Verdun

by John Mosier

  To Sarrail, a native of Carcassonne, the Argonne was as much a foreign country as Bulgaria. The same can be said for his colleague to the right, since de Castelnau had spent most of his military career in Paris with the GQG. Lacking a feel for the region where they had to fight, they approached it the same way as junior staff officers back at headquarters, depending completely on maps.

  Unfortunately, map reading in its fullest military sense was a subject that French officers had very little instruction in. It takes training to be able to translate the contour line on a flat map into a three-dimensional image, training as well as experience to see that what appears to be a modest elevation may be the basis for an almost impenetrable defensive position. One of the more fascinating realizations that one has when the German lines are seen on the ground, and then compared with the map, is to see how they invariably picked out the positions that would give them a natural advantage.

  Contemporary observers and subsequent writers fell all over themselves to describe the frantic German retreat of early September. What they invariably fail to mention is that however panic-stricken the soldiers were, the positions they retreated to were, across the board, the perfect basis for a defensive line. This was hardly an accident, and after von Falkenhayn took over, the Germans engaged in a series of extremely aggressive offensives to consolidate their positions and make them even tougher propositions for their adversaries.

  Looked at on a map, von Mudra’s offensive seemed insignificant. But seen on the ground, it was quite the opposite. In five days he had bitten off a key section of the left bank, his artillery had a chokehold on the rail line into Verdun, and he was now forcing the French to fight in an area European armies traditionally stayed as far away from as possible: a heavily forested series of ridges and small hills, with steep slopes and very few roads.

  Initially, he was only the commander of the Sixteenth Army Corps, which was based in Metz, where he had been the military governor. But after the first wave of operations in September, his responsibilities were expanded to include the whole of the Argonne, and the Sixteenth Corps became a sort of ad hoc task force that grew in size and firepower.

  As soon as von Mudra had moved his phone lines and headquarters farther into the Argonne, he directed another attack, which began on 4 October 1914. It was notable for being the first engagement of the war in which the Germans used everything in their arsenal: In addition to the 21-centimeter howitzers already used in the September attacks, which were normally part of corps artillery, von Mudra added a new and extremely effective weapon, the Minenwerfer, known to subsequent generations simply as mortars. The infantry and the engineers used hand grenades and flamethrowers.12 As the Allies would discover with tanks, the use of a new weapon did not automatically mean success. The Germans had tough going, and it wasn’t until the thirteenth that they had taken off the first line of trenches.

  Von Mudra had objected to this offensive. Despite the new weapons, it was a costly operation. So on 13 October, he was formally put in charge of the whole sector. At his disposal he had three infantry divisions: the 33rd and 34th from the Sixteenth Corps, plus the 27th Division (on loan from Fourth Army), the 5th and 6th Jäger, three regiments of Landwehr, an extra three battalions (twelve companies) of Pioniere, and eight regiments of artillery.

  Von Mudra’s tactics were simple. A small section of the front was selected as the target. There was a massive artillery bombardment, but one of a very short duration, conducted by very heavy weapons. The effect was like dropping one enormous shell on the enemy positions. Then a mixed force of engineers and infantry infiltrated into the pulverized position, followed by groups of infantry and machine gunners. When the new light mortar came into production, mortar crews followed along.13

  These tactics took time to develop, and at first they were conducted on an even smaller scale. Thus on 1 December 1914, five companies of infantry from the 27th Division grabbed three lines of trenches and took 21 prisoners, at the cost of six dead and 13 wounded. In November and December, there were nine such attacks. On 7 January 1915, another attack in the Ravin des Meurissons advanced over a kilometer and captured 800 prisoners, a major achievement only when one considers that there were almost as many live French prisoners as there were German attackers.

  On 29 January 1915, there was another, somewhat bigger attack toward the Ravin de Dieusson. The French lost about 3,000 men, roughly three times the casualties suffered by the attacking Germans. In the first three months of 1915, fighting mostly in the Argonne, the French Third Army lost nearly 30,000 men.

  No description, however, can make clear the desperate nature of the struggle. In the December fighting, the fourth regiment of the Foreign Legion (the Garibaldiens) was essentially wiped out, and the Garibaldi brothers, nephews of the famous Italian, killed. On 7 January 1915, General Henri Gouraud, commanding the tenth division, and an officer much admired by his men, was wounded and replaced at the Fille Morte.14 Von Mudra’s men gnawed on through the forest, accumulating a string of impressive-sounding place names. On 8 January 1915, they had taken the crête of the Haute-Chevauchée. On the nineteenth, Saint Hubert and then the Fontaine de Madame. On 4 February, the Bagatelle. On the tenth, Marie-Thérèse, and on the sixteenth, they were at the small hamlet of Le Four de Paris. No one place was significant, perhaps, but the string was impressive, and, in fact, the ruins of Le Four de Paris mark the end of the central core of the forest. One more push and the Germans would be out into the clear. French morale fell precipitously.

  These small methodical advances solved the other problems as well: there was no need to accumulate a mass of reserve troops, no need to move guns after each lunge. The area attacked was always within range. And since there was no particular reason to attack any one spot, each attack could be delivered as a surprise: It was difficult to forecast, and the preparations for it would leave no aerial intelligence footprint.

  Slowly, one small step at a time, the Germans were forcing the French back. But events on the left bank had already been eclipsed by a startling German success on the right, as well as a series of French disasters.

  THE SECOND BATTLE FOR VERDUN: (2) THE WOËVRE

  The German commander in the Woëvre was now General Hermann von Strantz. A native of Posen (now in Poland), when the war began he was commanding the Fifth Army Corps, recruited from his hometown and environs. On 10 September, there was a major shakeup in the German order of battle. Von Strantz was now put in charge of Armeeabteilung von Strantz, responsible for the area between the Meuse and the Moselle. In addition to his old army corps, he had the Third Bavarian and the Fourteenth Army Corps (Baden), a cavalry division (Bavarian), and the Austrian artillery batteries.

  In von Falkenhayn’s scheme for the second envelopment of Verdun, von Strantz would attack the heights of the Meuse at the same time that von Mudra attacked out of the Argonne. Even if von Mudra had only a limited success, his offensive would prevent the French from shuttling reinforcements across the Meuse to defend the Woëvre.

  In fact, by mid-September, as the French scrambled to regroup, there was a sizable hole in their front. Basically the hole, or breach, was the area between the Meuse and the Moselle rivers, as one French army was on the left bank and its partner to the east was still centered on Nancy.

  To be precise, the defense of the entire southern half of the Woëvre had been entrusted to one reserve division, the 75th. That unit had been involved in the fighting on the left bank during the Battle of Revigny, and had suffered some severe blows. It is doubtful that the division had more than 8,000 men, and its artillery consisted of two batteries of 75-millimeter guns and three batteries of ancient 65-millimeter mountain guns.

  But for the staff at the GQG this was perfectly logical. As the French officer who wrote the standard and authoritative account of this theater observed, they believed the Woëvre was “impracticable in all its routes.”15

  So although von Falke
nhayn’s plan was ambitious, von Strantz felt he could manage it. The frustrated assault on Troyon had been a learning experience, and here as elsewhere, the Germans were very quick to learn from their mistakes. It was not enough to bombard a fort and hope that the garrison would surrender. Nor could an assault by regular infantry succeed. What was required was a sort of combined arms assault using artillery, infantry, and the Pioniere, who had the training and the weaponry needed to assault forts in a systematic fashion.

  So the German plan was simple: rapidly advance to the southwest in the direction of Saint-Mihiel, neutralize the fort du Camp des Romains, cross the Meuse using the thoughtfully provided bridge at Saint-Mihiel, and physically sever the rail line into Verdun.

  Given the size of the front and the depth of penetration required for the offensive to succeed, this plan seems like a tall order. But von Strantz now had a good grasp on what was going on with his opponents. The only other opposition in the area was to his right, butting up on Verdun. Holding a tenuous line between Étain and Buzy, directly to the east of the city of Verdun, but outside of the range of the artillery at forts Vaux and Moulainville, were the 72nd Reserve Division, and two regular infantry units, the 55th and the 56th, together with a few soldiers from the 75th.

  The problem for the commanders of those units was that their right flank was up in the air. Buzy was directly to the west of Metz, approaching German territory, and there were no French troops anywhere near. So von Strantz, holding them in place with a frontal attack, simply thrust around them with the bulk of his forces. As Buffetaut observes grimly, “The progression to the heights of the Meuse unfolded like a peacetime maneuver” (Verdun, 9).

  That does a serious injustice to the French soldiers who had basically been left high and dry. On 20 September, the German offensive began. The villages at the foot of the heights all were fine defensive positions. The Germans basically destroyed them, along with the general commanding the 75th Division, who was killed in the fight for the town of Hattonchâtel. So were most of his men. The division was essentially wiped out. Uniquely in the history of French divisions, it was never reconstituted, its absence being the only memorial to the disaster.

  Indeed, it was a disaster. By 24 September, the Bavarians were in the town of Saint-Mihiel, and promptly crossed the bridge to Chauvoncourt. That was it for the main south–north rail line into Verdun.

  All that remained was Camp des Romains. Located on a bluff to the south of Saint-Mihiel, the fort could rapidly make the Chauvoncourt bridgehead untenable. The garrison of the fort had two insurmountable problems: Although the bluff the fort was located on provided splendid views of the Meuse and the town, it was an isolated disposition, easy to surround—and by 24 September, the Bavarians had surrounded it.

  So the garrison was completely cut off from the outside. Moreover, on this round the Germans were making sure there would be no disrupting fire from the closest forts. The amount of firepower von Strantz was able to bring to bear was impressive. To neutralize the battery at Les Paroches, he used a battalion of 15-centimeter howitzers and a battery of 10-centimeter guns. To suppress the fire from Fort Liouville, he used a battery of 30.5-centimeter Austrian guns, and for his main objective, the Camp des Romains, he deployed another battalion of 15-centimeter howitzers, a battalion of 21-centimeter howitzers, and another battery of 10-centimeter guns, as well as the Minenwerfer of the Pioniere.

  All of these weapons were modern long-recoil artillery pieces. The French had nothing like them. The Austrian heavy guns promptly reduced Liouville to rubble, preventing its garrison from supporting artillery fire, and after three days of bombardment, the garrison of Camp des Romains were reduced to the status of cave dwellers. It was the same situation that Captain Heym had faced at Troyon, only worse, because this time the assault was carefully planned and executed.

  On the morning of 25 September, a mixed force of combat engineers and infantry stormed the fort from all sides. In three hours the battle was over. Camp des Romains had fallen, was in fact the only one of the Séré de Rivières forts to be taken by a direct infantry assault.

  THE AFTERMATH

  Clearly, the results of Second Verdun were very bad news for the French high command. The two main railroad lines into Verdun were cut, which was bad enough, but one would suppose that what was even worse was that less than three weeks after the victory of the Marne had sent the Germans fleeing north, suddenly they were smashing through the French positions like a hot knife through butter. Von Falkenhayn had definitely sent Joffre a message.

  But there didn’t seem to be anyone on the other end to receive it. Only Raymond Poincaré, the president of France, got the message, and he got it instantly. On Thursday, 25 September, he records the following entry in his diary: “At the end of the day, I receive a telegram from the Prefect of the Meuse that filled me with sadness: ‘Germans masters of Saint-Mihiel and Camp des Romains.’”16

  As one can imagine, the president was not happy about hearing the news of the latest disaster from a local official rather than from the army, and on Saturday, at a meeting of the cabinet, Poincaré hit the ceiling (at least according to him):

  Lately, the press communiqués are full of falsehoods and omissions. . . . They make no mention of the capitulation of Camp des Romains. It is announced that we have retaken Berry-au-Bac et Ribécourt, but we never admitted that we had lost them. I insist, once again that we tell the truth. I demand, equally that we find out immediately why it is that the forts fell so quickly. In places where the enemy is entrenched out in the open, we can’t dislodge him, and on the heights of the Meuse, in a position fortified in advance, we couldn’t defend ourselves for half a day (327–28).

  In the actual French, instead of “falsehoods and omissions,” Poincaré uses a phrase that actually compresses into two words a somewhat different concept: that of falsehoods through omissions. Perhaps the difference is subtle, but it speaks perfectly to the techniques developed by the French army right from the start of the war. What was blandly passed over in silence was just as misleading as what was said that wasn’t true.

  In any event, Poincaré’s open distress at the very least made Joffre realize he had a problem. The stage was thus set for the Third Battle of Verdun, which ultimately would emerge as the bloodiest and most futile battle the French army fought and lost.

  5

  The French Riposte:

  October 1914–July 1915

  If this wastage continues, the day is near when the offensive value of our army, already severely weakened, will be destroyed.

  —Abel Ferry, July 5, 19151

  Belatedly, the September battles for Verdun brought the Argonne and the Woëvre to the attention of Joffre and his staff at Chantilly. That and the irritation of the president of the republic at discovering firsthand how the army was lying about the war. Whatever the cause, the GQG belatedly grasped the nature of the problem. Joffre summed it up rather well.

  The consequences of this German attack were serious. It placed in the enemy’s hands at Saint-Mihiel the main road, railway and canal by which Verdun was supplied; near Commercy, it brought the main line under the fire of German guns, and, near Aubreville, the railway running from Châlons to Verdun. Due to this situation, Verdun was no longer supplied except by a single railway . . . a narrow gauge line running from Bar-le-Duc.2

  Accordingly, he ordered the army commanders on both sides of the Meuse to recapture the lost territory and free up the supply routes into Verdun.

  Joffre’s directive resulted in two separate offensives, one on each side of the Meuse, and each of those in turn can best be understood as consisting of two somewhat unrelated struggles.

  The Third Battle of Verdun, which was basically an attempt to free up the west–east railroad line on the right bank, began in October 1914 with a series of direct attacks on the German observation post on the butte of the Vauquois. That offensive, which lasted from Oc
tober through March 1915, was supplemented, or complemented, by fighting to the west of the butte, as both sides struggled to turn the other’s flank. Chronologically speaking, the fighting to the immediate west, in the Argonne forest, intensified a month or so after the attempts on the Vauquois, and reached its climax in the summer of 1915. But essentially, the two parts, the Vauquois and the Argonne, were closely related. Separating the battle into distinct parts is simply an attempt to make the narrative more readerly.

  By the same token, the Fourth Battle of Verdun, on the right bank, had the same aim: to relieve the German stranglehold on Saint-Mihiel. It too can be divided into two parts, simply for the sake of coherence: Les Éparges and the Woëvre. The rationale here is that the French have always made these distinctions in writing about this aspect of the war, and as we shall see, given the way the fighting spun out of control, became an end in itself without regard for the original objectives, the divisions make a good deal of sense.

  Although obscure and poorly understood, these struggles were some of the bloodiest and most horrific of the war. A secret government report listed total casualties for the two areas as well over 200,000 men.3 The intensity of the fighting, the muddling of objectives, and the overall loss of coherence on the part of the French commanders should not distract us from keeping firmly in view that the fighting on both sides of the Meuse for the twelve-month period beginning in October 1914 was supposed to be part of a coordinated French effort to break the German stranglehold on Verdun.

  Without pushing the point, the two battles have certain other similarities. The most striking is that on both sides of the river the French mounted serious and sustained attempts to seize the two hills, or buttes, that were strategically important.