Early on the morning of the 19th the greater part of the German force in Dornach advanced to Lutterbach, and there was a general flight of the villagers, carrying their household goods and driving in front of them as much as they could of their cattle and even poultry. At ten o’clock the French batteries on the rising ground at Morschweiler opened fire, and the battle soon became general all along the line. All day long the artillery duel continued, and after a time the French gunners became so confident of their own superiority, and so indifferent to the bad shooting of the enemy, that they advanced into the open and worked their guns as calmly and with as little regard for cover as if they were engaged in ordinary training manœuvres in time of peace. All day long, too—for the fighting was at very close quarters—one hand-to-hand infantry engagement after another between two sets of men who fought with desperate dash and tenacity, resolved on the one hand to advance, on the other to stand firm, for the honour of their respective countries, caused a vast amount of bloodshed. On the left, near the big engineering works, commonly known as “The Red Sea,” a body of French skirmishers advanced early in the engagement to within forty yards of a German company which was posted on the road in front, and killed and wounded half of them almost before they could reply. The rest fled to the shelter of the neighbouring houses, and there was a helter-skelter fight along the street, and in and out of doors and windows and gates and outhouses. Half of a battalion which was sent to support the routed men was wiped out by the artillery, and the other half refused to advance. A little further south, at Hochstatt, the 35th and 42nd French regiments suffered severely in the same way at the hands of the German gunners. In the afternoon, however, the 75’s altogether dominated the guns opposed to them, their fire ceased, and except for stray rifle shots here and there, the battle seemed to be over, large numbers of the enemy having been driven to take refuge in Mulhouse.
One more effort was made, but it was their last. A strong body of reinforcements were sent out of the town, and, by using a large building which till then had been sacred to the Red Cross as a redoubt, managed to keep the fighting going on for some time longer. But driven out of this refuge by infantry and artillery fire, they were once more compelled to retire to Mulhouse. Soon afterwards Dornach, where the bulk of the fighting took place, was captured, and by five o’clock the French, having surrounded and captured twenty-four guns and a large number of prisoners in the outlying suburbs, entered the town for the second time in less than a fortnight. This time there was no question of the enemy having retired of their own free will in order to entice them to advance further than was prudent. They had been beaten fairly and squarely in one of the few pitched battles of the war, and were flying in confusion to the shelter of the Hardt Forest and the Rhine. It was a great moment for General Pau’s army and for France, even though the engagement, compared with the events which were to take place in Lorraine and Belgium, was a comparatively small one. But unfortunately it was a moment that did not last. Twenty-four hours after France knew that the tricolour was once more floating in Mulhouse, it learnt also of the defeat at Morhange, and although there was no immediate connexion between Morhange and the evacuation of Mulhouse (only five days after its recapture), the gravity of the crisis on the more important fields further north completely out-shadowed the really considerable triumph in Alsace.
CHAPTER IX
MORHANGE
On the map the main ridge of the Hautes and Basses Vosges (and the boundary line of that part of the frontier) follows almost exactly the shape and position of a small manuscript “q.” At the head of the curl of the “q” is the Donon, and at its lower curve the Col de Saales, with the town of St. Dié a trifle to the west of it.
Through the valley represented by the curl the river Bruche flows north-east past St. Blaise and Schirmeck, and then turns nearly due east past the fort of Mutzig, to Strassburg.
Following down the stroke of the “q,” the principal passes, from north to south, crossed by roads which even the snows of winter do not often make impassable, are the Col de Sainte Marie aux Mines, the Col de Bonhomme, the Col de Schlucht (from near which the north branch of the river Fecht flows past Stossweiler to Munster), the Col de Bramont (from which the valley of the Thur descends past Wesserling and St. Amarin to Thann and Cernay), and the Col de Bussang, and at the southern extremity of the stroke is the Ballon d’Alsace.
Since the beginning of the war there has been a continuous series of violent struggles for the possession of nearly the whole of this string of important positions on the crests of the range. Some of them the French have gained and kept; some they have taken and lost, and then regained; some they have taken and lost, and not succeeded in recovering up to the present moment. They have always kept their footing secure on the summits of the southern part of the range from the Ballon d’Alsace to the Col de Schlucht. From the Col de Bonhomme and the Col de Sainte Marie aux Mines, which they captured at the beginning of the campaign, they were compelled to retire in the fourth week of August, 1914, but they recaptured these passes after the Battle of the Marne. The whole of the curl of the “q,” from the Donon to the Col de Saales, and also the valley of the Bruche, which the French won and held for the first fortnight of the offensive, were then evacuated and have remained ever since in the hands of the enemy. All efforts to dislodge them from that sixteen-mile stretch of the frontier have failed, and their continued presence there has been and is a distinct nuisance to our Allies.
For the present, however, we are concerned only with the events which took place in this region during the successful opening of the French offensive, up to the Battle of Morhange, and the second retirement from Mulhouse. By August 7th, largely thanks to the effective fire of the Fort of Servance, on the north-west of the Ballon d’Alsace, our Allies were complete masters of the Ballon itself and of the Col de Bussang, five miles further north, and, as we have already seen, had sent a force down the valley of the Thur to Thann. By the evening of the 8th, they were astride the Bonhomme and Sainte Marie aux Mines passes, and by twelve o’clock next day, after a violent struggle which lasted all night, the town of Sainte Marie aux Mines was commanded by the fire of their guns. Almost at the same time another French column began a resolute attack on the Col de Saales. On August 12th, supported by a well-directed artillery fire which swept the rear of the German position, the infantry advanced impetuously to the attack, and the enemy retired from Saales in disorder, leaving behind them in the hands of the French four guns, a large amount of equipment, and eight hundred prisoners, most of them belonging to the 99th regiment of the line, which formed part of the garrison of Saverne and was brought into public notice shortly before the war by the exploits of the notorious Lieutenant Forstner.
Early the next morning the French followed up their attack by advancing in the valley of the Bruche in the direction of St. Blaise, where they were opposed by a strong German force consisting of the 99th and its sister corps the 132nd, two batteries of 77’s, and one of field-howitzers, and a company of machine-guns. The engagement began with a brisk artillery combat, which resulted in the complete silencing of the enemy batteries by the shrapnel of the 75’s. Most of the horses of the gun-teams and a large proportion of the artillerymen were killed, and the guns, deserted by the survivors, were taken by the French, practically undamaged. During the early part of the action some German machine-guns placed in the tower of the St. Blaise Church did a considerable amount of damage, but as soon as their position was discovered the 75’s made short work of the tower and all it contained. Just before nightfall a battalion of French chasseurs—the 1st, I believe—charged the German positions with fixed bayonets and in half an hour had driven the enemy out and settled themselves down for the night in the captured trenches. Besides eight guns, four mortars, six mitrailleuses, ninety horses, and over five hundred men, the spoil included the colours of the 132nd Regiment, which were taken by a private of the 5th company of the Chasseurs battalion—the first trophy of the kind that was secured during the war. Among the many Germans killed was a general of division.
So far, with the exception of this last engagement, the fighting in the Vosges had mainly consisted of affairs of outposts, though the occupation of the passes was obviously a strategical gain of great importance. From August 15th onwards, though only for a few days, the offensive was pushed steadily forward in stronger force and a good slice of German territory was occupied. The possession of the Donon and the Col de Saales, commanding the valley of the Bruche, enabled the French to occupy Schirmeck, seven or eight miles north of Saales, while another column branched off to the right and took Villé on the road to Schlestadt. There was, in fact, a general advance along the valley of Bruche and the other valleys running down into the plain of Alsace. Prisoners and war material were captured in considerable numbers, in some places the plain itself was reached, and the chief difficulty of the officers was in restraining their men, who were quite unaffected by the losses which they had suffered, from going too far ahead.