Verdun

by John Mosier

  6Bruce I. Gudmundsson, On Artillery (New York: Prager, 1993), 29–30.

  7As even his most devoted biographer concedes, Sarrail’s behavior in Greece alienated everyone, but Joffre, who believed (correctly) that the whole idea was militarily disastrous, probably thought that was simply a bonus. See the treatment by Jan Karl Tannebaum, General Maurice Sarrail (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1974), which treats the political situation entirely from the point of view of the left, but is forced to admit that Sarrail’s career was marked by gaffes and blunders. Sarrail was closely linked to André, one reason why Joffre couldn’t simply sack him outright, even though his command in the Argonne was a disaster.

  8Marshal [Joseph Jacques Césaire] Joffre, Mémoires du maréchal Joffre (Paris: Plon, 1932), 4. There are substantial differences between the original French text and the standard English translation. Whole chapters in the French are not in the English: those on artillery, munitions, training, and budgets, which appear at the start of the text, as well as the detailed listing of Plan XVII.

  9Data taken from the archives, published as Service Historiques des Armeés, Inventaire Sommaire des Archives de la Guerre (N24 and N25) (Troyes: La Renaissance, 1967), 154. It is an illuminating comment on how little the British knew about their allies that in the official handbook the French army issued to their officers, the 105-millimeter howitzer was listed as in service at the divisional level. As the army had only 586 of these in service by the end of the war, the claim is hardly true.

  10See André Duvignac, Histoire de l’armée motorisée (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1947), 248.

  11General Staff [of the United Kingdom, War Office], Handbook of the French Army, 1914 (London: War Office, 1914), 256–57. An excellent illustration of how poorly informed the British were about their ally.

  12Data take from Felix Martin and F[ernand] Pont, L’armée allemande: étude d’organisation (Paris: Chapelot, 1903), 495–97.

  13Fayolle, Carnets secrets de la grande guerre, edited Henry Contamine (Paris: Plon, 1964), entry of June 13, 1915, 111–12.

  14Although it is assumed that the French were mad for the concept of the offensive at all costs, the situation is much more complicated than that. As Douglas Porch explains in detail, the real problem was not that the army was committed to the wrong idea, but that it hardly had any agreed ideas at all. See The March to the Marne: The French Army, 1871–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1981), especially 249–54.

  15The first quote is from Ferry’s entry of May 6, 1916 (Carnets, 160), the second from his entry of April 13, 1918 (Carnets, 271).

  16Georges Blond, La Marne, Verdun (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1966), 13.

  4. The September Wars for Verdun

  1Jean Dutourd, Les Taxis de la Marne (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), 33.

  2Data from Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (New Haven: Yale, 1931). Mobilization figures: 96–105; casualties: 412–13.

  3See the table that classifies all the major engagements of the war in Service Historiques des Armeés, Inventaire Sommaire N Groupes de divisions (Troyes: La Renaissance, 1967), Annexe: 627–30. Despite the theoretical emphasis on archival research in contemporary history training, it often seems that a great deal is missed.

  4Maurice Genevoix, Ceux de 14 (Paris: Flammarion, 1950), 61. This quote is from his journal, originally published in 1916 as Sous Verdun, literally Under Verdun, a significant title. Heavily censored, it was still considered for the Prix Goncourt; had it not been so mutilated by the censor, it would have probably have won. See the discussion by Norton Cru in Témoins (Paris: les Etincelles, 1929), who says, “Among all the writers of the war, Genevoix incontestably occupies the first rank” (142–54; quote from 142). His five-volume account of his eight months in combat, in reality one long narrative, was eventually combined into one text with the title Ceux de 14. For some strange reason, in the postwar editions of this classic narrative, the title page suggests it is a novel.

  5Gabriele Bichet, Le role des forts dans la bataille de Verdun (Nancy: Imprimerie Georges Thomas, 1969), 23.

  6A. J. P. Taylor, Illustrated History of the First World War (New York: Penguin, 1966), 38.

  7By January 1915, the front had stabilized to a measured length of 773 kilometers, of which roughly 170 looped around Verdun from the Moselle over to the western edge of the Argonne, and another 180 kilometers across Lorraine and then down the Vosges to Belfort. The BEF held 5 percent of that line, or 40 kilometers. The straight-line-as-the-crow-flies distance from the edge of the RFV to the western edge of the Argonne is more than 60 kilometers. Figures from Senate [of France] Report 633:186, as summarized by Huber (112). See also Ferry (167–70).

  8There are numerous photographs that show the existence of large forested areas even as late as July of 1915, e.g., in the 1974 edition of Pezard’s Nous autres à Vauquois. Photograph 24, of the ancient Roman road through the forest, reveals a landscape on July 14, 1915, that looks remarkably like it does today. So does photograph 23, simply labeled “Argonne.” See André Pézard, Nous autres à Vauquois [1915–1916] (Paris: Ranaissance du Livre, 1917; revised and amended: ([Aurillac: Imprimerie Moderne, 1974]).

  9The only account of the Argonne battles of 1914–1915 in English is J. M. Scammel’s redaction of some rather propagandistic French sources, “The Argonne 1914 and 1918,” Infantry Journal (October 1929), 354–61. Scammel is apparently unaware of what happened after September 12, 1914, as his account stops there. The best short account is in Buffetaut (de Verdun, de l’Argonne a la Woëvre, 31–36). The most comprehensive treatments are from General Rouquerol, La guerre en Argonne (Paris: Fayolle, 1931) and a very early monograph by Bernhard Kellermann, Der Krieg im Argonnerwald (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1916).

  10See the extensive analysis of French and German artillery in General [Firmin Émile] Gascouin, L’evolution de l’Artillerie pendant la Guerre (Paris: Flammarion, 1920). Classifications taken from page 28.

  11Marshall [Joseph Jacques Césaire] Joffre, Mémoires du maréchal Joffre (Paris: Plon, 1932), 71. As Gascouin points out, there was a further problem with the French guns. The German 10.5-centimeter howitzer had the same range as the Rimailho 155, and the heavier German guns all outranged the French weapons (Evolution, 18–20).

  12The flamethrower in the accepted sense of the term wasn’t used until February 1915 at Malancourt, north of Verdun. Eyewitnesses seem to be talking about some sort of incendiary device used by the Pioniere, a larger and more cumbersome unit that is referred to briefly in Paul Heinrici, Das Ehrenbuch der Deutschen Pioniere (Berlin: Wilhelm Rolf, [1931]), 516.

  13The medium Minenwerfer, a 17-centimeter weapon that tossed 12 kilograms of high explosive out to distances of 900 meters, was a fairly heavy weapon for men to lug around, although it could certainly be carried by its gunners. The new 7.6-centimeter light mortar delivered only about a kilo of explosive, but it was much easier to transport, and represented the first true infantry weapon for the Germans.

  14A marker a few meters south of the monument at the haute chevauchée marks the spot. Gouraud is interred in the Navarin ossuary in Champagne, along with 10,000 other French soldiers.

  15Général J[ean-Joseph] Rouquerol, Les hauts de Meuse et Saint-Mihiel (Paris: Payot, 1939), 31. Details of the September fighting taken from Roquerol, 36–53; Yves Buffetaut in La bataille de Verdun, de l’Argonne a la Woëvre (Tours: Éditions Heimdale, 1990), 10–12; Henri Ortholan, Le général Séré de Rivières: le Vauban de la revanche (Paris: Bernard Giovangeli, 2003), 529–30.

  16Raymond Poincaré, Au service de la France (Paris: Plon, 1931), 5:327.

  5. The French Riposte: October 1914–July 1915

  1Abel Ferry, La Guerre vue d’en bas et d’en haut (Paris: Grasset, 1920), 35.

  2Marshal [Joseph Jacques Césaire] Joffre, Mémoires du maréchal Joffre (Paris: Plon, 1932)
433.

  3The computations, listed in Ferry (La Guerre, 53) are taken from his report to the Secret Committee [of the war cabinet] of June 17, 1916. Ferry’s elaborate calculations of French casualties were based on official army reports, and indeed are basically the same as those used later by French historians, e.g., Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (New Haven: Yale, 1931), 410–12.

  4Joffre, (Memoires, 4). The standard English translation puts it slightly differently, but the meaning is the same. See Joffre, The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, Field Marshal of the French Army, translated by T. Bentley Mott (New York: Harper, 1932), 1:4. In his secret diary, Gallieni observed that he had been trying to get modern heavy weapons into the army as well: Joseph-Simon Gallieni, Les carnets de Gallieni (Paris: Albin Michel, 1932), 79.

  5A fact noted by John Buchan, A History of the Great War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 1:137. This is an excellent early history of the war, and a fine example of British propaganda, as Buchan, a respected minor novelist, was employed by the government to advance the official story. The publication date of the American edition is extremely misleading. The first volume actually appeared in early 1915. The British were writing the history of the conflict while it was still going on.

  6Joffre, Memoires (76–77). Of course, the chief motive behind Joffre’s account is to justify himself and lay the blame on the government. But the general attitude of the parties of the left, who governed the Third Republic, was a profound distrust, amounting to a fear of the army, an attitude with serious consequences, of which much more later.

  7There is a summary of the tests in Bruce I. Gudmundsson, On Artillery (New York: Prager, 1993), 30.

  8The explosives required for shells were all derived from coal and coke, just as coal was required for the blast furnaces. Before the war, France was heavily dependent on imported coal and ore, the bulk of which came from Germany and Belgium. See Arthur Conte, Joffre (Paris: Oliver Orban, 1991), 261.

  9Général [Alexandre] Percin, L’artillerie aux manouevres de Picardie en 1910 (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1911), v.

  10Georges Boucheron, L’Assaut: L’Argonne et Vauquois avec la 10e division (Paris: Parin, 1917). His description of the October attacks is found on pp. 59–80.

  11Joffre, The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, Field Marshal of the French Army, translated by T. Bentley Mott (New York: Harper, 1932), 2:343.

  12Boucheron mentions only the 270, but implies that there were also 155-millimeter guns involved, as well as the ancient 95s. There is a certain amount of confusion here, since Buffetaut speaks only of the mortars; in addition he speaks of a “batterie of obusiers de 200,” which is curious, since there was no gun of that size in the French inventory. Presumably he’s referring to the 220-millimeter weapons, which, given their caliber, could be termed howitzers (obusiers). To muddy the waters still further, Boucheron speaks of a gun of 150 millimeters, when presumably he means 120, since again, no such weapon existed. The confusion is probably typographical. See Yves Buffetaut in La bataille de Verdun, de l’Argonne à la Woëvre (Tours: Éditions Heimdale, 1990), 35. This is the best short account of the fighting yet written. For the definitive list of the French artillery park, see General [Firmin Émile] Gascouin, L’evolution de l’Artillerie pendant la Guerre (Paris: Flammarion, 1920), 18–19, 29.

  13André Pézard, Nous autres à Vauquois (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre 1917), 63.

  14Service historique, Armées Françaises dans la grande guerre (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1922), 2:520. Note that the volume numbers of this work are misleading; the work is actually divided into tomes, and each one is multivolume (in the normal sense of both words).

  15Gérard Canini, La Lorraine dans la guerre 14–18 (Nancy: Presses universitaires, 1984), 82.

  16General J[ean-Joseph] Rouquerol, Les hauts de Meuse et Saint-Mihiel (Paris: Payot, 1939), 131. Rouquerol also observes that the position had no real value (113). Both to General Rouquerol, writing in 1939, and to Yves Buffetaut in 1993, the position had no military value whatever, which unfortunately seems a fair judgment (Buffetaut, 51).

  17Maurice Genevoix, Les Éparges in Ceux de 14 (Paris: Flammarion, 1950), 565–69.

  18Service historique, Armées Françaises dans la grande guerre (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1922), 2:501. Contrary to what is sometimes implied about official histories, the French one treats losses in surprisingly candid fashion.

  19Quote taken from the official marker at the entrance to the butte: a reminder of how much of the real history of this war is as much archeological as documentary.

  20See, e.g., Michelin Guides, The Battle of Verdun, 1914–1918 (Clermont-Ferrand: Michelin, 1919), 5. The claim has been repeated steadily since then. See the maps in Pétain (from whence most maps come), La bataille de Verdun (Verdun: Fremont, [1931]), 40–41. AEF maps are in American Battle Monuments Commission, American Armies and Battlefields in Europe: A History, Guide, and Reference Book (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938).

  21Information on Henri Collignon taken from the marker erected at the Vauquois. He was 58 years old.

  22The front from the Verdun–Étain road to where it crossed the Moselle above Pont-à-Mousson is almost exactly 96 kilometers, but the upper end of this line, about eight kilometers, was apparently not part of the offensive. The Somme was less than 50 kilometers of front.

  23Including four batteries of 120-millimeter Longs, four batteries of 120-millimeter Shorts, and 155-millimeter Rimailho guns. Data on artillery strength comes from General M. Daille, Histoire de la guerre mondiale: Joffre et la guerre d’usure, 1915–1916 (Paris: Payot, 1936), 2:41, 110, 179. See also Joffre, The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, Field Marshal of the French Army, translated by T. Bentley Mott (New York: Harper, 1932), 2:343–44; General J[ean-Joseph] Rouquerol, Les hauts de Meuse et Saint-Mihiel (Paris: Payot, 1939), 119.

  24The best discussion of this new structure is in Pierre Joseph Camena d’Almeida, L’armée allemande avant et pendant la guerre de 1914–18 (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1919), 208–19. Allied intelligence, optimistic as always, saw this as proof the Germans were desperate for men. For details on how the Germans formed more divisions, see Eugene Carrias, L’armée allemande: son histoire, son organisation, sa tactique (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1938), 101–6.

  25Yves Buffetaut, La bataille de Verdun, de l’Argonne a la Woëvre (Tours: Éditions Heimdale, 1990), 46. See as well General J[ean-Joseph] Rouquerol, Les hauts de Meuse et Saint-Mihiel (Paris: Payot, 1939), 116.

  26Paul Cazin; this excerpt is taken from his diary, which he called La humaniste a la guerre (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1920), 117–26. Along with other members of the regiment, he took part in the attacks around the ruins of Régnéville and the bois Le Prêtre, and then returned to Apremont. On 23 July 1915, after four and a half months at the front, Cazin had a nervous breakdown and was taken to the hospital. Released in September, he served as an army interpreter, working with Polish prisoners of war. Although the récit Cazin titled “The Evil Night” reads like a work of fiction, it is actually a piece of reportage, since it was written a few days after the actual experience. The French historian Jean Norton Cru (the source for this biographical information on Cazin) authenticated it as written shortly after the experiences in April of 1915, probably on April 22, since the passage is inserted between two brief entries marked April 23 and 24.

  27Georges Boucheron, L’assaut: L’Argonne et Vauquois avec le 10e division (Paris: Perrin, 1917), 95–96.

  28Histoire d’une Division de couverture (Paris: la Renaissance du Livre, 1919), 186.

  29[Colonel] Bernard Serrigny, Trente ans avec Pétain (Paris: Plon, 1959), 41.

  30Technically, the eight cemeteries contain 35,902 remains, but the ossuary of La Gruerie supposedly contains 10,000 of these, and one learns to be suspicious of ossuaries with 10,000 remains (or in the case of Verdun, with 100,000 remains).
By contrast, about 17,000 soldiers are buried in the 15 Meuse cemeteries, about 112,000 in the 18 Champagne graveyards, and another 56,000 in the 21 cemeteries of Verdun.

  31As German cemeteries were consolidated from wide areas, comparisons are difficult. However, the sum total of all German war dead buried on the left bank of the Meuse through the Argonne—including the consolidated cemetery of Servon-Melzicourt, which includes about 6,000 remains removed from Champagne, and Brieulles, which is mostly devoted to Verdun dead—comes to only 34,000 remains, a figure that is all-inclusive through 1918.

  32British data from the official history, corrected for certain omissions and displayed in more elaborate form in Arthur Grahame Butler et al., The Australian Medical Services in the War of 1914–18 (Melbourne: Australian War Memorial, 1930–43), 2:261. French data from Service Historiques des Armeés, Inventaire Sommaire des Archives de la Guerre (N24 and N25), (Troyes: La Renaissance, 1967), Annexe 6, corrected for live prisoners of war according to reports made to the Chamber of Deputies as redacted and analyzed in Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (New Haven: Yale, 1931), 135. German figures are found in Heeressanitätsinspekion des Reichsministeriums, Sanitätsbericht über das deutsche Heer in Weltkrieg 1914/18, (Berlin: Reichsministerium, 1935) 3. Tables 155–58.

  6. France’s Winter of Dreams and Discontent

  1The Rise of the Roman Empire, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert (London: Penguin, 1979), Book 36, part 17, 538 (the last sentence but one of the work).

  2Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961): his awareness of the defects in the artillery (139); the surprise about Antwerp (200); importance of the Channel ports (207). Possession of the channel ports enabled the Germans to begin submarine warfare using their rather short-range undersea craft, as these vessels would have been extremely ineffective if forced to rely on German home ports.