Chapter 9

It was my great good fortune, when the fate of Verdun still hung in the balance, to visit the city and to lunch with General Dubois and his staff in the citadel. Though the valor of the French infantry kept the Germans from entering Verdun, nothing could prevent the entrance of their shells. Seven hundred fell in one day. Not a single house in a city of 40,000 inhabitants remains intact. The place looks as though it had been visited simultaneously by the San Francisco earthquake, the Baltimore fire, and the Johnstown flood. But once in the shelter of the citadel and we were safe. Though German shells of large caliber were falling in the city at frequent intervals, the casemate in which we lunched was so far beneath the surface of the earth that the sound of the explosions did not reach us. It was as though we were lunching in a New York subway station: a great, vaulted, white-tiled room aglare with electric lights. We sat with General Dubois and the members of his immediate staff at a small table close to the huge range on which the cooking was being done, while down the middle of the room stretched one of the longest tables I have ever seen, at which upward of a hundred officers--and one civilian--were eating. This lone civilian was a _commissaire_ of police, and the sole representative of the city's civil population. When the Tsar bestowed the Cross of St. George on the city in recognition of its heroic defense, it was to this policeman, the only civilian who remained, that the Russian representative handed the badge of the famous order.

The _déjeuner_, though simple, was as well cooked and well served as though we were seated in a Paris restaurant instead of in a besieged fortress. And the first course was fresh lobster! I told General Dubois that my friends at home would raise their eyebrows incredulously when I told them this, whereupon he took a menu--for they had menus--and across it wrote his name and "Citadel de Verdun," and the date. "Perhaps that will convince them," he said, passing it to me. By this I do not mean to imply that the French commanders live in luxury. Far from it! But, though their food is very simple, it is always well cooked (which is very far from being the case in our own army), and it is appetizingly served whenever circumstances permit.

After luncheon, under the guidance of the general, I made the rounds of the citadel. Here, so far beneath the earth as to be safe from even the largest shells, was the telephone-room, the nerve-centre of the whole complicated system of defense, with a switchboard larger than those in the "central office" of many an American city. By means of the thousands of wires focussed in that little underground room, General Dubois was enabled to learn in an instant what was transpiring at Douaumont or Tavannes or Vaux; he could pass on the information thus obtained to General Nivelle at Souilly; or he could talk direct to the Ministry of War, in Paris. I might add that one of the most difficult problems met with in this war has been the maintenance of communications during an attack. The telephone is the means most generally relied upon, but in spite of multiplying the number of lines, they are all usually put out of commission during the preliminary bombardment, the wires connecting the citadel with Fort Douaumont and Fort de Vaux, for example, being repeatedly destroyed. For this reason several alternative means of communication have always to be provided, among these being flares and light-balls, carrier-pigeons, of which the French make considerable use, and optical signalling apparatus, this last method having been found the most effective. Sometimes small wireless outfits are used when the conditions permit. On a few occasions trained dogs have been used to send back messages, but, the pictures in the illustrated papers to the contrary, they have not proven a success. In the final resort, the most ancient method of all--the despatch bearer or runner--has still very frequently to be employed, making his hazardous trips on a motor-cycle when he can, on foot when he must.

In the room next to the telephone bureau a dozen clerks were at work and typewriters were clicking busily; had it not been for the uniforms one might have taken the place for the office of a large and busy corporation, as, in a manner of speaking, it was. On another level were the bakeries which supplied the bread for the troops in the trenches; enormous storerooms filled with supplies of every description; an admirably equipped hospital with every cot occupied, usually by a "shrapnel case"; a flag-trimmed hall used by the officers as a club-room; and, on the upper levels, mess-halls and sleeping-quarters for the men. Despite the terrible strain of the long-continued bombardment, the soldiers seemed surprisingly cheerful, going about their work in the long, gloomy passages joking and whistling. They sleep when and where they can: on the bunks in the fetid air of the casemates; on the steps of the steep staircases that burrow deep into the ground; or on the concrete floors of the innumerable galleries. But sleeping is not easy in Verdun.

A short distance to the southwest of Verdun, on the bare face of a hill, is Fort de la Chaume. Like the other fortifications built to defend the city, it no longer has any military value save for purposes of observation. Peering through a narrow slit in one of its armored _observatoires_, I was able to view the whole field of the world's greatest battle--a battle which lasted a year and cost a million men--as from the gallery of a theatre one might look down upon the stage, the boxes, and the orchestra-stalls. Below me, rising from the meadows beside the Meuse, were the shattered roofs and fire-blackened walls of Verdun, dominated by the stately tower of the cathedral and by the great bulk of the citadel. The environs of the town and the hill slopes beyond the river were constantly pricked by sudden scarlet jets as the flame leaped from the mouths of the carefully concealed French guns, which seemed to be literally everywhere, while countless geyser-like irruptions of the earth, succeeded by drifting patches of white vapor, showed where the German shells were bursting. Sweeping the landscape with my field-glasses, a long column of motor-trucks laden with ammunition came within my field of vision. As I looked there suddenly appeared, squarely in the path of the foremost vehicle, a splotch of yellow smoke shot through with red. When the smoke and dust had cleared away, the motor-truck had disappeared. The artillery officer who accompanied me directed my gaze across the level valley to where, beyond the river, rose the great brown ridge known as the Heights of the Meuse.

"Do you appreciate," he asked, "that on three miles of that ridge a million men--400,000 French and 600,000 Germans--have already fallen?"

Beyond the ridge, but hidden by it, were Hill 304 and Le Mort Homme of bloody memory, while on the horizon, looking like low, round-topped hillocks, were Forts Douaumont and de Vaux (what a thrill those names must give to every Frenchman!) and farther down the slope and a little nearer me were Fleury and Tavannes. The fountains of earth and smoke which leaped upward from each of them at the rate of half a dozen to the minute, showed us that they were enduring a particularly vicious hammering by the Germans.

There are no words between the covers of the dictionary which can bring home to one who has not witnessed them the awful violence of the shell-storms which have desolated these hills about Verdun. In one week's attack to the north of the city the Germans threw five million shells, the total weight of which was forty-seven thousand tons. Eighty thousand shells rained upon one shallow sector of a thousand yards, and these were so marvellously placed that the crater of one cut into that of its neighbor, pulverizing everything that lived and turning the man-filled trenches into tombs. Hence there is no longer any such thing as a continuous line of trenches. Indeed, there are no longer any trenches at all, nor entanglements either, but only a series of craters. It is these craters which the French infantry has held with such unparalleled heroism. The men holding the craters are kept supplied with food and ammunition from the chain of little forts--Vaux, Douaumont, and the others--and the forts, themselves battered almost to pieces by the torrents of steel which have been poured upon them, have relied in turn on the citadel back in Verdun for their reinforcements, their ammunition, and their provisions, all of which have had to be sent out at night, the latter on the backs of men.

So violent and long-continued have been the hurricanes of steel which have swept these slopes, that the surface of the earth has been literally blasted away, leaving a treacherous and incredibly tenacious quagmire in which horses and even soldiers have lost their lives. General Dubois told me that, only a few days before my visit to Verdun, one of his staff-officers, returning alone and afoot from an errand to Vaux, had fallen into a shell-crater and had drowned in the mud. Indeed, the whole terrain is pitted with shell-holes as is pitted the face of a man who has had the small-pox. So terrible is the condition of the country that it often takes a soldier an hour to cover a mile. What was once a smiling and prosperous countryside has been rendered, by human agency, as barren and worthless as the slopes of Vesuvius.

Verdun, I repeat, was held not by gun-power but by man-power. It was not the monster guns on railway-trucks, or even the great numbers of quick-firing, hard-hitting 75's, but the magnificent courage and tenacity of the tired men in the mud-splashed uniforms, which held Verdun for France. Though their forts were crumbling under the violence of the German bombardment; though their trenches were pounded into pudding; though the unceasing barrage made it at times impossible to bring up food or water or reinforcements, the French hung stubbornly on, and against the granite wall of their defense the waves of men in gray flung themselves in vain. And when the fury of the German assaults had in a measure spent itself, General Nivelle retook in a few hours, on October 24, 1916, Forts Douaumont and de Vaux, which had cost the Germans seven months of incessant efforts and a sacrifice of human lives unparalleled in history.

The fighting before Verdun illustrated and emphasized the revolution in methods of attack and defense which has taken place in the French army. At the beginning of the war the French believed in depending largely on their light artillery both to prepare and to support an attack, and for this purpose their 75's were admirably adapted. This method worked well when carried out properly, and before the Germans had time to bring up their heavy guns; it was by resorting to it that the French won the victory of the Marne. But the Marne taught the Germans that the surest way to break up the French system of attack was to interpose obstacles, such as woods, wire entanglements, and particularly trenches. To destroy these obstacles the French then had to resort to heavy-calibered pieces, with which, as I have already remarked, they were at first very inadequately supplied. In the spring of 1915 in Artois, and in the autumn of the same year in Champagne, they attempted to break through the German lines, but these attacks were not supported by sufficient artillery and were each conducted in a single locality over a limited front. Then, at Verdun, the Germans tried opposite tactics, attempting to break through on a wide front extending on both sides of the Meuse. So appalling were their losses, however, that, as the attack progressed, they were compelled by lack of sufficient effectives to constantly narrow their front until finally the action was taking place along a line of only a few kilometres. This permitted the French to concentrate both their infantry and their artillery into dense formations, and before this concentrated and intensive fire the German attacking columns withered and were swept away like leaves before an autumn wind.

The French infantry--and the same is, I believe, true of the German--is now to all intents and purposes divided into two classes: holding troops and attacking, or "shock" troops, as the French call them. The latter consist of such picked elements as the Chasseur battalions, the Zouaves, the Colonials, the First, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Army Corps, and, of course, the Foreign Legion. All these are recruited from the youngest and most vigorous men, due regard being also paid to selecting recruits from those parts of France which have always produced the best fighting stock--and among these are the invaded districts. Shock troops are rarely sent into the trenches, but when not actively engaged in conducting or resisting an attack, are kept in cantonments well to the rear. Here they can get undisturbed rest at night, but by day they are worked as a negro teamster works his mule. As a result, they are always "on their toes," and in perfect fighting trim. In this way mobility, cohesion, and enthusiasm, all qualities which are seriously impaired by a long stay in the trenches, are preserved in the attacking troops, who, when they go into battle, are as keen and hard and well-trained as a prize-fighter who steps into the ring to battle for the championship belt.

The most striking feature of the new French system of attack is the team-work of the infantry, artillery, and airplanes. The former advance to the assault in successive waves, each made up of several lines, the men being deployed at five-yard intervals. The first wave advances at a slow walk behind a curtain of artillery fire, which moves forward at the rate of fifty yards a minute, the first line of the wave keeping a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards, or, in other words, at a safe distance, behind this protecting fire-curtain. The men in this first line carry no rifles, but consist exclusively of grenadiers, automatic riflemen, and their ammunition carriers, every eighth man being armed with the new Chauchat automatic rifle, a recently adopted weapon which weighs only nineteen pounds, and fires at the rate of five shots a second. Three men, carrying between them one thousand cartridges, are assigned to each of these guns, of which there are now more than fifty thousand in use on the French front. The automatic riflemen fire from the hip as they advance, keeping streams of bullets playing on the enemy just as firemen keep streams of water playing on a fire. In the second line the men are armed with rifles, some having bayonets and others rifle grenades, the latter being specially designed to break up counter-attacks against captured trenches. A third line follows, consisting of "trench cleaners," though it must not be inferred from their name that they use mops and brooms. The native African troops are generally used for this trench-cleaning business, and they do it very handily with grenades, pistols and knives.

When the first wave reaches a point within two hundred to three hundred yards of the enemy's trenches, a halt of five minutes is made to re-form for the final charge. In addition to the advancing curtain-fire immediately preceding the troops, a second screen of fire is dropped between the enemy's first and second lines, thus preventing the men in the first line from retreating and making it equally impossible for the men in the second line to get reinforcements or supplies to their comrades in the first. Still other batteries are engaged in keeping down the fire of the hostile artillery while the big guns, mounted on railway-trucks, shell the enemy's headquarters, his supports, and his lines of communication.

The attack is accompanied by and largely directed by airplanes, certain of which are assigned to regulating the artillery fire, while others devote themselves exclusively to giving information to the infantry, with whom they communicate by means of dropping from one to six fire-balls. As the aircraft used for infantry and artillery regulation are comparatively slow machines, they are protected from the attacks of enemy aviators by a screen of small, fast battle-planes--the destroyers of the air--which, in several cases, have swooped low enough to use their machine-guns on the German trenches. If it becomes necessary to give to the infantry some special information not provided for by the prearranged signals, the aviator will volplane down to within a hundred feet above the infantry and drop a written message. I was told that in one of the successful French attacks before Verdun such a message proved extremely useful as by means of it the troops advancing toward Douaumont, which was then held by the Germans, were informed that the enemy was in force on their right, but that there was practically no resistance on their left. Acting in response to this information from the skies, they swung forward on this flank, and took the Germans on their right in the rear. Just as a football team is coached from the side-lines, so a charge is nowadays directed from the clouds.

One of the picturesque developments of the war is _camouflage_, as the French call their system of disguising or concealing batteries, airplane-sheds, ammunition stores, and the like, from observation and possible destruction by enemy aviators. This work is done in the main by a corps specially recruited for the purpose from the artists and scene painters of France. It is considered prudent, for example, to conceal the location of a certain "ammunition dump," as the British term the vast accumulations of shells, cartridges, and other supplies which are piled up at the railheads awaiting transportation to the front by motor-lorry. Over the great mound of shells and cartridge-boxes is spread an enormous piece of canvas, often larger by far than the "big top" of a four-ring circus. Then the scene painters get to work with their paints and brushes and transform that expanse of canvas into what, when viewed from the sky, appears to be, let us say, a group of innocent farm-buildings. The next day, perhaps, a German airman, circling high overhead, peers earthward through his glasses and descries, far beneath him, a cluster of red rectangles--the tiled roofs of cottages or stables, he supposes; a patch of green--evidently a bit of lawn; a square of gray--the cobble-paved barnyard--and pays it no further attention. How can he know that what he takes to be a farmstead is but a piece of painted canvas concealing a small mountain of potential death?

At a certain very important point on the French front there long stood, in an exposed and commanding position, a large and solitary tree, or rather the trunk of a tree, for it had been shorn of its branches by shell-fire. A landmark in that flat and devastated region, every detail of this gaunt sentinel had long since become familiar to the keen eyed observers in the German trenches, a few hundred yards away. Were a man to climb to its top--and live--he would be able to command a comprehensive view of the surrounding terrain. The German sharpshooters saw to it, however, that no one climbed it. But one day the resourceful French took the measurements of that tree and photographed it. These measurements and photographs were sent to Paris. A few weeks later there arrived at the French front by railway an imitation tree, made of steel, which was an exact duplicate in every respect, even to the splintered branches and the bark, of the original. Under cover of darkness the real tree was cut down and the fake tree erected in its place, so that, when daylight came, there was no change in the landscape to arouse the Germans' suspicions. The lone tree-trunk to which they had grown so accustomed still reared itself skyward. But the "tree" at which the Germans were now looking was of hollow steel, and concealed in its interior in a sort of conning-tower, forty feet above the ground, a French observing officer, field-glasses at his eyes and a telephone at his lips, was peering through a cleverly concealed peep-hole, spotting the bursts of the French shells and regulating the fire of the French batteries.

Nearly three years have passed since Germany tore up the Scrap of Paper. In that time the French army has been hammered and tempered and tested until it has become the most formidable weapon of offense and defense in existence. I am convinced that in organization and in efficiency it is now, after close on three years of experiments and object-lessons, as good, if not better, than the German--and I have marched with both and have seen both in action. Its light artillery is admittedly the finest in the world. Though without any heavy artillery to speak of at the beginning of the war, it has in this respect already equalled if not surpassed the Germans. It has created an air service which, in efficiency and in number of machines, is unequalled. And the men, themselves, in addition to their characteristic _élan_, possess that invaluable quality which the German soldier lacks--initiative.

It is worthy of note, in this connection, that the entire reorganization of the French army has been carried out virtually without any action on the part of the French Congress, and with merely the formal approval of the Minister of War. The politicians in Paris have, save in a few instances, wisely refrained from interference, and have left military problems to be decided by military men. But, when all is said and done, it will not be the generals who will decide this war; it will be the soldiers. And they are truly wonderful men, these French soldiers. It is their amazing calm, their total freedom from nervousness or apprehension, that impresses one the most, and the secret of this calm is confidence. They are as confident of eventual victory as they are that the sun will rise to-morrow morning. They are fanatics, and France is their Allah. You can't beat men like that, because they never know when they are beaten, and keep on fighting.

I like to think that sometimes, in that cold and dismal hour before the dawn, when hope and courage are at their lowest ebb, there appears among the worn and homesick soldiers in the trenches the spirit of the Great Emperor. Cheeringly he claps each man upon the shoulder.

"Courage, mon brave," he whispers. "On les aura!"

FOOTNOTES:

[C] A nickname for the Hispana-Suiza.

[D] Though great numbers of American-built airplanes have been shipped to Europe, they are being used only for purposes of instruction, as they are not considered fast enough for work on the front.

[E] Commandant Bunau-Varilla was really sent as a compliment to my companion, Mr. Arthur Page, editor of _The World's Work_.

VII

"THAT CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY"