Three Weeks of the War in Champagne
By a British Observer
The following article, issued by the British Press Bureau, London, March 18, 1915, is from a British observer with the French forces in the field who has the permission of General Joffre to send communications home from time to time, giving descriptions of the work, &c., of the French Army which will be of interest to the British reader.
I propose to give some account of the operations which have been in progress for the last three weeks in Champagne. Every day since Feb. 15 the official communiqués find something to say about a district which lies midway between Rheims and Verdun. The three places which are always mentioned, which form the points of reference, are Perthes-lez-Hurlus, Le Mesnil-lez-Hurlus, and Beauséjour Farm. The distance between the first and the last is three and one-half miles; the front on which the fighting has taken place is about five miles; and the French have been attacking at one point or another in this front every day for the last three weeks. It is, therefore, an operation of a different kind to those which we have seen during the Winter months. Those were local efforts, lasting a day or two, designed to keep the enemy busy and prevent him from withdrawing troops elsewhere; this is a sustained effort, made with the object of keeping a constant pressure on his first line of defense, of affecting his use of the railway from Bazancourt to Challerange, a few miles to the north, and of wearing down his reserves of men and ammunition. It may be said that Feb. 15 marks the opening of the 1915 campaign, and that this first phase will find an important place when the history of the war comes to be written.
We must first know something of the nature of the country, which is entirely different to that in which the British Army is fighting. It is one vast plain, undulating, the hills at most 200 feet higher than the valleys, gentle slopes everywhere. The soil is rather chalky, poor, barely worth cultivating; after heavy rain the whole plain becomes a sea of shallow mud; and it dries equally quickly. The only features are the pine woods, which have been planted by hundreds. From the point of view of profit, this would not appear to have been a success; either the soil is too poor, or else it is unsuitable to the maritime pine; for the trees are rarely more than 25 feet high. As each rise is topped, a new stretch of plain, a new set of small woods appear, just like that which has been left behind.
ELEUTHERIOS K. VENIZELOS—The great Greek statesman who
recently resigned as Prime Minister.—(Photo from Medom Photo Service.)
LORD HARDINGE OF PENSHURST—Who, as Viceroy,
rules England's Indian Empire during the critical period of the war.
The villages are few and small, most of them are in ruins after the fighting in September; and the troops live almost entirely in colonies of little huts of wood or straw, about four feet high, dotted about in the woods, in the valleys, wherever a little water and shelter is obtainable. Lack of villages means lack of roads; this has been one of the great difficulties to be faced; but, at the same time, the movement of wagons across country is possible to a far greater extent than in Flanders, although it is often necessary to use eight or ten horses to get a gun or wagon to the point desired.
From the military point of view the country is eminently suitable for troops, with its possibilities of concealment, of producing sudden surprises with cavalry, and of manoeuvre generally. It is, in fact, the training ground of the great military centre of Châlons; and French troops have doubtless been exercised over this ground in every branch of military operation, except that in which they are engaged at the present moment.
What commander, training his men over this ground, could have imagined that the area from Perthes-lez-Hurlus to Beauséjour Farm would become two fortress lines, developed and improved for four months; or that he would have to carry out an attack modeled on the same system as that employed in the last great siege undertaken by French troops, that of Sebastopol in 1855? Yet this is what is being done. Every day an attack is made on a trench, on the edge of one of the little woods or to gain ground in one of them; every day the ground gained has to be transformed so as to give protection to its new occupants and means of access to their supports; every night, and on many days, the enemy's counter-attacks have to be repulsed.
Each attack has to be prepared by a violent and accurate artillery fire; it may be said that a trench has to be morally captured by gun fire before it can be actually seized by the infantry. Once in the new trench, the men have to work with their intrenching tools, without exposing themselves, and wait for a counter-attack, doing what damage they can to the enemy with hand grenades and machine guns. Thus the amount of rifle fire is very small; it is a war of explosives and bayonets.
Looking at the battle at a distance of about 2,000 yards from the enemy's line, the stillness of what one sees is in marked contrast to the turmoil of shells passing overhead. The only movement is the cloud of smoke and earth that marks the burst of a shell. Here and there long white lines are visible, when a trench has brought the chalky subsoil up to the top, but the number of trenches seen is very small compared to the number that exist, for one cannot see into the valleys, and the top of the ground is an unhealthy place to choose for seating a trench. The woods are pointed out, with the names given them by the soldiers, but it needs fieldglasses to see the few stumps that remain in those where the artillery has done its work. And then a telephone message arrives, saying that the enemy are threatening a counter-attack at a certain point, and three minutes later there is a redoubled whistling of shells. At first one cannot see the result of this fire—the guns are searching the low ground where the enemy's reserves are preparing for the movement, but a little later the ground in front of the threatened trench becomes alive with shell bursts, for the searching has given place to the building up of a wall of fire through which it is impossible for the foe to pass without enormous loss.
The attached map may enable us to look more closely at what has been achieved. The lowest dotted line, numbered 15, is the line of the French trenches on Feb. 15. They were then close up to the front of the German line with its network of barbed wire, its machine-gun emplacements, often of concrete, and its underground chambers for sheltering men from the shells. Each successive dotted line shows the line held by the French on the evening of the date written in the dotted line. Thus the total gain of ground, that between the most southerly and the most northerly dotted lines, varies between 200 yards, where the lines are close together northeast of Perthes, and 1,400 yards, half way between Le Mesnil and Beauséjour Farm. But the whole of this space has been a series of trenches and fortified woods, each of which has had to be attacked separately.
Map of the French Operations in the Champagne
Some of the severest fighting on the western battle front took place in this little section of about four miles of trenches, lying between Rheimes and Verdun. For a whole month from Feb. 15, the attacks were kept up by the French forces almost continuously, and the sketch gives the graphic result of changes for three weeks of that time. Ostensibly the purpose of the French was to pierce the German line and cut the railway a few miles to the rear. Incidentally, the French aimed to keep their opponents busy, and thus prevent any reinforcements being sent to von Hindenburg in the east.
The total gain of ground—that between the most southerly and most northerly dotted lines—varies from 200 yards northeast of Perthes to 1,400 yards, half way between Le Mesnil and Beauséjour Farm. But the whole of this space has been a series of trenches and fortified woods, each of which had to be attacked separately.
The letters (A to G) in the sketch indicate the points of the severest fighting. A (the "little fort") was taken and lost three times before the French finally held it. B saw some of the stiffest encounters, the Germans attacking the hill nearly every day after the French captured it, and even the Prussian Guard being put in. The woods at C, D, and E were centres of terrific combats, in which trenching and mining were continuous tasks. The redoubt at F was captured only after large losses on both sides. At the extreme west is still another wood, (G.) which the French attacked three times before they were successful in getting a foothold there.]
Some of the points where the fighting has been heaviest are shown in letters on the map. A is the "little fort," a redoubt on an open spur, holding perhaps 500 men. This was first attacked in January; it was partly taken, but the French in the end retained only the southern corner, where they remained for something like a fortnight. On Feb. 16 it was again taken in part, and lost the same day. On the 17th the same thing happened. On the 23d they once more got into the work; in the evening they repulsed five separate counter-attacks; then a sixth succeeded in turning them out. On the 27th they took all except a bit of trench in the northern face, and two days later they made that good, as well as a trench about fifty yards to the north of the work.
B is a small hill, marked 196. The capture of this, with its two lines of trenches, was one of the most brilliant pieces of work done. Since this date, the 26th, the enemy have continued to counter-attack nearly every day. It was here that the Prussian Guard was put in; but they have failed to get it back, and their losses have been very high. The prisoners stated that one regiment had its Colonel and all the superior officers killed or wounded. C is a wood, called the "Yellow Burnt Wood." It is still in the hands of the Germans, a regular nest of machine guns, which command the ground not only to the front but also down valleys to the east and west. The French are just in the southwest corner.
At D there are two woods; the southern we will call No. 3, the northern No. 4. On the 16th our allies got a trench just south of No. 3; they got into the wood on the 18th, and fought backward and forward in the wood that day and all the 19th and 20th; by the evening of the 20th they had almost reached the northern edge. On the 21st a stronger counter-attack than usual was repulsed, and in pursuing the retiring enemy they secured the northern edge. On the 22d there was more fighting in No. 3, but in the end the French managed to make their way into No. 4 as far as a trench which runs along a crest midway through the wood. The next six days saw continuous fighting in No. 4, sometimes near the northern end, sometimes at the crest in the middle, and occasionally back near the southern end. The French now hold the northern edge, and have pushed troops into the "Square" wood just north of the line of the 25th.
At E again there are two small woods; these were both captured on the 26th, but the trenches in the northern one had been mined, and the French had no sooner seized them than they were blown up. At F there was another small redoubt; part of this was taken on the 19th from the east, but the work was not finally captured till the 27th, when 240 corpses were found in it. On the extreme west, at G, is a wood which has twice been unsuccessfully attacked. On the first occasion troops got into the wood, but a severe snowstorm prevented the artillery from continuing to assist them, and they were driven out. The second was an attempt to surprise the enemy at 2 A.M. on the 25th; this also failed. A third attack was made on March 7 and was successful; the French line now runs through the wood.
The above will serve to show the tenacity which is required for an operation of this kind. Up to the present the French have made steady and continuous progress, and their success may be best judged from the fact that they have not been forced back on any day behind the line they held in the morning, despite innumerable counter-attacks. And this is not merely a question of ground, but one of increasing moral superiority, for it is in the unsuccessful counter-attacks that losses are heavy, and these and the sense of failure affect the morale of an army sooner or later.
Will the French push through the line? Will a hole be made, or is the enemy like a badger, who digs himself in rather faster than you can dig him out? I cannot tell; it would indeed be an astonishing measure of success for a first attempt, and the enemy may require a great deal more hammering at many points before he has definitely had enough at any one point. But these operations have brought the day closer, and turn our thoughts to the time when we shall be able to move forward, and one finds the cavalrymen wondering whether perhaps they, too, will get their chance.