The Price of Glory (28 page)

On the Left Bank the Germans began to find themselves at an increasing tactical disadvantage. Gone were the woods and broken country where their infiltration methods could excel. The terrifying flame-throwers had now largely become suicide weapons, an immediate target the moment they appeared in the open. In horrible fascination French troops watched as the fuel cannisters, punctured by a grenade or shell, turned their bearers into writhing torches; or when, wounded, the German Pioneers spun round to hose their own companions with the hellish liquid. But worst of all these tactical disabilities was the flanking fire that was crippling their frontal assaults the moment they debouched into open ground. The Fifth Army had spread its attack across the Meuse to eliminate the guns that were gnawing its right flank. Now, in turn, that secondary attack was being eviscerated by French guns that had set up to its right, on a ridge that was the western twin of the Mort Homme, called simply Côte 304. As the Allies had discovered in all their abortive offensives, however wide the front might be there would always be a devilish machine gun on a flank that could hold up a whole division; broaden the front to eliminate that machine gun, and inevitably there would be yet another on the new flank. Like a surgeon treating galloping cancer, the knife is enticed even farther from the original point of application. Thus now the Germans, after the costly failure of their first series of attacks on the Mort Homme, decided they could proceed no further until Côte 304 was theirs.

As before, their first effort was crowned with an unattended disaster for the French. In their initial — and nearly successful — attempt on the Mort Homme the Germans had sought to outflank it from the northeast, and now they tried a similar movement on Côte 304 from the west. The point they selected was the western extremity of the Verdun salient, between the villages of Malancourt and Avocourt, where the front swung south through the tip of the Forest of Hesse. Here, in the Bois d’Avocourt, was a dangerous re-entrant in the French lines, but recognised as such and heavily fortified. Well-concealed redoubts were guarded by a triple barrier of barbed wire, fifty yards deep. It was probably the strongest section of the French line on the Left Bank. To the Germans, however, it
presented the key to Côte 304, which was the key to Mort Homme, which in turn was the key that would unlock the Right Bank,
und so weiter.

The task fell to the 11th Bavarian Division, a unit that had recently distinguished itself under von Mackensen in the Serbian and Galician campaigns. Its commander, von Kneussl, had won the
Pour le Mérite
for the capture of the Russian fortress of Przemysl. For a long time the industrious Bavarians had been preparing for such an attack. The usual deep
Stollen
had been dug, and sappers had run several mineshafts beneath the French defences. None of this had escaped French notice, and some of the heaviest mortars they could muster had been brought up; resulting in the burying alive of many of the Bavarians underneath their
Stollen.
Moreover, at the critical moment at least one of the mines failed to go off. However, none of these preparations were necessary; success was presented to the Bavarians in quite another way. The French 29th Division holding the Bois d’Avocourt had been just too long in the trenches. Many of its men came from the soft and dreamy
Midi.
Morale was low and desertion high. From deserters von Kneussl’s intelligence officers gained very precise information on the passages through the enemy wire; even the French themselves afterwards claimed that ‘doubtful elements’ had entered into parleys with the Germans, and actually shown them the way. Whichever the true cause (and the mystery has never been entirely solved, the German official history still preferring to attribute the success to the sheer ‘force’ of the Bavarian attack), within four hours on the morning of March 20th the entire position fell, with negligible losses to the attackers. A whole French brigade was surrounded and compelled to surrender; the total bag amounting to 2,825 troops twenty-five machine guns and twelve assorted cannon, and a box full of brand new
Croix-de-Guerres
— a discovery which delighted German war correspondents. Among the fifty-eight French officers captured were the Brigadier and two Regimental Commanders, the former taken in his dugout before he had heard a shot fired.

To those in the know in France, the disaster at Avocourt was a stunning blow. President Poincaré wrote gloomily in his diary:
‘Encore une défaillance!’,
revealing that this was not the first news he had received of a lapse of morale at Verdun. In the opinion of General Palat this episode was ‘perhaps the most deplorable to occur on our side during the Great War’. The disgrace, coupled
with the new grave menace it presented, roused the Left Bank defenders to a new fury, and the French 155s made tenancy of the Bois d’Avocourt as disagreeable as possible for the Bavarians. On the 22nd, a major German attempt to capitalise on the Avocourt success was caught by brilliantly sited French machine guns, firing at them from three sides. Rain had turned the battlefield to a swamp, and it proved impossible to move up heavy mortars to knock them out. The French machine-gunners fired until whole battalions were slaughtered, almost to a man. The
Reichs Archives
speak of the day’s fighting being ‘one of the most heroic’ of the entire battle, an adjective not infreqently used by First World War officialdom when casualties had been particularly hideous. In fact, the losses of the comparatively few German battalions engaged in this small corner of the Verdun front that day alone exceeded 2,400, little less than the total British casualties on D-Day in 1944. The gain was nil.

On March 29th, the French tried to replug the menacing hole in their lines at Bois d’Avocourt. The attack was led by a distinguished French military writer, Lt-Colonel de Malleray. He retook part of the wood, but, as so often happened, was mortally wounded soon afterwards, with both his legs severed. The story has it that young de Malleray, a second-lieutenant in the same regiment, having heard the first news but not the sequel, was himself on the way up to the line that evening, and encountered his father’s Colonel. ‘Are you pleased with my father,
mon Colonel?
’ the son asked proudly.
‘Ah! mon pauvre petit!’
was all he could reply.

Signs of exhaustion were growing among the attackers. One lieutenant-colonel in his prime died of a heart attack, and the German M.O.s began expressing serious concern about the physical state of the troops. For the first time there were reports of German units refusing to ‘go over the top’, or surrendering too easily. Increasingly familiar became the tone of letters home like the following: ‘Of my section, which consisted of 19 men, only 3 are left… Those who got away with a
Heimatschuss
(a “blighty wound”) say they were lucky.’ Part of the trouble lay in the German command’s ruthless system of keeping divisions in the line over lengthy periods, constantly topping up the losses with new replacements. As the leavening of hardened veterans became sparser and sparser, so the pathetic eighteen-year-olds fresh from the parade grounds in the Fatherland showed themselves less and less capable of standing up to the remorseless demands of the Verdun fighting. Their faltering affected
the hitting power of whole regiments. In his usual cold manner, Falkenhayn summed up the March results as follows: ‘owing to the peculiar conformation we could not use these successes to bring our artillery far enough forward, and consequently the preparatory work here had to be continued.’ Despite the omens of stress and the disappointing results, the Germans kept up their ‘preparations’, doggedly battering away on the Left Bank, regardless of cost. Steadily the grey tide inched forward. On March 31st, Malancourt fell; on April 5th, Haucourt, and April 8th, Bethincourt. For the French, thought the German commanders, circumstances must be so much worse, casualties so much higher; how much more could they stand? On April 1st, the Kaiser — publicly exposing the German hand for the first time — declared: ‘The decision of the War of 1870 took place in Paris. This war will end at Verdun.’

Again the Germans changed their tactics. Now, on April 9th, they decided to mount a full-scale offensive along the whole Verdun front, on both banks of the Meuse; doing what should have been done on February 21st. Côte 304 and the Mort Homme were both to be assaulted simultaneously. The Fifth Army command had been streamlined, with General von Mudra placed in command of the whole Right Bank, and General von Gallwitz brought back from the Balkans to command the Left Bank sector. Von Gallwitz was a talented artillerist, having been the Inspector General of the Field Artillery just before the war, and more recently had added to his lustre in leading the Eleventh Army to victory in Serbia. With him came a young staff officer destined to become one of Germany’s greatest commanders in the Second World War; Erich von Manstein. But hardly had General von Gallwitz arrived at Verdun before he was forcibly impressed by the potency of the French artillery; it had just blown to pieces one of his divisional commanders in his car. Gloomily he confided to his diary, ‘Too great a task, undertaken with inadequate reserves.’

For the actual conquest of the elusive Mort Homme, none other than the elder brother of the Commander-in-Chief had been selected; General of the Cavalry, Eugene von Falkenhayn, commander of the XXII Reserve Corps, and childhood tutor to the Crown Prince. He seems to have had his full share of the family cautiousness; complaining of his methodical slowness, von Gallwitz remarked sarcastically: ‘We shall be in Verdun at the earliest by 1920.’ Under the relentless pressure all along the front, French
commanders of every sector were desperately appealing for reserves; which often were simply not there. Yet, for all the massive support on either side of him, all the elder Falkenhayn could achieve was to push the line up on to the north crest of the Mort Homme. Great was the rejoicing, briefly, in the German camp; for their maps marked this crest as the Mort Homme itself. The rejoicing was not shared by the weary infantrymen who had just fought their way on to it. Beyond, a few hundred yards distant, lay yet another summit, 100 feet higher, the true Mort Homme, which was still firmly held by the French. Few mountaineers can ever have experienced more bitter frustration.

For this latest effort, the greatest since February 21st, the Germans had expended seventeen trainloads of ammunition and many thousands more men. One of the elder Falkenhayn’s divisions alone left 2,200 men on the blood-soaked northern slopes of the Mort Homme. But everywhere, with a minor dent here and there, the French line had held. Once again, much of the German casualty list had been caused by those infuriating guns behind Côte 304. In a rare note of optimism Pétain issued an Order of the Day, beginning, ‘The 9th of April was a glorious day for our forces,’ and ending with a famous paraphrase of Joan of Arc:
¹
‘Courage, on les aura!’

After April 9th it was often difficult to tell to whom the Mort Homme, smoking like a volcano from the concentrated fire of both artilleries, actually belonged. Back and forth between its two summits, Points 265 and 295, swayed the opposing forces, locked together in a crescendo of desperation that typified the worst of the months of ceaseless combat on the Left Bank. The diaries of a twenty-two-year-old French Second Lieutenant, Roger Campana, who had already had one spell at Verdun, provide one glimpse of how the savage formlessness of the battle seemed to those caught up in it. Taking up positions on Point 265 and the northerly slopes of the Mort Homme on April 6th, Campana was agreeably surprised by the relative calm. A lieutenant of one of the forward companies, a peacetime mathematician, asked for a candle to continue his studies in his dugout. The calm lasted for two more days. Then, on April 8th, while on patrol the ‘Lieutenant Mathematician’ captured two German deserters,, who conveniently warned them of the coming attack. The following morning, a peerless sunny Sunday, incredibly the larks were singing
on the Mort Homme and it seemed quite impossible that there could be an attack that day. Suddenly, a single shell landed, and the tornado descended.

By 11 a.m. the bombardment intensified to the point where Campana could count the shells raining down on two neighbouring companies at a rate of five a minute. In a trench to his rear that he had ordered to be abandoned the previous night, eight shells burst almost simultaneously. At midday, the German assault waves appeared out of their holes, bayonets fixed; ‘They ran forward a few metres, then under the tac-tac of our machine gun, collapsed.… Not a single German got to his trench.’ Some hoping to escape evidently pretended to lie dead, ‘like rabbits’, but sooner or later lost their nerve and bounded up to regain their trenches, only to be picked off by Campana’s men, who found the spectacle rather diverting. The shelling was resumed, and the machine gun finally knocked out by a heavy shell. Once again Campana saw the Germans line up; ‘In a few minutes the slopes of Hill 265 were covered with enemy advancing on us. This time we only had our rifles to stop them, and that was not sufficient.’ Below, in the mathematician’s trench, they were already fighting hand to hand. Campana fired a red rocket, and for once the 75s replied; right in the middle of the advancing Germans. Still they advanced. When they were thirty yards off, Campana gave the order to fix bayonets, but just at that moment the Germans were caught between salvoes of short-falling 75s and the French rifle fire. Like rats in a burning barn, ‘they ran frantically to the right and left’.

Through his binoculars, Campana now watched a counter-attack go in to retake the lost trenches, led by a young lieutenant of his class at St. Cyr, wearing white gloves. A few minutes later, he saw his classmate stretched on the ground, hands crossed on his chest ‘like two white flecks on his blue overcoat’. Night came, and with it a respite in the fighting. In the sinister light of a large red moon, Campana counted over 180 German bodies in front of his platoon. For another week, he and his men remained on the Mort Homme. On being relieved, the decoration parade, with a general galloping at the head of his elegant staff past the tattered and gap-ridden ranks of the 151st, seemed to young Campana ‘the most beautiful day of my life’.