The Price of Glory

by Alistair Horne

  In sharp contrast to the British infantrymen who in less than five months’ time would be advancing in straight, suicidally dense lines on the Somme, the German patrols moved in small packets, making skilful use of the ground. For under the Fifth Army’s final orders — influenced by the cautious Falkenhayn in his desire that the battle should not proceed too rapidly — infantry action on the first day was to be limited to powerful fighting patrols. Acting like a dentist’s probe, these patrols would feel out the areas of maximum decay in the French defences that the bombardment had caused. Only on the 22nd would the main weight of the attack go in to enlarge the holes. Two out of the three German corps adhered rigidly to this order; but rugged General von Zwehl, conqueror of Maubeuge, taking full advantage of that latitude peculiar to the German Army (and which had brought disaster to it on the Marne), decided to send in the first wave of storm-troops hard on the heels of his patrols.

  * * *

  Opposite the Westphalians of von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps lay the Bois d’Haumont, an irregular-shaped wood to the left of and slightly forward from the Bois des Caures, of which it guarded a vital flank. It had taken a dreadful pounding; by the late afternoon many of its defenders had fallen asleep in sheer exhaustion, and the remainder were in a partly stunned and shell-shocked condition. Suddenly, a soldier in a trench to the west of the wood lifted his head and noticed a line of Feldgrau troops less than a hundred yards away. The alarm was given, and rapidly organised French fire stopped the Germans in their tracks. At the other end of the wood, however, closest the Bois des Caures, the French 165th Regiment were instantly faced with a grave situation. Many of their trenches had been completely levelled by the shelling; their rifle barrels filled with dirt and useless, boxes of hand grenades and cartridges buried under the debris. A sector of front nearly half a mile wide was held by two platoons exhausted from digging out their comrades. When these spotted the first German patrols, they were but ten yards away, already infiltrating through untenanted parts of the line. Two posts were occupied almost without resistance, and the whole of the first line of trenches in the Bois d’Haumont fell rapidly thereafter. Up rushed the attending German machine-gun teams to man the captured weapons, and the crews with oxyacetylene torches to cut through the remaining French barbed wire. As dusk fell, the Germans had gained a first and vital footing in the French defences. Captain Delaplace, the C.O. of the battalion defending the Bois d’Haumont sent a frantic message to his Brigade Commander, Colonel Vaulet, asking, ‘What am I to do?’

  At the moment when the Westphalians occupied the first trenches in the Bois d’Haumont, the defenders in the Bois des Caures were taking stock of the situation. As the survivors came out of their holes during the second lull in the bombardment that day, they peered through the settling dust with astonishment and horror. The wood presented an appalling sight. Nothing about it was any longer recognisable. It looked as if a huge sledge-hammer had pounded every inch of the ground over and over again.1 Most of the fine oaks and beeches had been reduced to jagged stumps a few feet high. To one soldier, they resembled a Brobdingnagian asparagus bed. From the few branches that remained hung the usual horrible testimony of a heavy bombardment in the woods; the shredded uniforms, dangling gravid with some unnameable human remnant still within; sometimes just the entrails of a man, product of a direct hit. It seemed impossible that any human being could have survived in the methodically worked-over, thrashed and ploughed-up wood. Yet some had. Like a colony of ants in sandy soil, stamped on repeatedly by an enraged child, they had been buried and reburied, yet always some — like Stephane and Scholeck — had miraculously struggled to the surface again. Undoubtedly many owed their lives to Driant’s brilliant lay-out of the wood’s defences, which, broken up into redoubts and small strongholds, had avoided anything resembling the continuous line of trenches familiar to the rest of the Western Front.

  Nevertheless, the losses had been severe. Concrete machine-gun posts had been blown to pieces like matchwood. Two huge shelters, R4 and R5 had been smashed by direct hits, a whole platoon wiped out in each. One end of Driant’s own bunker, R2, had been hit, a lieutenant killed and nine men seriously wounded. One of them when dug out ran off screaming with mad laughter, crazed by the bombardment. Most of the Chasseurs’ dugouts had caved in, and those that had not been buried under them emerged badly concussed. Of Driant’s 1,300 men, perhaps less than half had escaped injury; one corporal estimated that ‘in five poilus, two have been buried alive under their shelter, two are wounded to some extent or other, and the fifth is waiting.…’

  Three minutes after the German guns had lifted, a Chasseur ran up to Driant with a cry of ‘Volià les Boches!’ The colonel grabbed a rifle himself and rushed out of his Command Post to rally his battered troops. ‘We are here,’ he is said to have shouted, ‘this is our place, they shall not move us out of it.’ At the same time, he sent a runner back to send up his reserve battalion. A short while later, ‘Gran’ père’ Stephane arrived at Driant’s Command Post with a message from his company commander, Lieutenant Robin, reporting that his first positions had already been carried by the Germans, and begging for artillery support. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost your leave,’ Driant remarked dryly to Stephane, adding that he himself had been asking in vain for a barrage of 75s over the past hour. ‘Frankly, Corporal, I think we shall have to count largely on ourselves.’

  A veteran already at twenty-three, Robin had shown great courage in the early days of the war rallying a regiment routed by a surprise German night attack. Now, holding the most northerly point of the Bois des Caures, he had ordered his company up on to what remained of the parapets the moment the bombardment lifted. But a patrol of Germans about 150 strong had infiltrated, unseen in the chaos of the shattered wood, between his and Captain Séguin’s company on the left. Creeping up a communication trench, they had suddenly appeared at the rear of support position S7, well behind the first line of trenches. One huge Hessian was actually aiming a revolver at Robin when shot down by his platoon Sergeant, who then proceeded to despatch another six. Robin pulled back his men to S6 — in remarkable order, considering the surprise — where a savage hand-to-hand fight took place, with grenades and bayonets; here Robin himself was wounded with a grenade splinter in the foot. In front, the attacking Germans were held, but once again outflanking patrols appeared to right and left. As night was falling, Robin was forced to fall back a second time to the next line of support pill-boxes, his company now numbering no more than eighty.

  To his left a worse situation had developed. The right flank of Captain Séguin’s company was anchored by two machine guns, one operated by Sergeant Léger and the other by Corporal Pot. The good corporal had a section of five rather bolshie old soldiers with whom he was engaged in a heated discussion as to who was to bale out their flooded emplacement, when, less than fifty yards away, there appeared a line of about 200 Germans. It was too late for the bickering Chasseurs to get the gun into action, so Pot and his men fell back — in some miraculous fashion unseen by the enemy — to blockhouse S9 in the support line. S9 was tenanted by a platoon under the command of Sergeant-Major Dandauw, who had been badly shaken by the bombardment. At the very moment that Pot’s machine-gunners arrived with alarm written all over their faces, there appeared from the opposite direction a small group of men wearing white brassards. At first Dandauw thought they were French stretcher-bearers and ordered his platoon to hold its fire. Suddenly he realised they were Germans. Losing his head he ordered the retreat, and the whole platoon retired at speed down a communication trench.

  The trench led past Driant’s Command Post at R2, and there further flight was blocked by the Colonel himself. With a calm worthy of Joffre himself, and without administering any reproof, Driant told Dandauw: ‘Get your men under shelter; rest them, and before dawn you will retake your post.’ Meanwhile, what might have led to a disastrous breakthrough was checked by the heroism of Sergeant Léger and his men. A more experienced NCO than Pot
, he had carefully removed his machine gun under cover during the bombardment, remounting it at the critical moment so that the first German patrols were met with a deadly fire. Still the enemy infiltrated around him. Encircled, his ammunition exhausted, Léger smashed his machine gun and continued the fight with hand-grenades; until, almost the sole survivor of his detachment of twelve men, he was severely wounded and collapsed unconscious.

  To the east of the embattled Chasseurs, similarly confused fighting was in progress in the Bois d’Herbebois, on 51 Division front. For days Sergeant-Major Quintin had been peering at Soumazzannes Farm opposite his platoon, wondering what might be going on behind it. Now he saw the grey figures emerge from it, like mice out of their holes, he thought. Soon his trench was under rifle fire, and three shaken survivors of a section that had been buried under the bombardment crawled up to tell him that there was a large gap with not a single man alive to his left. In characteristic fashion, as soon as Quintin’s remaining men (twelve out of about forty) opened fire, the German patrols halted like the sea reaching a rock and then began to flow round into the breaches. In the gathering twilight, Quintin fell back to a new position, unimpeded by the enemy. Through the gap to his left the grey tide trickled until it came up against an almost intact and well-defended position, held by a platoon under a young Officer Cadet,1 Aspirant Berthon. There was a pause and a brief conference among the enemy. Before Berthon’s men could find an effective target to fire on, a column of searing fire enveloped them. Three days earlier Berthon’s Company Commander had observed a mysterious huge sheet of flame and black smoke rising up behind Soumazzannes Farm. He could not explain it, but nevertheless called for an artillery bombardment. Now Berthon’s platoon were to be the human guinea-pigs for this dreadful new weapon the Germans were trying out for the first time. Soon the flamethrower had set fire to even the wattling revetment of the trenches. The defenders, howling in agony, their clothes and hair aflame, fled in disorder. Swiftly the Germans occupied the smouldering position, establishing a machine gun to fire into the backs of the panic-stricken French.

  Meanwhile, in the Bois des Caures, Lieutenant Robin had given the Hessians a sharp jolt. Though wounded, he had launched a hastily organised bayonet attack in the dark which retook two of the captured support positions. So successful was this counter-attack, that Robin then went on to recapture a section of the French front-line trench, where the over-confident German patrols had already gone to sleep. Completely surprised, the Germans fell back in disorder; several prisoners were taken, including one who revealed that this had been only a patrol action, that the main attack would not be coming until midday on the morrow. Reporting back to Driant, Robin asked, ‘What am I to do against this with my eighty men?’ He was told: ‘My poor Robin, the order is to stay where we are.’

  * * *

  Night brought an end to the fighting, but once again the terrible bombardment began. A Situation Report sent by runner from Driant to General Bapst said, ‘We shall hold against the Boche although their bombardment is infernal.’ Everywhere the French feverishly repaired their battered defences and tried to do their best for the wounded. Commanders preparing their own ripostes for the dawn waited anxiously for reinforcements that, more often than not, would never arrive. From all stretches of the front desperate messages poured into divisional headquarters, like Major Bodot’s from Herbebois:

  I am looking for two companies of the 233rd that left the Bois des Fosses and were to join me at the Coupure, but I have had no news of them.

  Throughout the line the first day of battle had been for the French one of minor disasters alternating with countless, unrecorded small Thermopylaes. Wherever the German flamethrowers made their hideous debut, panic had occurred; in the Bois d’Haumont, an officer and thirty-six men had surrendered to one flamethrower detachment alone. But, for the most part, the Thermopylaes had the day. The line had held.

  In fact, for the Germans the day’s fighting had provided the prelude to many disappointments at Verdun. First of all, the fantastic bombardment had not worked nearly as well as expected. Assured by their officers that they would find nothing but corpses in the French first line, the fire that had greeted them as soon as they moved into the open had come as a nasty shock. By midnight, the small numbers committed had already suffered 600 casualties. Nevertheless, initial successes were such that patrol leaders all along the line had urged that the main attack scheduled for the 22nd be sent in right away to exploit the French disarray. Apparently taken by surprise himself, Knobelsdorf had reacted quickly enough on receiving news of von Zwehl’s rapid progress in the Bois d’Haumont, and ordered the other two army corps to ‘Push forward as far as possible.’ But by the time his order could reach subordinate commanders over the cumbersome communications network, darkness was closing in. It was too late. The main body of XVIII Corps, its patrols pinned down by a mere handful of concussed Chasseurs in the Bois des Caures, had simply not moved from its Stollen. Only General von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps, through his partial disobedience, had made a material contribution by seizing the whole of the Bois d’Haumont in five hours; thereby prizing open the first crack in the French front. A valuable opportunity had been lost, and Falken-hayn’s cautiousness had caused the Germans their first battle setback. As a further discouragement, the meteorologists had erred, and once again biting snow squalls swirled around the exposed German patrols during the night.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FALL OF COLONEL DRIANT

  L’artillerie fait aujourd’hui la véritable destinée des

  armées et des peuples.—NAPOLEON I

  DELIVERING his orders for the 22nd, Knobelsdorf now placed no limits on Corps objectives. In person he telephoned the Chief of Staff of XVIII Corps, ordering him to get a move on and conquer the Bois des Caures that day at all costs. The bombardment of the previous morning was to be repeated, until the defenders were truly ‘softened up’, and the storm-troops would attack during the afternoon. But, as dawn rose, the initiative lay momentarily with the French. At several points along the line small counter-blows of a battalion, or a single company, struck out. These were as typical in the spirited dash in which they were executed as they were representative of the 1914 indoctrination of the French Army, that all lost ground must be retaken by an immediate riposte; a revival of the Furia Francese that in past centuries had been the wonder and terror of Europe. Alas, as so often was the case, the small results gained by these penny-packet, hasty attacks were also out of all proportion to their heavy cost. Most were broken as rapidly as they were launched; either in the annihilating curtain of the new German bombardment, or by the machine guns brought up during the night by the entrenched enemy patrols, or by running headlong into greatly superior German attacks. In the Bois des Caures, the dawn attack in which the disgraced Sergeant-Major Dandauw was to retrieve his name, collapsed almost at once. It was hardly aided through being shelled by the first effective French bombardment of the battle that fell promiscuously among the enemy and the attacking Chasseurs. In Herbebois, the same befell the remnants of Major Bodot’s missing companies, which had finally been found and were now preparing to retake the bunker that had fallen to the German flamethrower.

  To the left of the Bois des Caures, worse confusion had upset the biggest counter-attack planned by the French, which was aimed at retaking the lost Bois d’Haumont. The local commander, Lt.-Col. Bonviolle, had tried to scrape together an ad hoc battalion for the attack, but half of it simply failed to materialise. Nevertheless, by 5 a.m. he had mustered enough strength to assault the southwest corner of the wood. But an hour before his attack was due to begin, a bedraggled courier arrived with an order from General Bapst. Despatched at 11 p.m. the previous night, he had taken five hours to span the intervening four miles. The order put additional troops at Bonviolle’s disposal, telling him to plan an attack for 6 a.m. against the whole wood. By now the telephone to 72 Div. HQ had just been restored, somewhat shakily, and a heated discussion took pl
ace between the Colonel and the General. At least, said Bonviolle, his project was already prepared and had prospects of success. But Bapst insisted. After much misunderstanding on the bad line, a disastrous compromise was agreed upon whereby the full-scale attack demanded by Bapst would take place, but postponed until 8.30 a.m. By this time it would be full daylight.

  At 7.20 a.m. Major Bertrand commanding a battalion of the 165th in reserve at Hill 344, about two miles behind the Bois d’Haumont, received orders to move up to join in the counter-attack. It was the first he had heard of it, and all he could see to his front were the huge spouts of the renewed German barrage. He decided it would be impossible to move, and sent a courier for further orders; meanwhile sitting where he was. Soon, in the broadening daylight, it was too late for any movement. German aircraft spotted his assembling reinforcements and almost instantaneously brought down a deluge of fire, wreaking carnage.

  Nor had the German infantry stood idly by, waiting for the French reaction. Once again von Zwehl had jumped the gun, without bothering too much about the prolonged softening-up bombardment that had started deluging the rest of the front soon after dawn. To the west of the Bois d’Haumont, and close to the Meuse flank of the French 72nd Division, was the Bois de Consenvoye. It was defended by a Territorial regiment, composed largely of quadragenarians and the flat-footed, which should never have been in the line at all. At the very moment when Bonviolle’s counter-attack was due to unfold, von Zwehl’s Jäger troops (the equivalent of the French Chasseurs) now hit these Territorials with tremendous force. Once again flamethrowers had been brought up, and this time an entire company broke and fled without stopping until it reached Samogneux on the Meuse. A battalion of a regular regiment, the 351st, that tried to stem the onrush was almost wiped out. By the afternoon, 450 prisoners, including nine officers, were in German hands. A big hole had been rent in the French first line, and, with all available reserves despatched to join in Bonvoille’s counter-attack, there were no troops immediately available to plug it. Samogneux was seriously threatened.