Verdun 1916

by J E Kauffman

  After the Germans resumed the bombardment of Fort Troyon, they had to wait for their units to move into position before they could launch an attack on St Mihiel. On 22 September, the 5th Army began operations against Fort Paroches and St Mihiel. The French 75th Reserve Division held the front near St Mihiel.6 According to the Crown Prince, his artillery smashed the guns of Fort Paroches on the very first day. This fort, built in 1885 and typical of the interval fortifications between Verdun and Toul, still had caponiers to defend its fossé. Its armament consisted of six 120mm L cannons and two 90mm guns. On 22 September, its guns returned fire. Contrary to the Crown Prince’s assertions, the bombardment of the next two days only destroyed one of the fort’s 90mm guns. A heavier bombardment on 25 September smashed the other 90mm gun, but the remaining guns continued to fire until 26 September when a powder magazine took a hit. On 30 September, the garrison evacuated the premises, but stayed nearby in case the enemy infantry launched an assault.7 The Germans suffered about 600 casualties in their failed siege of Fort Paroches.

  Concurrently with the attacks on forts Troyon and Paroches, the Bavarian III Corps moved against Fort Camp des Romains and Fort Liouville with 210mm and Austrian 305mm Mörser.8 Fort Camp des Romains, built in 1878, had undergone little modernization and still had caponiers to cover its fossé and two old Mougin casemates for a 155mm L gun from 1881. The fort’s armament in 1914 consisted of six old 120mm L cannons, four 90mm guns on the ramparts and four old mortars. Its garrison of 530 men and a regiment of the 75th Reserve Division defended St Mihiel when the Germans approached on 22 September. The 6th Division of the Bavarian III Corps stopped at the edge of St Mihiel in the afternoon of 24 September. The German artillery, directed by a tethered balloon, had begun to shell the fort on 23 September. The well-directed artillery forced the French gunners from the ramparts. On 24 September, the Bavarians occupied St Mihiel as the French regiment retreated across the Meuse. The assaulting battalion crossed the Meuse on one of the few footbridges left after General Sarrail had the bridges blown up on 8 September as enemy troops approached. The Germans established a small bridgehead at Chauvoncourt, but the guns of Fort Paroches made access difficult. Meanwhile, the fort sustained damage as the heavy bombardment continued. The Germans cut the cable that linked Fort Camp des Romains with forts Paroches and Troyon. After a German attack late in the day failed, the bombardment resumed. Damage to the barracks rendered life intolerable for the garrison. On 25 September, an early morning shelling was followed by an assault from a Bavarian brigade. The attackers crossed the fossé, which was no longer defended, using ladders carried by the pioneers. The garrison, which had moved to the centre of the fort around the barracks, counter-attacked, but failed to dislodge the Germans. Before long, the fighting spread into the galleries and lasted for 3 hours until the French commander surrendered after 48 of his men were killed and 130 were wounded.9

  On 25 September, the 6th Division of the Bavarian Corps took on Fort Liouville, another old fort from 1880. Unlike the nearby forts, it had a Mougin turret for two 155mm guns added in 1881. Its Mougin turret had been reinforced, two of its caponiers had been replaced with counterscarp casemates and an observation cloche, a 75mm gun turret and a machine-gun turret had been added in 1909. The ramparts mounted seven 120mm L cannons, eight 90mm guns and machine guns in 1914. Over half of the over 700-man garrison consisted of artillerymen. On 22 September, the turrets and the 120mm cannons fired on German troops in the Varnéville sector. The next day, heavy German artillery targeted Fort Liouville. The gunners on the ramparts were vulnerable. That morning, a round penetrated the Mougin turret block between the turret and the frontal amour and sparked a flame that ignited the powder bags in the turret, injuring twelve men. It took hours to make the repairs. After several days, the fort sustained significant damage including to the artillery command post. On 25 September, the movement of the Mougin turret was blocked by pieces of broken concrete and the eclipsing mechanism of the 75mm gun turret was impaired by hits from large-calibre rounds. A shell struck the barrel of the right gun of the Mougin turret and later more debris blocked the movement of the turret. Problems multiplied for the fort on 26 September. A shell fractured the Mougin turret and one of the gun breeches of the 75mm gun turret was no longer serviceable. The next day the Mougin turret developed further mechanical problems, but there were no more spare parts left to repair it. The 75mm gun turret became increasingly difficult to operate due to previous damage and fresh hits from heavy artillery rounds. The mechanics repaired and returned the turrets to action on 28 September. The restored turret operated until 29 September when a 305mm round put it out of action for the remainder of the battle. The 305mm Mörser inflicted a great deal of damage on the fort. Finally, on 30 September, the fort commander moved his troops out, took up positions nearby and prepared to repel a ground attack. That day, another 305mm round pierced the frontal armour of the Mougin turret rendering it unserviceable. On 1 October, French troops came to relieve the fort and found the garrison sheltered in a nearby ravine. The German bombardment lasted until 16 October.10 While the German 5th Army assailed the Côtes de Meuse, the French counter-attacked its flank striking at the XVI Corps between the Meuse and Moselle. However, the Germans were left in possession of a salient at St Mihiel.

  While 5th Army tried to crack the Meuse Heights and secure a bridgehead near St Mihiel, the remainder of the German army launched a new offensive against the Varennes area on the Argonne Front. The French had attacked on 20 September, but were repelled near Cuisy. The Crown Prince explained that on 22 September, the situation turned into a ‘severe battle’ when his detachments crossed the front line:*

  As early as 6:30 a.m. the enemy’s front line trenches were surprised and passed. And yet how different was the fighting now from what it had been in the first phase of open warfare! The enemy had completely changed. At its battle Headquarters in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon the Army Headquarters realized from reports what difficulties our brave troops encountered in struggling forward against the French, who fought so magnificently and stubbornly for the smallest places…. The enemy artillery in the woods and near Varennes, Vauquois, Malancourt, Esnes and Cumières swept our roads of approach, as well as the valleys…. But had our troops also changed? The general impression derived from the various reports and observations … compelled us to conclude that the aggressive spirit of the troops had been reduced in the first place owing to the enervating effects of the very bad weather … and secondly by the dysentery which had just broken out, by the slippery state of the ground, and the impenetrable underwood of the forest. What must also have depressed their spirits was the fact that we were fighting for country which, for reasons quite incomprehensible to the troops, had been surrendered only a few days previously.

  The Crown Prince’s troops were more successful the next day, but the 5th Army suffered from a shortage of ammunition for the artillery, resulting in his infantry taking heavy losses from lack of support. His troops, nonetheless, recaptured Varennes. In his memoirs he claimed that his offensive ‘through Varennes and St. Mihiel had the lasting effect of keeping large French forces perpetually on the Verdun and Toul front’. On the other hand, he found that the ‘enemy front from Toul to Verdun remained just as impregnable to our attacks as the upper valley of the Aire, south of the narrow defile of Varennes’.** From the heights in the vicinity of Varennes, German artillery interdicted the main railway line Ste Ménehould–Verdun. All attempts to drive the Germans from the heights failed. Fighting continued in the Argonne as the Crown Prince’s army went on the defensive and began digging trenches.

  According to the Crown Prince, during 1914, the Germans used aerial photography to fill in information missing from plans of the defences of Verdun in their possession. They began building standard gauge and military railways in the 5th Army sector to bring heavy 420mm Mörser batteries, other siege artillery and sufficient ammunition to bombard Fortress Verdun. The pioneers of the V Reserve Corps erected a 25m-
high tower on the heights of Crépion from which the Crown Prince watched his medium and heavy artillery respond to the 155mm gun of Fort Douaumont, which had been firing since September.11 Crown Prince Wilhelm used the tower on 8 October 1915. Before long, the tower became a target for the French artillery.

  The staff of the 5th Army estimated that the ammunition necessary to sustain an attack of ten days, employing two-and-a-half army corps and their artillery, would require forty-eight-and-a-half trains. This would not include the requirement for the heavy siege batteries. Such an action would have been impractical in 1914 or 1915 when the Eastern Front took precedence. On 19 October 1914, the Crown Prince received orders to attack Verdun, but he was assigned a daily consignment of only nine-and-a-half ammunition trains and Army Detachment Strantz would receive four-and-a-half. Falkenhayn seemed to believe that Fortress Verdun would fall as easily as the Belgian fortresses and Maubeuge. Furthermore, he had little to spare because he was fully engaged in the ‘Race to the Sea’ in the north. The Crown Prince refused to undertake such an operation without enough ammunition to do the job. In addition, General Headquarters denied him the number of pioneers his staff requested.12 The Kaiser agreed with his son after hearing about the problem. The operation was cancelled and some of the divisions of the 5th Army were transferred to other armies. The shortage of ammunition kept the 5th Army even from replying to French artillery fire for the remainder of the year. The struggle continued in the Argonne as the French lost a great number of men trying to penetrate the German position. At Christmas, a rare truce allowed both sides a brief respite.

  In November 1914, in order to achieve more effective control and support, Falkenhayn gave the Crown Prince control over Army Detachment Strantz, Fortress Metz, Army Detachment Falkenhausen and Army Detachment Gaede.13 This left him in control of the front from the Argonne to the Swiss border.14

  The Argonne

  The Argonne proved to be a barrier for both the French and Germans. In early September 1914, the German 5th Army had moved rapidly through most of the region. The valley of the Aire could have provided it with a route for the encirclement of Verdun. On 10 September, however, all the German armies on the right wing were ordered to pull back. The Crown Prince and his chief-of-staff disagreed with the directive and appealed to the high command. After a final encounter with the French on that day, the 5th Army began to retreat through the Argonne. At the end of the month, the 5th Army advanced once again southwards through the Argonne trying to regain the ground it had lost in the withdrawal, but this time, the French did not yield quickly. The German troops recaptured Varennes, but they did not advance much further. The French tried to drive them from the key position of Vauquois (a butte 290m high) in one bloody engagement after the other. According to the Michelin guide to the battle published after the war, the Argonne is a hilly wooded area with no gentle slopes to prevent the infantry from easily establishing fighting positions. At the time, the ‘impenetrable thickets’ of this forested region could only be traversed by way of existing lanes and footpaths. The Argonne had plenty of water as numerous springs and streams ran through the clay soil that turned to mud once the rains fell. After a shower, the soldiers’ trenches tended to fill with mud and most of the paths became impassable. From October 1914 onward, snipers infested the region and the crackle of rifle and machine-gun fire became almost incessant.

  Once again, General Headquarters ordered the 5th Army to go on the defensive and transferred some of its units for duty elsewhere. In the autumn of 1914, both sides dug trenches then saps leading to the opposing lines hoping to take the enemy by surprise as they quite literally emerged from the ground. They also adopted a more insidious method developed in ancient and medieval times: mining. It consisted of tunnelling until one reached a point under the enemy trench line, filling the end of the mine with explosives and detonating the charges. After the explosion, the attackers rushed to occupy and hold the crater they had created. Fighting at close quarters and dodging a hail of grenades was quite common.

  Along the German front between Four-de-Paris and the Aire Valley, the French sappers were busy from January to March 1915 digging over 3,000m of tunnels and detonating fifty-two mine chambers. As time passed, the miners excavated larger mine chambers at the end of their tunnels and crammed them with ever larger amounts of explosives. The French II Corps had recaptured Four-de-Paris at the end of 1914. In January 1915, after an artillery bombardment, four French infantry regiments and the Garibaldi Legion attacked the Germans on the Bolante Plateau.15 General Bruno von Mudra’s corps handled most of the German defences in the region, and hung on tenaciously despite shortages of artillery ammunition. A 305mm Skoda battery was set up at Binarville and a second one at Apremont on each side of the Argonne. In late February 1915, during one of many bloody engagements in the Argonne, the French 9th and 10th Divisions of the V Corps attacked through the Aire Valley and tried to storm Vauquois from where the Germans directed artillery fire against the Ste Ménehould–Verdun railroad.16 Supported by a heavy artillery bombardment, the 10th Division reached the summit and advanced across the butte where it halted in the village on the north end. However, Joffre refused to send much-needed reinforcements. Even though the fighting continued, the Germans maintained their artillery position overlooking the main rail line to Verdun. The V Corps sustained almost 27,000 casualties between mid-January and the end of March 1915 during this struggle. General Mudra received reinforcements from 5th Army and kept the fighting going as mine warfare intensified. By May 1915, he had inflicted 8,000 additional casualties on the XXXII Corps of the 3rd Army, which held a position on the left flank of V Corps. The XXXII Corps was pushed back on a 7km front at the beginning of July.17 The Crown Prince bragged that his four divisions had held off nine-and-a-half French divisions for most of the year. He was able to consolidate his positions during the remainder of the year. It made little difference which side had more troops in the Argonne because the terrain gave the edge to the defender. The French and the Germans continued their bloody struggle for control in the forest, but the front lines changed very little until 1918. The Germans never retook the southern section of the Argonne.

  Verdun, September–December 1915

  Although Verdun escaped complete isolation in September 1914, it formed a salient with only a secondary railroad connection to Bar-le-Duc for logistical support. During 1915, it became a relatively quiet front while the battle raged incessantly to the west in the Argonne. To the south of the salient, the French strove to wrest control of the Éparges Plateau from their foe and to eliminate the German salient of St Mihiel by striking at both sides of it.

  In February 1915, a 420mm Mörser and a 380mm naval gun battery set up in a wood near Loison, to the southwest of Spincourt, fired upon Fort Douaumont. They were the largest weapons introduced to the Verdun Front in early 1915. The Crown Prince was impressed, even though the results were not spectacular. One round smashed through concrete protection of the 155mm gun turret, which remained in action nonetheless. The damage was minor. On 25 May, the Crown Prince climbed another observation tower in Consenvoye Woods, north of Verdun, to observe the cathedral of Verdun and French defensive positions while the 380mm naval guns fired on the military targets.

  Joffre’s big offensives of 1915 drained his resources and prevented him from eliminating the St Mihiel Salient or clear the Argonne even though he ordered smaller and more concentrated attacks against both. Army Group East was created in January 1915 with General Auguste Yvon Dubail at its head.18 He ordered the first major assault against the Éparges–Combres Heights.19 The Éparges Butte was 345m high and measured about 1,100m by 700m with a crest that extended east to west. At a point identified as ‘X’ on the northeast end of the crest, an observer had a clear view of the Woëvre. The French 12th Division (VI Corps) moved into position in November 1914. In January 1915, it seized the villages of Éparges and St Rémy. It left three battalions (one each from its 67th, 106th and 132nd Infantry regiment
s) in position around the village of Éparges below the heights. Meanwhile, the sappers dug mines into the butte. On 17 February, the French opened the assault by detonating four mines below the first German trench on the heights. The French soldiers reached the German first line only to find it abandoned. The next day, after the French had consolidated their position, the Germans responded with a counterattack that drove them from their positions. The French counter-attacked. The fighting continued back and forth until 20 February when the French gave up after sustaining heavy losses and failing to take and hold the crest. On 18 March, the French 12th Division launched a renewed assault with an hour-long bombardment. Once again, they ejected the Germans from the first line, but not from the second. The Germans counter-attacked the next day and inflicted heavy losses on the French. On 27 March, additional French units including the 25th Chasseur Battalion joined the fray and despite a fierce battle, the Germans remained in control of the peak. During February and March, the French sustained 15,546 casualties (3,050 killed). The next encounter began on 5 April and lasted four days. This time, other divisions hit different parts of the St Mihiel Salient, which prevented the Germans from bringing additional reserves. After another heavily contested battle, the French 12th Division held the ground. General Herr, commander of VI Corps, declared it a victory, but French control of the area was incomplete since the Germans still clung to part of the heights at Point X.20 Meanwhile, the Germans seized 4km of the French position along the Tranchée de Calonne, just west of Les Éparges.