Chapter IV: Book II: The Battle (1)

I

THE FLIGHT OF THE RAVENS

THE observers on aeroplanes or balloons who saw the volcano burst into flame declared that they could not mark on their maps all the batteries that were in action. The woods of Consenvoye, Moirey, Hingry, and Grémilly, the forests of Spincourt and Mangiennes, the hillsides of Romagne and Mormont, breathed fire like myriads of monstrous dragons.

The commander of a company of light infantry, who was wounded in the foot in Caures Wood, stated: “The intensity of the firing was such that when we came out into the open we no longer recognised the country which we had known for four months. There was scarcely a tree left standing. It was very difficult to walk about, because the ground was so broken up with the holes made by the shells. The defences were very much damaged, but there was such an entangled mass of barbed wire and broken branches that the whole still formed a serious obstacle to the offensive. The communication trenches no longer existed. The main trenches, on the other hand, had been badly knocked about, but were still serviceable; they were instantly manned.”

“They were instantly manned”--this remark proves the superiority of the human will to all the mechanical forces that science can let loose. The supreme command drew from it this deduction: “What the artillery achieves is the weakening of the material resources of the defence and the wearing down of its morale, not its complete overthrow.”

Of this hurricane of fire the fort received its full share.

“Those are 150 mm. shells. Here come some 210 mm. Ah, these are surely 380 mm. My vaults are ringing. My vaults are still sound. How are my transverse galleries? They’re resisting. And my turret? It is still standing. The observing stations? One has been touched. I can see quite well with one eye. Besides, the damage can perhaps still be made good. A breach in the counterscarp? They’ll make it firmer when they stop it up. My big neighbour, Douaumont, has come off even worse than I. He attracts the lightning like some stately oak on a hilltop. I should like to know what is going on. My telephones are no longer working. I am cut off from the rest of the world. Such a storm cannot last. Let us wait for the end.”

The end does not come, the storm continues to roar and rumble, but bad news comes up the hillsides, no one knows how. On both banks of the Meuse villages are burning, forests crackling, stones crumbling.

The nearer one is to things that are happening, the less information one can glean about them. The ration fatigue parties are still the best source of news. But these cooks certainly draw the long bow; they tell some alarming tales.

“Caures Wood was lost the second day.”

“Caures Wood? Impossible! Driant is there!--unless Driant is dead.”

“They don’t know what has become of him. And if it were only Caures Wood that was lost!”

If they are to be believed, Herbebois and Chaume Wood, the village of Ornes and, in the Woevre, Fromezay and Herméville--the last two abandoned intentionally, in order to gain support on the Meuse Heights--are in the enemy’s hands. Confound those croakers! They are trying to sow the seeds of panic. Their work is certainly carried on under great difficulties. There is no job like it, except that of the scouts. And even the scouts have no load to bear: they jump lightly from shell-hole to shell-hole; they lie down, burrow themselves in, disappear, get up again, dart off like arrows, and again lay themselves out flat when the hail of bullets cuts off their road. You cannot get along very fast with twenty bowls on your back and water-bottles slung across your shoulders, or a whole grocer’s shop of tinned food, or bags filled with every kind of provender, and, to crown it all, a mask on your face which half stifles you. (The mask is worn because of all the poison-gases which linger long in the ravines and rifts in the ground, and lie in wait for you, like footpads to seize you by the throat.) The bottoms of the valleys are all but impassable. The enemy have got the range of all the roads and have battered them. The second and third lines have suffered as badly from “Jack Johnsons” as the first. Never, within the memory of men who went out on the first day of the war and have come back, Heaven knows how, from the Marne and the Yser, from Artois and Champagne, have we had to face such a deluge of fire and steel. So a cook here is a soldier who comes from the back to the front with honour as well as his burden.

On the fourth day a liaison officer assures us that Les Fosses Wood and Les Caurières Wood have been lost.

“They are already in the La Vauche ravine.”

“In the La Vauche ravine? Then Douaumont will see them.”

And now the news grows more abundant, with more men coming and going: reliefs, wounded, stragglers, fatigue parties meet on the hillsides, under the never-ending shower of shells which is aimed particularly at the fort and its immediate approaches. One needs a sober head to extract a certain measure of truth from these alarming and often contradictory reports. _They_ have been seen at Dieppe, _they_ have been seen quite near Damloup. In the end, _they_ are seen everywhere. The fort, which cheerfully digests its daily ration of projectiles, listens philosophically to these unsettling rumours. It now knows how solid its walls are. What interests it more than anything is the fate of Douaumont.

Well, on the evening of February 25, a Friday, an evening when all who go out are soaked with snow and numbed with cold, comes a wounded man looking for his way. He has hobbled up the hill, the blood from his thigh-wound staining the hasty dressing, and reaches the postern, red-eyed and spattered with blood and mud. He dares to announce that they have entered Fort Douaumont. Now, really, that is hard to believe. However much you may want your neighbour to get a few hard knocks, you cannot hear of his sudden death without a protest! A fort is not swallowed up like that. And a fort is not a place of refuge. It does not receive any guest without question. Go your way, you trafficker in bad tidings! Still, before you go, give some details, if you have any to give.

“_They_ were seen on the banquettes. It was even thought that they were Zouaves. Zouaves in their khaki uniforms.”

“Why, it _was_ the Zouaves. They passed here yesterday to go and take up their position.”

“Zouaves would not have fired at us with their rifles.”

“They mistook you for Boches.”

Night is a bad time for clearing up a mystery. It is better to count on to-morrow. But our hopes are doomed to be shattered. Next day some riflemen who have drifted back confirm the news. The Germans are at Douaumont.

Vaux no longer dreams of talking lightly about the misfortunes of an old comrade. For years they had mounted guard together before Verdun. They lived the same life, a life that was rather sad and lonely. They saw each other at a distance, they signalled to each other. One relied on the other in battle as on a trench-mate. If one is dying, the other is in danger. And from the observing-station which is still intact the fort inspects the slopes of Hardaumont and La Caillette, the treacherous ravines and the bare plain of the Woevre.

On Sunday, February 27, its little garrison is strengthened. The reinforcements, Territorials from Verdun, bring us no end of rumours. Are they laying on the colours too thick? We shall know later on or never. They say that the Boche has flung himself at Verdun with Hell’s own artillery (that we knew already, and besides, consider the country round the fort!); that he expected to smash, kill, destroy everything and to advance, shouldering arms, over a cleared terrain; that he has found his match instead of the dead whom he hoped to trample on, and that now fresh troops of ours are coming up: the stroke has failed, the road is blocked. Joffre has been watching and waiting, to strike at a time and place of his own choosing. What is more, Castelnau has come, and Pétain is there, getting ready to take over command. If Castelnau has come and Pétain is in command, all will be well.

“And Douaumont? Tell me about Douaumont.”

“The fort is taken. Didn’t you know?”

“I knew, but I wouldn’t believe it.”

“They won’t be left in possession. We are preparing to retake it from them.”

“That’ll be a tough job. Those birds like to settle in strange nests. Before you can look round, they have dug themselves in. Tell me anything else you know.”

The fort whispers to itself, “And even what you don’t know.” For stones have experience, and therefore irony.

“Well, the Iron Division is there. Others, too, which are unfamiliar to me. At Douaumont village there is a colonel who says, ‘So long as I have breath in my body, the Boche won’t get in.’”

“It’s always risky to say things like that.”

“The Boches have not got in. They were stopped in front of the village. Our machine-guns mowed them down there by hundreds.”

“And that colonel is still alive?”

“Yes. He was picked up, and I met him. He has a calm face and fiery eyes. He never raises his voice, yet you hear that voice inside you, controlling you and making you march. It was in his regiment that in Brulé Wood, towards St. Mihiel, an adjutant shouted, ‘Arise, ye dead!’”

“And did the dead answer?”

“What would you expect them to answer?”

“The dead always answer when they are called. The dead have made the nation which the living carry on. It is the dead who have built me. And the dead are bone of thy bone and flesh of thy flesh, as they are stone of my stone.”

The sentries, however, have been doubled. Since the enemy is at Douaumont, since he has descended into the Woevre, he is likely to attempt the assault any day. On March 8 he attacks Vaux village; on the 9th and 10th he hurls himself against both village and fort.

The fort, on its hill, resists the storm, like a ship battered by the waves.

Above the battlefield, in the plains of the air, electric waves started from afar are recorded in signs at the receivers and by wireless telegraphy transmit the war news to headquarters, to the nation, to the whole world. They cross each other like flocks of migrant birds, and engage in mysterious conflicts.

On February 26 Germany lets loose a first raven, bearing this message:

“To the east of the Meuse, in the presence of His Majesty the Emperor and King, we achieved some notable gains. Our gallant troops seized the heights to the south-east of Louvemont, the village of Louvemont and the fortified position farther to the east. With a vigorous push forward some Brandenburg regiments reached the village and the armoured fort of Douaumont, which they took by storm. In the Woevre, the enemy’s resistance was shattered on the whole front in the Marchéville district (to the south of the Paris-Metz road). Our troops are pressing hard upon the enemy in his retreat.”

No assault was made upon Fort Douaumont; it was taken by surprise. All the German attacks on Douaumont village were a complete failure. The Woevre was evacuated by a strategic manœuvre, and the enemy, in a distrustful mood, only ventured upon it with considerable qualms, had to stop in front of Manheulles on February 27, and was unable to enter Fresnes until March 7. But how much better it looks in a communiqué to represent those worthy Brandenburgers as scaling the glacis of a fort under fire, putting ladders to the counterscarp, climbing to the assault, crossing the ditches, happy to conquer or die under the benign gaze of His Majesty the Emperor and King, who was no doubt present at the ceremony with a golden helmet on his head and a golden sword in his hand! A taste for romantic visions prevails in the German Great General Staff.

The second raven is more daring. It is sent forth on March 9 and announces to an eagerly listening world the capture of Fort Vaux. It is the pendant to Douaumont: a diptych offered to the nations.

“To the east of the river (Meuse), in order to shorten the connections to the south of Douaumont with our Woevre lines, the village, the armoured fort of Vaux, and the numerous neighbouring fortifications belonging to the enemy were seized after the way had been vigorously cleared by our artillery, in a brilliant night attack by the Posen reserve regiments, Nos. 6 and 19, under the direction of Infantry General von Guretsky-Cornitz, Commander of the 9th Reserve Division.”

How could the attentive world dare to cast doubts on the veracity of a wireless message so definite and so inspiring? The day and hour are given, the numbers of the regiments, the name and title of the General who held command. Such details cannot be invented. Detail is the strong point of the German method. Learning is nothing but a knowledge of details. History? Details or a series of detailed statements.

Has Fort Vaux been taken? How should it not have been, seeing that it is General von Guretsky-Cornitz, commanding the 6th and 19th Posen regiments, who took it? Obviously, on the one side, there is the General with his two regiments, and on the other there is Fort Vaux. How could Fort Vaux fail to lodge the General and his two regiments with him? “Is that trunk ours?” asked Robert Macaire of the faithful Bertrand. And he at once concluded: “It must be ours.” “Is the fort ours?” the Boche asks himself. “It must be ours.” And he at once announces the fact.

The only drawback is that the fort is not his. It takes this liberty on March 8, and again on March 9, and again on the 10th. General von Guretsky-Cornitz, Commander of the 9th Reserve Division, gains nothing by vigorously clearing the way with his artillery and by making a brilliant night attack. Yet the German supreme command dares not confess to the world that the haughty General von Guretsky-Cornitz has befooled it. Hastily, on March 10, it sends out a third raven, with this message under his wing:

“The French have made violent counter-attacks on our new front to the east and south of the village, as well as near Fort Vaux. In the course of these engagements the enemy managed to regain a footing in the armoured fort itself. Everywhere else the enemy were repulsed with heavy losses.”

That is how the game is played. “Let us give back the fort to the French, since they are there and have always been there. Let us give it back, for we are honest and loyal: we give back what we haven’t got. What ground have the French for complaint? We have given them back a fort by a counter-attack. We credit them with a counter-attack which they have never made. We ascribe to them a success which they have not obtained. The world will admire us. The world will say: ‘There is true Teutonic frankness. The Germans had taken Fort Vaux. It was a splendid gain. Next day they lost it. Well, they don’t hesitate to proclaim the fact. We can certainly rely on the German communiqués. They confess the truth when things go against them. They play the game.’”

But lying requires a continuity of effort of which the most cunning impostors are rarely capable. It is only the man who tells the truth that never burns his fingers. Three months later--measure those three months later: exactly eighty-eight days, in other words the whole interval between the announcement of March 9 and the real fall of the fort, June 7 in the early morning, eighty-eight days of heat and cold, of weariness, of thirst and lack of sleep, of bombardments and assaults--three months later Fort Vaux is really taken. The German High Command knows what the cost is. It proudly announces the news. It forgets its wireless message of March 9. It says, “The armoured fort Vaux is occupied by us....” It does not say, it does not dare to say, “The armoured fort of Vaux is reoccupied by us....”

II

THE ROAD

(MARCH 11)

Here is Verdun, like a Florence of the North in the midst of its amphitheatre of hills. After days of frost and snow, so pitiless to our men in the demolished trenches which are now mere conglomerations of shell-holes, a soft spring air has suddenly come to relax the numbed limbs and the frozen earth. The surprise is so great that it brings to unaccustomed lips that charming and unexpected name of Florence. It is the hour of sunset, a sunset that bathes the undulating line of the hills in gold and mauve, and lights up the dismal waters of the flooded Meuse.

At the foot of the gloomy cathedral, so different from the graceful Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs with its coloured marble, one crosses a passage under half-ruined walls and reaches a terrace which looks out over all the tragedy of Verdun: gutted houses stripped of their outer wall and with their furniture hanging loose like the inwards of slaughtered cattle; crumbled façades, doors opening on the void, slashed and jagged fragments of walls, often topped by tall, useless chimneys. All this, which is now a mere shapeless mass of rubbish, was once the Rue Mazel, the busiest, gayest, and liveliest quarter of Verdun, and of that war-time Verdun which was far more bright, animated, and amusing than the Verdun of peaceful days. The bombardment has brought into prominence the ancient ramparts, dating, no doubt, from the time of the prince-bishops, which girdle the upper city and around which the ruins of the new city now group themselves. A stray dog, the sole living creature that wanders through the deserted streets, utters plaintive barks. Shells fall on Jardin-Fontaine. Right above the city one aeroplane is chasing another. You hear the tick-tack of their machine-guns; the German hastily makes his way back to his own lines....

I am living in a whitewashed cell in a Verdun barracks. Rolled up in a blanket, I am sleeping on a camp-bed, when Major P----rushes in like a whirlwind and, flashing his little electric lamp, wakes me up with a start. At the outset of the campaign he had offered me a more sumptuous hospitality in the cellars of Berry-au-Bac. The cellars of Berry-au-Bac were replete with carpets, armchairs, mirrors, and art bronzes. We ate from patterned china, and drank from fine glass. Even if the tableware was an odd set, it gave one an impression of wealth and luxury.

We took a boat down the Aisne. At times the bullets accompanied us like a swarm of bees, and the water seemed to prolong their mournful whistle. When we went down, in order to get shelter, into those famous vaulted cellars, decorated like drawing-rooms, whose mirrors double the perspective, we basked in unexpected comfort.

“Do you want to go to Fort Vaux?” the major asks me, point-blank. “It’s the chance of a lifetime. Three officers are needed to-night--one at the fort, the other at Vaux village, the third at Damloup. We start in a quarter of an hour.”

I had expressed a wish to make this pilgrimage. My wish is now to be granted; the order is immediately given.

“It is essential,” he adds, “to start at night, so as to explore the ground in the early morning.”

A quarter of an hour later we get into a motor-car--Captain L---- of the Army Corps Staff and I. On the way we pick up Captain H---- of the Divisional Staff.

We follow the Étain road, then leave the car to scramble up a wooded slope and reach the divisional headquarters. The zone of death begins. The road which we have just left is bordered by an inextricable mass of fragments of waggons, open sacks, dirty harness, rifles, and distended bodies of horses, their legs in the air, their bellies ripped open. In the wood, our route is sometimes obstructed by broken branches, and our feet catch on tree-stumps or stumble in the craters. When the shells plough up the soil in our vicinity, a column of black smoke, like sooty dust, poisons the clear night air.

For the night is perfectly clear. Between the trees the moon sheds a bluish light, a sort of softened day, delicate and modest, as if she refused to let us probe the wounds of the earth.

We now go down into a ravine by a path that winds like a mountain track. The gradient is steep, and it is best to go quickly; the enemy have obtained the range of the place, and it is shelled without respite. A corpse is there, and has to be strode over. Lower down, in front of headquarters, there is another that seems to sleep under its helmet. A pious hand has put the helmet back over the mangled face.

We enter the dug-out. After a passage, where the liaison officers lie sleeping close together, comes a wainscoted room, with a chair and a table and, at the back, an iron bedstead. The chief, General de B----, is poring over his map. He sits up in his chair when he sees us. He is young and cheerful, with clear eyes and an incisive manner of speech. Only one sign of weariness: the hollows under his eyes. How many such leaders I have seen in action! Surmounting physical ordeals and dangers, bearing without a murmur the weight of all the lives entrusted to their charge, when their most loyal aides were succumbing to sleep or anxiety, they quietly bent their brains to the study of a plan of campaign and carefully arranged, without the dangerous counsels of feverish haste, the minutest details of some operation.

The Germans are at the foot of the Fort Vaux and even half-way up. The slopes descend gently at first, in front of the fort, for a space of three or four hundred yards at most, then they rush down abruptly to the Woevre plain. This rapid descent makes a right angle which our artillery cannot touch because of its trajectories. The Germans are established there. It is important that they should be dislodged. What line do they follow below Hardaumont, past the village, and, farther to the east, near Damloup? Before action is taken, this point must be accurately determined. There has been fighting these last few days, and the position remains slightly confused. Our caravan, then, will split up into three: each of us will have his objective--Vaux, the fort, and Damloup--and each his guide.

I recall those confabulations on the mountains before undertaking a climb which offered some difficulty or other, or, in Lovitel’s hut in Dauphiné, those little councils of war on the eve of a chamois hunt: one would take this path, another that couloir; another speaks of a dangerous place, and thinks it best to use a rope. After this, at daybreak, we shake hands and set off, each by his own route, to meet at the appointed place.

We go up the side of the ravine again and come to a wood that grows sparser and sparser. Yes, it is indeed the beginning of a difficult climb. The air is keen, and so bright is the moon that the stars are scarcely visible. As we climb higher the vegetation becomes more scanty; the trees are now stunted--a few hardy larches, with twisted roots, persist in growing; then comes the zone of sickly shrubs; finally there is nothing left but the bare ground. The same order is found here; around me there are a large number of trees, but they are in fragments, the branches broken, the trunks battered, the roots protruding from the riven soil, and soon they are nothing but miserable broomsticks. The summit, where lies the region of ice and desolation, cannot be far off.

Yet the mountain has the unrivalled advantage of silence. We accustom ourselves so quickly to the murmur of the torrents that roll at the bottom., and even that murmur is like the hidden refrain that accompanies a day-dream. Here we are obsessed by that continual, sharp, menacing, formidable whistle which precedes the bursting of a shell. And sometimes we have to stop, to lie down or to plunge into a crater--there are only too many places to choose from--and wait until the storm has passed over. When the curtain fire breaks off for a while, we resume our journey. The ground is riddled like a sieve; at the cross-roads the corpses, men or horses, lie in piles. The light of the moon covers them with a mysterious winding sheet.

We stop at the stone quarry which forms the brigade headquarters. There, too, a chief is still awake, and finishing a plan of operations. Tall, very youthful-looking, with a ringing voice and a hearty manner, he too appears one of those born trainers of men who know how to unite method with dash. What a clearness they all show in their reports and anticipations! What importance they attach to the sparing of lives! What frankness in their tone, what an art of going straight to the point! Here there is no longer any toadying or vanity or desire to please. A sort of moral elevation, the result of their leadership, has come to mark their character. When one is acquainted with the matter in hand, a simple telephone conversation is a model of clear language and logical reasoning.

Thus, from one post to another, the dialogue is prolonged into the night. One seems to visit a series of catacombs where a rite is performed by the dim light of the sanctuary lamp. One goes away with a sense of religious reverence.

“Good luck!” says the colonel to me, as he escorts me out over the threshold. “I am going to rest for a few hours.”

It is two o’clock in the morning.

The worst part of the journey is still to come; fifteen to eighteen hundred yards over a tableland, which by day is here and there vaguely guarded from sight by copses--what copses!--but for the greater part of the time is quite devoid of cover. By moonlight our outlines will scarcely stand out above the road over the ridge; the return journey, if we set out again after sunrise, will be a little more complicated.

We walk in Indian file, the guide, Captain P---- of the Brigade Staff, who wished to accompany me, and myself. The shells fall like hail. The earth which they have churned up has crumbled to such an extent that it looks like a mass of cinders. Fifteen to eighteen hundred yards is much farther than one thinks. One has time to make a rapid mental survey of one’s whole career.

Again it is mountaineering memories that surge up in my brain. This time it is the journey through a gorge, the Neuweisthor, between the valley of Fée and that of Zermatt in the Valais Alps. We had taken an unfamiliar path; we had to follow a ridge, which on either side looked out over a precipice; on the right, we could make out a very uninviting crevasse; on the left, right at the bottom, the little Italian village of Macugagna appeared at such a sheer drop beneath us that we had the feeling that, if we were to stumble, we should certainly roll down to it, two or three thousand feet below. The ridge was so narrow that we could not place one foot alongside of the other, and we did not know where to pitch our ice-axes. To make matters worse, while the guide was a level-headed man, the porter who brought up the rear of our roped party had fuddled himself with drink before starting. We were at the mercy of a false step on the part of this tippler. But his professional honour had passed into his legs. The ridge ends in a sort of stone tower where one may gain a really firm foothold and breathe freely. There, on turning round, I saw my man, streaming with sweat and his eyes starting out of his head; he had worked all the alcohol out of his system and had fully recovered his faculties as guide.

The track that we are now pursuing is not so hard to follow, but in other ways it is beset with terrors. Every moment we have to walk across bodies flung across it. At every ten or twelve yards, soon at every five or six paces, we are compelled to stride over a corpse, or even bunches of corpses, some slashed and torn, others in a running posture as if they had been overtaken while in full activity. The light of the moon softens the horror of their wounds without altogether veiling it. Many of them belong to the scouts who ensure connections, carry orders, show routes to be followed. In this war, where men vie with one another in every kind of heroism, we must pay a special tribute to those soldiers who, while their comrades dig themselves in as best they can under the hurricane of fire, run about in the open in order to make up for signalling difficulties or for the breaking of telephone wires. Thanks to these men, efforts are co-ordinated and an understanding is maintained at all points of the front, so that the chain of unity holds together. If one falls, there is at once another to take his place. The remainder are always ready; they even offer their services before their turn comes. Prepared to go upon the most perilous errands, they form a mobile guard round their chief; they are the projecting rays of his brain, which, through them, directs men’s wills from afar and draws up or corrects the plans of an operation. Those who have fallen there, or at any rate some of them, seem to have assumed in death the attitude of those antique youths who handed on to each other the sacred torch in the race. Is it the moon that helps me to see these broken statues? Shall I once more find such marble visions by daylight? The crude light of day does not do justice to the beauty of death.

The soldier who acts as our guide marches at a good rate. He gives the signal to stop when a shell falls too close to us, or when the cadence of the explosions points to a systematic curtain fire. He does not pick out the places for halting, and makes us come to a standstill suddenly with corpses under our very noses, lucky indeed if our faces are not splashed with fragments of flesh crushed once more by that ghastly pestle.

But why does he stop at this moment? Just now the tempo seems to be slackening. Surely we ought to take advantage of this respite. Ah, there he is, stripping a dead soldier! He half-raises him and takes off one by one the straps which the man wears in banderole. In this way he unfastens four or five water-bottles, each holding four pints. These he unscrews and sniffs at in turn, not without anxiety on account of the shells which might interrupt him at his task. His face lights up: the water is drinkable. The man whom he has stripped so methodically carried a supply of water for replenishment, and water on this dried-up tableland is as precious as in the desert. The place from which it is drawn is at the foot of the hillside: you are not sure of getting there or of coming back. At the fort, so many lips are thirsty for fresh water!

The guide, with his water-bottle straps round his waist, hastily resumes his journey, drawing us after him as a roebuck draws a pack of hounds.

At this pace we pass a caravan of porters loaded with a consignment of grenades. They are marching as fast as their burden allows them, under the rain of steel. The only means of transport here is the human back. Poor little men, whose heart is still the greatest of all military forces! “It is a scientific war,” people have declared. “Victory lies with munitions. It is the munitions that crush and destroy everything.” Well, when the artillery thinks to have destroyed everything, the human will still offers a wall of flesh as a resistance: men have endured everything--fire, hunger, cold, and thirst--and still they rise out of the shattered soil. No war will be found to have given such examples of the superiority of man to the machine.

The countryside looks all scorched and burnt. The lava of a volcano, the shocks of an earthquake, all the cataclysms of nature would not have flayed it more unmercifully. It is a chaos without a name, a circle in Dante’s Inferno. I rack my memory for parallel scenes; perhaps certain Alpine solitudes where the glaciers have withdrawn or the moraines alternate with precipices--solitudes that have never heard the song of a bird or felt the contact of a living creature.

The craters meet and open like the yawning mouths of volcanoes. Broken branches, scattered boulders, detritus of all kinds and shreds of human flesh are mingled. A nameless stench rises from the tortured soil.

In front of us rises a wall covered with earth. There are gashes in it, and through these cracks the stones have fallen into the ditch. On the whole, however, it has borne the avalanche without flinching. Three-quarters of the vaulted door is masked by a mass of concrete dislodged by a 380 or 420 mm. shell. It is like the cave of the Cyclops, which had a rock for its door and which received Ulysses and his companions. Past the open space we scurry along quickly, for it is specially favoured by the enemy’s artillery, as the corpses, more numerous here, bear witness. Even so did the Cyclops kill all strangers.

What is my surprise at finding the interior of the fort undamaged! It must have been built of solid materials to resist such a hammering. The staircase, the passages, the rooms are crammed. A curious sight is the swarm of men under the electric lights: sleepers lying in every conceivable pose, some stretched out anywhere, others curled up so as to occupy the least possible space, all impervious to noises, refusing to wake up, enjoying the delicious relaxation of sleep removed from danger; fatigue parties making their way with difficulty through the crush; guards going on or returning from duty; wounded men with white bandages on their wounds; isolated squads looking for their company. One guesses the cause of this confusion, which will have to be remedied. The fort, on its tableland, plays the part of those mountain refuges where lost caravans come to find shelter from the storm. It is a haven of safety; he who succeeds in crossing the danger-zone can breathe freely under the arched vaults.

Little by little the march past becomes more orderly, and organization is introduced into the mob. The right is reserved for those coming in, the left for those going out. Here is the ambulance, there is the guard-room, there is the orderly-room.

On our arrival our guide is received with enthusiasm. His array of water-bottles earns him an ovation. Thirst is working havoc here. The nearest source of water is in the Fontaines ravine, and that ravine is constantly peppered with shot. Yet men risk their skins to go and get a drink. Water creates such pitiful mirages. In the shapeless furrows which serve them as shelters, the troops, with parched lips, wait for water with feverish impatience; they are reduced sometimes to drinking the tainted water that stagnates in the shell-holes, and to other strange expedients. Who will ever tell of all the horrors endured for Verdun and for that France which is behind Verdun?

A soldier, somewhat elderly, no doubt a Territorial, comes in with rolls of bread on his back. He is near collapsing; he pants, the sweat pours off him in big drops, his face is white as chalk.

“You are alone?” asks the sergeant of the guard. “Where is the rest of the fatigue?”

The man makes a vague gesture. The rest of the fatigue has not followed, will never get here. Still, the rations it was bringing must be looked for. Where will they be found? Far from here? Another gesture of weariness, of indifference, of ignorance--one cannot guess which.

“Well, do explain yourself!”

The soldier lays down his load and stands up straight.

“I’ll go back,” is all he says. And he crosses the threshold again, followed by two men whom the sergeant has told off.

The commandant of the fort made me visit his domain, the casemates of Bourges, the observing stations, of which one is still fit for use, the cupola deprived of its 75-mm. gun. We run across the commander of the 3rd Battalion of Light Infantry, who holds the sector in front of the fort up to the village, and the battalion chaplain, the Abbé C----, who, under his helmet, with his weather-beaten features and his long beard, looks like a crusader rather than a monk. The latter comes from the neighbouring redoubt, a little earthwork where he had set up a dressing station, which he has had to remove.

“Yesterday,” he told me, “our riflemen brought in a prisoner, groaning loudly and constantly repeating in a piteous tone, ‘Vier Kinder! Vier Kinder!’ (Four children!)” For the benefit of those who knew no German, he made gestures illustrating a row of figures of different heights and counted up to four on his fingers. Our men put him in a corner of the redoubt, which is very narrow, while they themselves, for want of room, remained in the doorway, exposed to the bursting shells. The commandant, as he passed by, ordered them to abandon this Quixotic arrangement.

Stroking his beard, he adds philosophically: “After all, whatever comes here comes from the prisoner’s lines. It is only fair that he should be able to appreciate its quality.”

The commandant of the fort leads me out on to the parapets, which are continually being demolished and continually repaired.

“Be careful; in order to get there we have to cross as quickly as possible a zone which is under fire from an enemy machine-gun!”

More treacherous than the whistling of shells, the bullets pass above our heads, but he himself does not hurry in the least. Here are posted, in the hollowed-out earth, finding places as best they can, the look-out men, and in shelters very little safer, our machine-guns.

Dawn begins to appear, eclipsing the light of the moon. Half lying on the parapet, I see a glorious spring sunrise. It awakens the plains of the Woevre, lighting up the rivulets and pools. Here is Vaux village on the right, and Damloup village on the left. Farther on, that large cluster of ruined houses must be Étain. In the rising sun they form a white lace*-work of stone, recalling the cities of the East. And yonder are the frowning hillsides of Hardaumont. Douaumont towers above, Douaumont still swathed in darkness, like an evil spirit.

More efficiently than the enemy, the sunshine climbs the slopes of the fort. It is light and airy, like a bearer of good tidings. Smiling, it shows me, in front, two or three hundred yards beyond the counterscarp, on the sloping turf, several greenish lumps almost dressed in line. They are the bodies of Germans mown down in the onslaughts of March 9. They have fallen in front of the barbed wire. One could count them. Already their numbers are diminished. At night their comrades draw them into their lines by means of hooks or ropes.

The sun has left the rim of the earth and is speedily mounting the horizon. The morning is of an exquisite softness that contrasts strangely with the tragic scene. Behind me is chaos, in front a charnel-heap. Yet up above a lark is singing. His wings flap and his claws quiver, but he does not change his place in the rose-tinted heavens. I watch this sweet songster fluttering overhead, as if it were pecking at the light. A look-out man raises his eyes to catch sight of it. He looks at it tenderly for a moment, then resumes his watching. The passing shells do not disturb it in the slightest.

What is happening down there, among the corpses in green uniforms? One of them has made a movement; he glides through the grass like a snake. The enemy uses his dead as a screen or a blind, and is coming in this way to spy out the land. A look-out man has also observed this uncanny resurrection. He fires. Nothing moves. We must have been mistaken. A long time afterwards, a little below the suspected point, a body jumps up and abruptly disappears at a spot where the gradient is very steep and forms dead ground.

As in the mountains, I sweep the horizon with my gaze and give names to the valleys and hills. Douaumont, on my right, is the loftiest summit (1200 feet); only Souville, at the back, makes any approach to this. It seems like some incubus weighing upon the whole surrounding country. I am separated from it by the wooded slopes of Vaux-Chapître, by the ravine of Le Bazil, whose existence I guess at, and by the rising wood of La Caillette. Above the Woevre, Hardaumont rears its head like a cliff. The Woevre stretches out as far as the eye can see, broken up with undergrowth and villages and streaked with roads. In broad daylight I get a better idea of its bareness, which was veiled by the kindly dawn. Its untilled soil resembles a vast marsh. On the right my eyes rest on the dark blur of Herméville Wood. The outlying spurs of the Meuse Heights hide a portion of it from view.

It is there, towards the village, over against those hillsides, over against Damloup, that the enemy’s onslaught was shattered. And the fort, on its plateau, with its superstructure half crushed, with breaches in its double wall, seems like the formidable hulk of an ironclad which still floats upon the waters, not yet abandoned by its crew. The storm thought to overwhelm it, and it has vanquished the storm.

We stayed very late, in order to see everything, in accordance with our instructions. Nine o’clock in the morning; the sun is already high in the heavens. The sky is clear, the day is a good one for observations, and the Boche balloons are watching us. The crossing of the ridge threatens to be difficult.

As a matter of fact, it is difficult to go out at all. We are at once encircled. Life hangs by a thread. The corpses, now indiscreet, display ghastly wounds. Only a few are intact; it is hard to find the broken statues I saw in the moonlight. And the realization of death, in the revolt of one’s whole being, is invested with a special horror--that of being crushed and pulverized, of being not even a dead man, but a nameless heap, a handful of fleshly dust. Then, too, there is the thought of remaining unburied.

This idea did not come spontaneously. We walked across two corpses: a little soldier, very young, quite beardless, no doubt of the 1915 class, covered with a little earth, two or three shovelfuls which did not suffice to hide him; and, quite near him, a stretcher-bearer, identified by his Red Cross armlet, his head split open, still clasping a spade in his hand. The stretcher-bearer was killed while trying to carry out his pious duty of interment. Here the stricken must be left uncared for. We must let Death bury the dead.

There is a legend which says that the souls of those who have not been laid in consecrated ground wander in space without ever finding rest. But the soil of our invaded country is consecrated ground. May those who have fallen there in defending it rest in peace! For the appeal of the Church, _Memento quia pulvis es_--“Remember, because thou art dust”--which accompanies the placing of the ashes on the brows of the faithful--could I ever have thought out a more eloquent paraphrase?

A last rationing party meets us. It has not been able to reach its goal during the night. By day it is not usual to go to the fort.

“Are you going as far as the fort?”

“We’ll have a try.”

“Good luck!...”

III

THE MASTER OF THE HOUR

(MARCH 14)

In the courtyard of those Verdun barracks where I spent such a brief night, there is a slightly larger crowd than usual. And every one follows with his eyes two Generals who are walking at a leisurely pace.

One is dressed in a sky-blue uniform, like the rank and file, like every one. His tanned face, every expression of which I know well--it combines great kindliness with an intellect always in search of certainty and precision--betrays the secret that racks him. He is in command of the most exposed, the most frequently attacked, the most difficult sector of the whole front of the army which covers Verdun, and, at this moment, of the entire front of the French Army. It touches Fort Douaumont and guards Fort Vaux. He lives heart and soul with his men, who are down there in the whirlwind of steel, holding out against all odds. He shares the burden of their hardships and their exertions. He is consumed with anxiety to know. The desire to conquer is fretting his body. His features bear ample witness to the fire that burns within.

The other, tall and massively built, wears the old-fashioned uniform, to whose colours the eye is unaccustomed: red trousers, black tunic, red cap, with a double band of oak leaves.[1] He seems to be gazing at an invisible point above the head of the person whom he is addressing. While listening, he seems to be under the spell of some inner dream. He wears a thick white moustache. His eyes have a far-away look. Are the realities of the present enough for them, or do they need a map of the world to satisfy them?

[1] In the French Army a double band of oak leaves round the
cap denotes a General commanding a division.--_Translator’s
Note._

The two have stopped near our group. The senior General says to his companion, as if putting an end to their conversation--a conversation in which up to now he has scarcely uttered a word:

“All is well, and now you need feel no uneasiness.”

The other seems to be surprised. He is in a state of deadly anxiety, and he is urged to be calm! He is apparently waiting for something more, but this is really the end of the discussion. A motor-car has been summoned. He salutes and goes off.

“You need feel no uneasiness.” One of my comrades, who in his brief leisure moments is rereading Tolstoi’s _War and Peace_, and is blessed with a portentous memory, reminds me of the passage where Prince André Bolkonsky, aide-de-camp to General Bagration, comes to report to his chief what he has been able to find out about the forces that are threatening the Russian Army:

“While listening to him, Prince Bagration stared in front of him, and Prince André, while studying the strongly marked features of that face whose eyes were half-closed, wandering, and sleepy, asked himself, with an uneasy curiosity, what thoughts, what feelings were hidden behind that impenetrable mask?”

(The eyes, here, are also staring, but at some point far away, as if to see beyond the horizon of Verdun.)

“All is well,” says Bagration simply, as if what he has just heard had been anticipated by him.

And what he has just heard is the menace that weighs upon his army.

What our General has just heard has caused him no anxiety. He has answered, “All is well,” as if the menace could in no way alter his plans. Later on this recollection, throwing light on the phrase which had almost shocked me, was to assume a singularly precise outline in my mind, and to widen like those ripples which are formed in water when a stone is flung in and grow larger and larger until they reach the banks....

IV

THE FIRST FIGHTS ROUND VAUX

(MARCH 9, 10, 11)

From the road, I see soldiers stretched out on the grass, basking in the spring sun, fishing in the river, or playing ball like schoolboys. Motor-omnibuses picked them up suddenly, not far from the Verdun battlefield, to carry them to this abode of rustic peace. They do not even hear the guns any longer. It is strange to contrast this bucolic scene with the fiery furnace of Vaux.

Among the valleys of the Meuse region, which are generally rather grim and gloomy, the valley of La Saulx is the most smiling, the richest in flowers, the most attractive. A crystal-clear brook waters its meadows and seems, with all its meanderings, to run an endless course. Here is Montiers-sur-Saulx, where the 303rd Brigade is billeted for a few days. The Sire de Joinville lived there; in the archives of the town hall one may read the charter by which he allowed the villagers the use of a part of his forest. Jeanne d’Arc went through it, dreaming of her mission. The troops in blue-grey caps who stroll round the central square where the military band plays are not so very different, in their bright uniforms, from the men-at-arms of bygone days.

In little groups the men walk about, light their pipes, and chat with the natives. The whole scene looks like a day of peace-time manœuvres, and the very gait of the men is so brisk that one might fancy them to be fresh troops recently detrained here and ready to proceed again to the front.

Yet the sentry who is mounting guard at the town hall wears a cap that has been pierced by a bullet. Other caps are indented or knocked out of shape. More than one of these peaceful ramblers has his head bandaged or shows some scar on his face. The colonel in command of the brigade has on his cheek a sabre-cut on which the blood has just dried--a trifling wound which has not been deemed worthy of dressing.

These are the men who broke the back of the German assaults on the village and fort of Vaux on March 8, 9, and 10. They can scarcely remember that they forced the enemy to retreat; they are too much occupied with forgetting their miseries--the cold, the snow, the lack of sleep, the long hours they spent crouching down in rifle-pits, their lost comrades, the continual presence of death during the bombardment which shatters men’s nerves and stuns their brains.

None of them of his own accord makes any allusion to his recent experiences: merely a word or two here and there, which cannot be understood save by those who have been through the mill. Later on, at home, or in some other theatre of war, when the events are really buried in the past, they will tell the story after their own fashion. Nor will they hesitate to weave into the tale other episodes drawn from earlier or later combats. For the moment they content themselves with saying that Verdun beats everything--the Argonne, Artois, Champagne, Ailly Wood, Le Prêtre Wood. These comparisons by men who know give a correct order of merit. They find no satisfaction in raking up what is past and done with, except to say that the Boches will not break through, in spite of their confounded heavy artillery. They revel in the joy of living quietly and without danger. They are almost inclined to pinch themselves so as to make sure that they are still alive. The nightmare visions that haunt them yet might leave them in doubt on the point. One must associate for a long time with officers and men in order to unravel the truth little by little and reconstruct the earlier Vaux engagements.