The Price of Glory

by Alistair Horne

  Caught out in the open, the German guns had a heavy toll exacted by the long-range French 155s, now arriving in ever-increasing quantities. A splinter killed the commander of III Corps Field Artillery, brave old General Lotterer who had seldom been far from his forward guns during the first phase of the battle. Particularly terrible was the suffering of Franz Marc’s horses; in one day alone, 7,000 died, and 97 were killed by a single shot from a French naval gun. The mere wear-and-tear of the prolonged firing contributed to German losses; after superhuman efforts, one of the monster 420s had been moved up to the Bois des Fosses in order to knock out Fort Souville, but on the third shot a shell exploded in the worn barrel, killing almost the entire crew. When at last the guns were in position, utter exhaustion on the part of the gunners sorely reduced both the rapidity and accuracy of their fire. Finally, over the devastated battlefield and the approach roads — the latter rendered quite chaotic by the even more viscous mud of the Woevre, and clogged with the moving gun-teams — it was impossible to bring up enough ammunition to sustain anything like the rate of fire of the first four days. Supplies became so critical that by March 3rd several batteries of howitzers had to be withdrawn altogether.

  The effect of this decline in German firepower at a moment when the French artillery, reorganised by Pétain, was beginning to be effective, was immediate and lethal. More and more frequently the assaulting infantry discovered that French machine-gun nests had been left untouched by the artillery. It was all becoming depressingly similar to the mournful experiences of every Allied offensive on the Western Front. What, now, of Falkenhayn’s promise that the infantry would just walk into Verdun once the artillery had done its stuff? The casualty lists were growing longer and longer. In the period February 21st-26th, the French losses amounted to 25,000 men, and, although during that time the ratio of French and German casualties was reliably estimated at three to one, by the 29th German losses had already passed the 25,000 mark. On March 1st a French listening post overheard a German remark on the telephone: ‘if it goes on like this we shan’t have a man left after the war’. In III Corps, one battalion of the Prussian Leib Grenadiers had been reduced to 196 strong in the fighting for Douaumont village, and another regiment of the same brigade had, by the second day of March, lost 38 officers and 1,151 men. In XVIII Corps, the three Hessian regiments of the brigade that had overwhelmed Driant in the Bois des Caures had also lost over a thousand men each. Both Corps had to be pulled out of the line, exhausted, on March 12th; by which time the XVIIIth alone had lost 10,309 men and 295 officers.

  But perhaps the most punishing — and undeserved — losses had been suffered by von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps, which had done so brilliantly in the first days of the battle. In its rapid advance up the right bank of the Meuse, it had increasingly exposed its flank to the French on the hills the other side of the river. By February 27th Pétain had amassed a powerful array of heavy batteries there. Even though, forged before the introduction of recoil mechanism, they bounced back and had to be relaid after each shot just like cannon of the Napoleonic era, the elderly French 155s cracked and thundered with remarkable accuracy. Firing visually into the dense grey packs moving across their front on the slopes opposite, only a few thousand yards off, gunners can seldom have had so superb a target. One particularly exposed ravine running down to the Meuse was nicknamed the ‘Bowling Alley’ by the Germans, and indeed the image was an apt one. With extremely heavy losses, the advance of the 77th Brigade over Talou Ridge was stopped in its tracks. The usury paid merely to hold the conquered ground became daily more prohibitive. Nowhere seemed to be safe from the searching French guns; during the first days of March one regiment lost more men while behind the lines in reserve than during its assault on Haumont Wood the first day of the offensive. Worse, the Germans seemed helpless to stop the slaughter. Every available battery was brought to bear on the French guns, but many of these had taken up position behind the parapets of the forts clustered on the Bois Bourrus ridge and were consequently most difficult to hit.

  To General von Zwehl the slaughter of his triumphant corps was particularly galling. On three separate occasions before the war he had taken part in manoeuvres dedicated to the capture of Verdun, and each had ended with the conclusion that the attack would have to be made simultaneously on both banks to obviate the danger of flanking fire. Before the offensive began he had tried in vain to impress this upon his superiors. Now it was his men that were paying the penalty. In desperation he attempted at dawn on the 27th to throw a force across the Meuse at Samogneux, but the attackers were caught up on wire entanglements hidden beneath the flooded river. Almost all of them were either drowned or captured. Von Zwehl now dispatched his Chief of Staff to the Crown Prince to urge once again, and in no uncertain terms, that a full-scale attack be launched on the Left Bank.

  As the German losses mounted, an eye-witness tells of a battle-shocked captain, summoned to his Battalion Commander, exclaiming: ‘What!… Battalion? Is there still such a thing?’ Elsewhere a General described the spectacle of wounded men that streamed back uncontrollably past his HQ as being ‘like a vision of hell’. Each commander began to beseech his immediate superior for reinforcements. But, by February 25th, the day when the way to Verdun was wide open, the whole Fifth Army had only one fresh regiment left in reserve. The Crown Prince telephoned Falkenhayn urgently for the reinforcements he had been promised. They were not, and would not be, forthcoming. Battalions that had lost four hundred men received half that number of replacements, in driblets. Meanwhile, the two promised divisions, which, had they been available at the right moment, would almost certainly have presented Verdun to the Germans, were still firmly held at Metz, two day’s march away. And Falkenhayn had no intention of releasing his grip on them until the bulk of the French Army had been lured into his trap. The remainder of the German reserves on the Western Front were sitting uselessly opposite the British, awaiting the relief offensive that Haig manifestly had neither the will nor the wherewithal to make. Thus Falkenhayn through his pusillanimity, his passion for half-measures and his obsession with the ‘bleeding white’ experiment, on February 25th-26th lost the opportunity of bringing off one of the greatest triumphs of the war. It was one that would never recur. Little did he know then, but he had thrown away probably the last good chance that Germany had of winning the war.

  Among the German miscalculations that on various historical occasions have seemed Heaven-sent to save the Allies, Falkenhayn’s denial of reserves to the Crown Prince reminds one of Hider halting his Panzers before they closed in on the BEF at Dunkirk, different though the motives may have been. But whatever blame for the German failure in the first week at Verdun may attach to Falkenhayn (and in his Memoirs the Crown Prince heaps all of it on him), the Fifth Army Command was not entirely beyond reproach. It is felt by responsible military critics, French and German, that the Crown Prince could still have taken Verdun on the initial thrust without the reserves withheld by Falkenhayn. Certainly, in its execution of the attack the Fifth Army had displayed a cumbersomeness and excess of caution that would never have been countenanced by most of Hider’s captains. By limiting itself to cautious probing on the 21st (all except for the disobedient von Zwehl who had registered the day’s only success), it had lost a valuable day. As late as the 24th, when it was obvious the whole French front was collapsing, the German storm troops still waited for a renewed artillery preparation, and then moved circumspectly, as if half-expecting to walk into some kind of trap. It seemed as if, after eighteen months of complete stalemate on the Western Front, with neither side able to make a breakthrough, the subordinate German commanders at Verdun had lost confidence to succeed where so many others had failed.

  On the last day of February a conference took place between the Crown Prince and his staff, and General von Falkenhayn. What was the Fifth Army to do next? The atmosphere was hardly warm. All Falkenhayn could set against the Fifth Army’s disappointment at Verdun was the news that the simu
ltaneous U-boat campaign (as ordained in his Memorandum to the Kaiser) had already had outstanding success. As he dwelt particularly on the menace of the French positions on the Left Bank, the Heir to the Throne must have had some difficulty hiding a note of ‘I-told-so-you-so’. For Falken-hayn, in his insistence on limiting the attack to one bank only, had stood in an isolation that was hardly splendid. General de Rivières, the creator of Verdun fortress had warned that its Achilles Heel lay on the Left Bank. There was the lesson of the pre-war German manoeuvres, and the fact that all Falkenhayn’s artillery advisers had stressed the necessity of attacking on both sides of the Meuse. And even Crown Prince Rupprecht, far removed from Verdun, had warned him days before the offensive began that the advance would be halted by flanking fire from the Left Bank. But the cold, aloof Commander-in-Chief had asked no one for advice, and had taken none. In his Memoirs he claims feebly he had foreseen the dangers, but believed that with the limited forces available an attack on the Left Bank would have been stopped by the ‘well-constructed’ enemy position. (In fact, the French lines there on February 21st were no better prepared than they had been on the Right Bank, and the rejoinder that if he had not had adequate forces he should not have undertaken the offensive in the first place is almost too obvious).

  Asked for his views on the future of the offensive, the Crown Prince said, however, that he thought it should continue. Undoubtedly progress would henceforth be more difficult now surprise had been lost, but the prospects of a ‘considerable moral and material victory’ were still immensely enticing. He insisted on three conditions. Firstly, the offensive must be spread at once to the Left Bank; not, now, because this might represent the best way to Verdun, but ‘rather on the tactical necessity of relieving our main attack’. Secondly, he must be ‘absolutely assured that the High Command was in a position to furnish us with the necessary men and material for the continuance of the offensive, and that not by driblets, but on a large scale’. Thirdly, the campaign should be halted the moment ‘we ourselves were losing more heavily and becoming exhausted more rapidly than the enemy’.

  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.