“Alerte! To arms!”
Ah! Yes! Ground, hacked, mutilated, overrun, those easy-going papas, the Territorials, fought the best they could; but the Argonne was the accomplice of the Boche. The drive became irresistible. With the shell-power of this massed artillery, the lines were broken and obliterated. Under the storm of shells the trenches were levelled. It was not an artillery battle, nor merely a violent attack. It was rather an avalanche of explosives. The molten torrent, crackling with sparks, fantastic, inhuman, swept all before it. All the massed Krupp guns in diabolic fury spat their clots of flaming blood. The torn, disembowelled earth leaped into the air and fell in dust. A bitter smoke filled the air, dense on the plain and dense on the mountain summit. Douaumont became a forge, Vaux was a fiery cyclone. Thavannes was a scarlet glow, le Mort Homme was a continuous roar, and Verdun heard the approaching thunder in apprehensive dread.
At the call for reinforcements the regiments came in all haste, to bare their breasts to the cannon. Fiercely the units clung to their ground, placed their batteries, intrenched themselves, and offered stubborn resistance. The enemy still advanced. The adversary was not an army division but all Germany, with the dynasty, the Crown Prince, the old Haseleer at their head. The defenders were again faced by the terrible order, “Conquer or die,” as on the Marne and the Yser. Once more that game was played. Once more it had the upper hand. Destiny, impassive, looked on.
Three kilometres of retreat brought the French to the Côte de Poivre.
The Boche had orders to take, at all costs, the “strongest citadel of France.” That success would mean the death of our country. It meant all France exposed to the foe, Paris captured, Defeat. It meant Crime triumphant, history violated, supremacy of brutal might, humanity’s bonds reforged. It meant the flower of the Revolution crushed and Liberty in chains. It meant the Kaiser’s boot on the neck of the world.
“Do you wish aid?” came the message from England, already preparing to send succor. France responded proudly: “No! I can hold my ground.”
And she held it. The world knows it.
An innumerable host, coated in dirty gray like a repulsive animal, rushed on in its heavy, obstinate bravery; as an infuriated bull with lowered head madly charges his foe, so the German brute in his blind rage hurled himself toward us. In the path of the Hunnish Horde stood French valor. They Shall Not Pass! Nor did they. But—what a struggle!
All the slopes which form the heights of the Meuse and are the ramparts of Gaul, resounded as a monster forge. There Vulcan had set up his furnaces. Such a battle is too great to be recounted. It is the story of Thavannes, whose immense tunnel of approach sheltered a whole battalion at a time. It is the story of the fall of Douaumont; then the siege of indomitable Vaux, dauntless, resisting, panting, quivering like a drum. There the shells fall at the rate of ten per minute. Raynal is commanding there: that is enough. Ten times the German hurled his force against the fortifications, and ten times he fell back, baffled. The garrison stood its ground in a furnace of the damned. New men entered by a breach, followed a narrow path, found the postern gate, and leaped in. For every man who came, came a shell. Overhead twenty airplanes circled about, directing the fire, like vultures above the eagle’s nest; while the cannon on the surrounding heights converged their fire.
Vaux! Heroic name, name never to be forgotten! Vaux, a rock burned by acids, by powder, by the fires of hell. Vaux held out five days, six days—eight days! The sky at night was a hot glow. The earth was one continuous roar of explosions, enveloped in billows of smoke. In that inferno men fought unto death. Trenches, shelters, stone, and earthworks were wiped away by the shells; the battle left the protection of the ground and swung into free space.