to return to the front. Joffre grudgingly cooperated in maintaining Pétain’s system of quick and frequent reliefs, so that no unit remained too long in action. Each division, Pétain explained, ‘following a sort of rotary movement like that of a millwheel, after being called on to bear its burden of bloodshed and weariness on the Verdun front, returned to the rear …’, or a quiet sector to recover.* In April, Joffre sent him the fresh IX Corps to keep the millwheel turning.17 Joffre recalled that when he gave Pétain this corps, he warned him that he would have to rely on his own resources after that. The divisions of the 2nd Army had taken a beating and, to Joffre’s chagrin, Pétain insisted that it was not yet ready for the great counter-thrust Joffre insisted on at Verdun.

  General Joffre and President Poincaré visited Verdun in early April. The government was worried about this battle because defeat could mean its own collapse. Foreign dignitaries such as Italian General Cardona also came to see Verdun. In March and April, Joffre made it clear to Pétain that retaking Fort Douaumont and launching a new offensive were top priorities. He was convinced that the 2nd Army commander was reluctant to go on the offensive and wanted to concentrate on defence. He complained that that Pétain requested additional reinforcements after every German attack. In part to satisfy Joffre, Pétain ordered Nivelle to prepare a methodical operation to take back Fort Douaumont in early March. Joffre wanted an operation on a grander scale than this, but when he visited Nivelle’s III Corps on 10 April, he was pleased with what he saw. Still dissatisfied, Joffre decided nonetheless to find a way to remove Pétain from Verdun even though in public he called him the ‘heart and soul of the action’ that saved Verdun. Thus, he promoted Pétain to army group commander as of 1 May after retiring General de Langle from Army Group Centre. Informed by Castelnau of his impending promotion on 19 April, Pétain received the news with a decided lack of enthusiasm.18 Joffre later explained that this move was meant to keep Pétain from constantly demanding new units, which had to be syphoned away from the build-up for the forthcoming offensive on the Somme. Joffre had wanted to assemble forty divisions for that big operation, but the Battle of Verdun had drawn off many of his resources so that by June he would only have twenty-four divisions at his disposal. Joffre feared that if he continued to agree to Pétain’s requests there would be nothing left for the summer Somme Offensive. The new posting put Pétain in control of 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th armies.19 His headquarters were at Bar-le-Duc. Nivelle assumed command of 2nd Army, which now was no longer under direct orders from Joffre at GHQ, but under direct control of Army Group Centre. Thus, Pétain had retained overall control of 2nd Army’s operations, while Joffre felt free to wash his hands of the situation at Verdun and concentrate on his upcoming offensive. Joffre expected Pétain to rely on his army group’s resources and make no further demands upon him. Pétain, on the other hand, encouraged Joffre to begin the Somme Offensive as early as possible to relieve the pressure on Verdun.

  On 1 May, reported Pétain, the 2nd Army, now under the command of Charles Mangin, had 538,600 troops and 170,000 horses and mules, which included the men and animals supporting the combat units. The army had seven corps: Bazelaire’s VII Corps, Curé’s IX Corps, Berthelot’s XXXII Corps, Descoins’ XII Corps, Lebrun’s III Corps, Baret’s XIV Corps and Duchêne’s II Corps.20 Up to that date, forty divisions had passed through Verdun and Pétain had removed most of them from combat before they reached the point of exhaustion. Apparently, he left the 29th Division too long on line, because it broke under attack in March.

  By the end of March, the French had to fill large gaps in the ranks as a result of casualties. To do this, the French government called the youth of the class of 1916 to the colours and recalled to arms the wounded who had recovered from injuries incurred in the first year of the war.21 The majority of the French troops already serving had become seasoned veterans. According to Pétain, the Poilus were no longer motivated by enthusiasm but by the determination to defend their homeland from the invader, which made them more effective. However, in 1916 morale was deteriorating on the front as a consequence of the intense German bombardments that could shatter the will to resist in a short time. For months, the Germans had sufficient artillery engaged in the battle to maintain pressure. Later in the battle, the positions of the French and Germans were reversed and the German troops began to crack, especially those who had been engaged in the battle month after month. In May, P�
�tain estimated that the German 5th Army consisted of eight corps and had a combat strength of about twenty divisions, but that only seven to eight divisions had been taken out of combat since 21 February. His intelligence service had identified twenty-six German divisions serving at Verdun since the battle began. He found that their method of deploying corps in sectors up the 20km or more behind the lines with depots for divisions and their sub-units allowed each corps to send up reinforcements quickly from within its area to keep operations going indefinitely, while pulling back front-line units to rest within the corps area.22 It also made it more difficult to break a corps front and advance for a significant distance because of its depth. Yet the French divisions, which had continually taken a beating on defence or during counter-attacks between March and June, yielded very little ground to the Germans. Thus, by May and June the Germans were no closer to Verdun or to a significant victory than they had been at the end of February.

  Reinforcing Failure

  In May, after Gallwitz’s Western Attack Group fought an almost month-long battle against repeated French counter-attacks it finally took and secured Hill 304 and Le Mort Homme. In the meantime, Lochnow’s Eastern Attack Group went into action on the other side of the Meuse. The east bank assault opened at the end of April. The 19th Reserve Division advanced with the X Reserve Corps (5th and 6th divisions attached from III Corps) against the French line from Thiaumont Farm to Caillette Woods to Buttes Woods and northwest of the Vaux Valley. On 7 May, they took Thiaumont Farm, but X Reserve Corps ran into a heavy artillery barrage that inflicted severe casualties on the 5th Division. The French counter-attacked and regained Thiaumont Farm. The Guard Ersatz Division relieved the 19th Reserve Division from the intense fighting on 8 May. As the German thrust ground to a halt, army headquarters prepared for a new assault for 13 May, but this operation was delayed. Meanwhile, Pétain kept rotating his divisions and allowed the Germans to continue battering themselves against his positions along the final line of resistance on the east bank. Beyond the line of the Froideterre Ridge, Fort Vaux, Souville and Tavannes there was little to stop the Germans from reaching the Meuse besides a couple of old forts of limited military value.