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

by Gerald Campbell

Unfortunately, the one fort in which the enemy did set foot—the Camp des Romains—was the most important of them all. It lies on a ridge nine hundred feet high, barely a mile to the south of St. Mihiel, and therefore at the apex of the triangular position occupied by the opposing lines of trenches, and commands the whole of the surrounding country except parts of the loops of the river immediately to the west and north of it. Its capture, after a heroic resistance on the part of the garrison, was finally brought about by the occupation of St. Mihiel by the army of Metz.

Why that occupation—a particularly disastrous blow for our Allies—was effected as easily as it was, it is not easy to understand. St. Mihiel, or at least the Camp des Romains, was the crucial point of the Meuse position. It was by this time quite obvious that the main object of the Germans was almost at any cost to break through the fortress barrier and cross the river so as to effect a junction with the Crown Prince’s army, which now occupied a position in the Argonne between the Aire and the Aisne, to the west of Verdun, extending eastwards to the north of that fortress. If this scheme had succeeded it would have had the double effect of completing the investment of Verdun with a ring instead of only a horse-shoe of hostile armies, and at the same time of relieving the pressure brought to bear on the Crown Prince’s army by the French troops in the Argonne between St. Ménéhould and Clermont. It might even have compelled these and the armies on their left to retire once more in the direction of the Marne. Consequently it was of vital importance for the French to concentrate every man they could spare at the point where the German thrust was likely to be most vigorous, and to hold on to St. Mihiel and the Camp des Romains like grim death.

Left to itself, the garrison could do next to nothing. It could account, and did account, for a large number of the enemy in front of its earthen ramparts. But sooner or later its doom was certain. Its fall was only a question of days, or even of hours. Like all fixed forts, ancient or modern, exposed to the fire of modern siege artillery, it was, in itself, about as impregnable as an umbrella. It lay on the extreme left of the French fine from the Meuse to Pont-à-Mousson. To the north it was protected to a certain extent by St. Mihiel, supposing that St. Mihiel contained any troops. But its real defences, on which the French had spent a considerable sum of money before the war, consisted of a large number of trenches, strengthened with concrete, some miles in advance of it on the farther side of the Hauts de Meuse, between Les Eparges and Thiaucourt. They occupied, that is to say, practically the whole of the space which I have spoken of as the gap in the lines of the armies, and which was partly accounted for by the fact that as the German Fifth Army inclined slightly westwards, to keep in touch with the others which had Paris as their principal objective, the French Third Army was to a certain extent obliged to follow it, besides which for the time being the French Second and the German Sixth Army were too much occupied with their own affairs round Nancy to be able to extend very far in the direction of Verdun. But the carefully prepared trenches were there all the time, and, as far as it is possible to judge without knowing all the circumstances, might and should have been held almost indefinitely, instead of which the chief purpose they seem to have served was to act as a shelter for the advancing Germans. By some further mischance or miscalculation, at this particularly critical moment, two or three days after the Germans had begun the general bombardment of the river forts, St. Mihiel was suddenly left almost wholly denuded of troops, with the result that on August 24th the enemy’s advance-guard walked into it practically unopposed.

There are two or three possible explanations of the way in which this regrettable mistake was brought about, in all of which there is probably a certain amount of truth. The French may have made up their minds that the enemy had for the moment given up the idea of making a determined effort to cross the river. Or they may have still clung to the mistaken belief that the fort on the height, chosen centuries ago by the Romans as the most commanding strategic position of the district, was strong enough to defend itself and look after the river as well. Or, thirdly, they may have concluded that they had no choice in the matter, and that the pressure nearer Metz, on the right flank of their line forming the south side of the St. Mihiel triangle, was for the moment more dangerous than that on their left, and that it was safe to move part of their force on the Meuse across to the Moselle.

That, at all events, is what they did, on or near September 22nd. The line in the south of the Woevre had already been considerably thinned by the despatch of a certain number of troops westwards across the Meuse to strengthen the right wing of the army in the Argonne during the Battle of the Marne and the operations which followed it. The effect of the removal of several additional battalions in the opposite direction, to the north of Nancy (where they found that their presence was urgently needed) was that St. Mihiel and the Camp des Romains were left almost isolated, with practically no soldiers at all to guard the town.

The news was quickly carried to the enemy (not by journalists, since there were none anywhere near, but by the spies who were particularly thickly planted in that district of France) and while the French troops which had moved eastwards were engaged to the north of Nancy, and the Toul force from the south was pushing back the main body of the XIVth German Army Corps in the direction of the Rupt de Mad, the extreme right of the Army of Metz, as the result of a bold flank-march along the left or north bank of the Mad, were able to advance nearly as far as St. Mihiel.

The presence of their advance-guard was first observed on the 23rd by a small patrol of French dragoons, who were attacked by a company of German infantry lying in ambush in a little wood by the side of the road about a mile from the town, and fell back on St. Mihiel after a slight skirmish. The news of the approach of the enemy created a panic in the town, and a large number of the inhabitants fled in the direction of Commercy. Next morning a squadron of Uhlans rode in and took possession of the place, cutting the telegraph and telephone wires, and carrying off as “hostages” some forty of the inhabitants, who must have bitterly regretted not having joined in the general exodus of the day before.

(Three months later M. Lamure received a letter on the subject of these hostages from a sergeant attached to the Bureau de Police of one of the eastern armies, who was anxious about some relations of his who were among them, as nothing was known up till then of their fate. He was a stranger to us, but he had heard of our existence, and had a pathetic though gratifying belief that the correspondents of The Times might be able to give him the information which his own intelligence office could not.)

The Uhlans were followed, some hours later, by the main body of the German army, which turned off from the Vigneulles-St. Mihiel road somewhere near Chaillon and made its appearance on the Meuse to the north of St. Mihiel at a point where by the natural lie of the ground and the intervening hills it was protected from the fire of the guns both of Les Paroches and the Camp des Romains, which were in any case busy fighting their own battles.

The Germans, or at least a part of them, had now penetrated as far as the line which it had been the object of all their forces operating on the eastern frontier to reach. Their first appearance on the Meuse, which the other armies had crossed lower down to the north of Verdun weeks before, should have been one of the dramatic moments of the war. It had, however, been brought about so tamely and with so little opposition at the last moment that it rather lost that character, and it was not till an attempt to cross the river was made that the position became really exciting. It was still about as unfavourable as it could be for the French. Only a single battalion of Territorials, with no guns and even no mitrailleuses, guarded the river at that point, against a line of probably ten times their own number. The bridges had been hastily destroyed as the enemy advanced, and from the left bank the Territorials did their best to keep them from crossing the river, and during the night of the 25th, by the light of their one searchlight, successfully dealt with the persistent efforts of the German engineers to build a pontoon-bridge.[pontoon-bridge.] But the next morning the enemy opened fire on them with some heavy batteries which they had brought up from Thiaucourt, and, as the heights of the river prevented the guns in the Camp des Romains from giving them any help, the Territorials were forced to retire under a hot fire, picking up and carrying with them their killed and wounded.