Verdun to the Vosges: Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France

by Gerald Campbell

It was certainly a lie with regard to Gerbéviller. That unhappy place was twice bombarded, first by the Germans and afterwards by the French, and at the first time of asking there was also a running fight through its streets. But it was not the shells of the 75’s and the 77’s that left roofless all but about six of its 463 houses. They were burnt by fire deliberately applied by the Bavarian soldiery by means chiefly of sulphur sticks and gunpowder pastilles, little black discs about the size of a florin, which apparently all the German soldiers carried with them. I have specimens of both taken from their cow-skin haversacks. The first time that we saw the town, about ten days after they had been driven out, we drove there with M. Mirman, the Prefect of Meurthe et Moselle, who had paid it his first official visit about a week earlier, and had at once carefully examined all the available evidence as to what had happened on the spot. That is a way M. Mirman has. He is not a collector of second-hand rumours. He deals with facts, and the mass of duly authenticated details about the doings of the Germans in his Department which he is putting together will form a damning indictment against them at the end of the war.

We drove to Gerbéviller by the road which, after crossing the Meurthe at Dombasle, skirts the river and the lower edge of the forest of Vitrimont for some miles and then cuts through the southern part of the battlefield on which for three weeks the defenders of Nancy made their memorable stand. We had therefore many chances of seeing the ruin caused by the battle at Blainville, Mont, and other villages on the way. But in none of them was there anything comparable to the wanton and wholesale destruction at Gerbéviller. In Lorraine they speak of it as Gerbéviller-la-Martyre. That is just what one feels about it. The town is like the dead body of a woman whom some inhuman monster has violated and kicked to death and then thrown into a bonfire.

When we got there some of the ruins were still smoking. We did not go inside what was left of the walls of the church. They were not in a very safe condition. In many places in the fields on the edge of the road just outside the town, and behind some of the tottering fragments of masonry that had once been the walls of houses, were lying the twisted carcases of horses; every here and there there was a horrible smell of burnt and putrefying flesh. There were also some pigs, routing about among the ruins for what they might devour. At first they were the only living things we saw. Everything else was dead, everything was burnt and smashed except the stone figure of the dead Christ on the Cross that stands at the corner where the principal street branches in two directions, fully exposed to the shattering volleys that were poured along it. By some miracle it had escaped destruction. Neither fire nor shells had touched it. From the church the street winds down the slope past the Christ on the Cross across the bridges that span the three streams into which the Mortagne divides as it flows through the town, then past what was once the private chapel of the family that owns the old chateau on the opposite side of the road, up the hill on the other side of the valley where there are half a dozen houses—at last—with roofs and walls and even windows, from one of which a Red Cross flag is floating, and then on to the wreck of the railway station. Some people have likened the remains of the town to the ruins of Pompeii. There is no need for that. They are the ruins of Gerbéviller. That will be description enough as long as the stones that are left hang together. The ruin is monstrous and unholy, especially in the part of the town on the right bank of the river, where it is, like Jerusalem of old, a city laid on an heap. We climbed at one place over the piles of stones and rubbish that had formed the front walls of one of the houses, and in a sort of ruined vault open to the air, which had been the cellar, saw lying on its back the blackened skeleton of a woman. She was one of several of the inhabitants who were burnt in the cellars in which they took refuge from the German shells and the German brutality. They could hardly be called hiding-places, because in some cases they were shot if they tried to come out of them. Others were shot in the streets like rabbits, as spies, or franc-tireurs or what not. Any pretext or none was good enough. I have seen a photograph which is in the possession of the French Government, taken by a responsible official, of fifteen white-haired old men whose dead bodies were found after the German withdrawal lying in a field near the town. Their hands were bound together, their trousers had been unbuttoned and were clinging round their knees, either as a brutal insult, or else—the irony of it—to prevent them from running away. They were shot in batches of five. The signal for their “execution” was given by the senior officer of the troops which had occupied the town. He sat at a table placed close to the scene of their murder drinking with some other officers. Three times he lifted his glass to his lips, and each time that he did so a volley was fired and five old men fell dead on the ground.

Photograph by Libert-Fernand, Nancy.

Gerbeviller—Meurthe et Moselle.

By fire and by bullet probably a hundred and certainly not less than forty people were assassinated and the whole population rendered homeless, because, as the Germans said—the usual lying excuse—some of them had fired on their troops. The truth of what happened is apparently this. When they attacked the town it was defended only by a body of Chasseurs, sixty or seventy strong. These men held out all day against the Bavarian regiments engaged in the attack, that is to say about 4000 men. Till the enemy entered the town in the afternoon the defenders were subjected to a bombardment as well as to the fire of rifle bullets. After they entered it the fight was continued along the street till late in the evening, when the men were driven back to their last stand behind a barrier which they constructed on one of the bridges. From here during the night they escaped—they had fought like heroes and nothing was to be gained by staying any longer—all except two or three who had got separated from the rest and had hidden in a cellar. Before morning these others also got away safely, but in order to do so they had first to kill a sentinel who was posted at the fork of the roads, near the stone Cross. When his dead body was discovered by the Germans, who were furious at the resistance they had met with, they decided that he had been killed by one of the inhabitants, and by way of punishment the acts of incendiarism were begun and were continued at intervals till the final general bonfire was lit on the day when they were driven out by the French soldiers.

Through the two bombardments, and the fight in the streets, and the burnings and the executions, the horrible story of human blood-lust and brutality was redeemed by the womanly courage and pity and devotion to duty which was shown by a little band of Sisters of Mercy, who, with the now famous Sœur Julie at their head, nursed the wounded all through those dreadful three weeks, with no thought of their own danger. The cross of the Legion of Honour was pinned on Sœur Julie’s serge robe by the President of the Republic, in front of the house where the Red Cross flag is still floating from the window, and where she and her fellow-Sisters gave such a splendid proof of the faith that was in them. Of the many deeds of heroism which they performed there is one little story which belonged entirely to herself. When the German soldiery were first let loose in the town, sacking and pillaging, they sacked and pillaged amongst other places the church (or perhaps it was the chapel, which is much nearer her house), and tried in vain to break open the sanctuary above the altar, by firing bullets at the lock. After they had gone Sœur Julie came to the place and with a bayonet which they had left on the stones wrenched open the door of the sanctuary, for fear that the sacred elements might fall into their sacrilegious hand if they came again. Though no one but a priest had the right to touch the wafers which were scattered on the floor of the sanctuary, she took them and the chalice, pierced by the Bavarian bullets, to her own house, and then, still with the same fear, herself consumed them, as David did the Shewbread, though with a rather higher object. And then, I am told, she felt rather uncomfortable in her mind—till she had made her confession to an ambulancier priest and received absolution for her “sin.”

Gerbéviller differed only in degree from what happened in scores of other towns and villages all over Lorraine and the Woevre and Alsace and the Vosges. It was not an isolated case. At Baccarat, at St. Benoit, at Badonviller, and many other places south of the Meurthe, as at Nomeny, Réméréville and many other places north of it, there were the same burnings, and the same shootings of innocent civilians. At Badonviller, where, besides eleven other victims, the wife of the singularly brave mayor, Monsieur Benoit, was shot in the street before his eyes, much more damage was done by incendiarism than by the fights that went on for the possession of the town. On the French side of the town there are few signs that it has often, since the beginning of the war, been the centre of furious fighting. A few French and German graves, distinguished by képis, or spiked helmets, one or two houses damaged by shells—and that is all. Then, as the road drops down into the town you see on the crest of the opposite ridge the ruins of the church, which, with the cemetery behind it was the part of the town that suffered most from the bombardment. Dome and roof have both been entirely shot away; shattered fragments of the pillars in front of the church and the shapeless remains of the four walls are all that is left, except for one thing—a statue of Joan of Arc, with one arm broken off short at the shoulder, standing erect and serene on its pedestal, surrounded by the piles of stone and mortar and timber and glass that litter the floor of the roofless nave. Outside in the cemetery, at the time of our first visit, coffins stripped of their covering of earth, broken tombstones, and shattered crosses completed the dreary scene of desolation, another proof that the church was the chief target of the German artillery. But of that there is no doubt. In the rest of the town, away from the church, comparatively little damage had been done by the shells, and there is this further curious fact to note, that the bombardment which did the mischief took place while the place was actually occupied by German troops. They were simply ordered to keep out of the range of the fire—which meant away from the actual neighbourhood of the church.

These troops—they were Bavarians—completed the work of destruction by burning the quarter of the town nearest to the German frontier, some thirty houses in all, besides pillaging many others. They also shot twelve of the inhabitants, including a woman and the child she was holding in her arms, and an old man of seventy-eight, who was sitting peacefully by his window.