By midday the Germans were across the river, marching in the direction of the valley of the Aire, a tributary of the Aisne, between it and the Meuse, with the object of crossing it to attack General Sarrail in the Forest of the Argonne. The position was critical, and for the French airmen, who could see what was happening and gave due warning in different directions, must have been intensely interesting. There seemed a good chance that the Germans might really carry out the complete investment of Verdun, which their newspapers had already announced as an accomplished fact, and join hands at last with the army of the Crown Prince. Driven northwards by General Sarrail after the Battle of the Marne, past St. Menehould on the Aisne and Clermont on the Aire, left and right of the Forest of the Argonne, that army, which consisted of the XVIth, XVIIIth, and XXIst Army Corps, now occupied a position extending from Varennes (also on the Aire and the east side of the forest) eastwards in a flattened arc rather less than a semicircle which passed about ten miles north of Verdun and then curved down to the east of it in the direction of Fresnes. Opposite to the Crown Prince across the forest from the Aisne towards the Meuse was General Sarrail with the VIth and VIIIth Army Corps. Behind him, falling back from the Meuse on his protection, was the Territorial battalion, which during the night had prevented the Metz army from crossing the river below St. Mihiel, and behind them again, hot on their heels, the pursuing Germans, with a body of cavalry, detached by General Sarrail to head them off, advancing to meet them, and, though at a considerable distance, another French force, the XXth Army Corps, hurrying as fast as they could from the Moselle to overtake them from behind. Meanwhile, the Toul garrison army, which had advanced from the fortress, was keeping up the lateral pressure on the stationary German force along the Rupt de Mad.
In contrast with the state of comparative immobility to which the campaign was shortly afterwards reduced, the manœuvres of the two forces were for the moment particularly lively. Looked at as a war game played on a chess-board, the position was more or less as follows: The French (White) had moved most of their pieces of value up towards the top left-hand corner of the board, where they had the Germans (Black) pretty well penned in front of them along the two back rows. Black, however, was still able to threaten an attack on White’s King (Verdun) at about the centre of their fourth row, though it was defended by a few white pawns (its garrison army). Two rows lower down in the centre a black castle (the Metz army at St. Mihiel) was only prevented from checking White’s King by some white pawns (the southern forts of Verdun) and, at the same time, threatened a move across the board to the left in order to get behind the main mass of White’s pieces. To remove this danger, and to guard a pawn (the Territorial battalion) to the left of Black’s castle, White moved back one of his knights (Sarrail’s cavalry) from the left-hand top corner, moved up one of his castles (the Toul garrison force) from his back row, and brought across his Queen (the XXth Army Corps) from the lower right-hand corner of the board, where it had been trying to check Black’s King (Metz). As the result of these three moves he was able to force Black’s castle back to its original position near the centre of the board.
When the news of the occupation of St. Mihiel reached Lorraine the XXth Army Corps, which had barely finished its work there of checking a German advance from the direction of Metz, were at once ordered back to the Meuse, and the advanced guard of their cavalry by a forced night march managed to cross it at Lérouville just below Commercy, only five hours behind the German army, and got in touch with them shortly afterwards in the valley of the Aire. The dragoons at once engaged them with machine-guns, and held them till first the artillery and then the infantry of the corps came up and the battle became general. The Metz force made three separate attacks on the position which the French had taken up on the heights of the Aire, but were repulsed each time with heavy losses, and during the night they fell back on the Meuse, still, however, retaining a footing on the left bank of the river in the western suburb of St. Mihiel and the barracks of Chauvoncourt. After their battle of the day before in Lorraine the forced night march of the XXth Corps and their successful engagement on the Heights of the Aire were a magnificent performance, which had the satisfactory effect of putting an end to the bold effort of the right wing of the Metz army to effect the longed-for junction with the Crown Prince. What it unfortunately did not do was to relieve St. Mihiel. As soon as the Germans got back there they proceeded to entrench themselves strongly, and from a position near the town began to bombard the French forts in the Camp des Romains with their Austrian mammoths.
Concerning this artillery position M. Lamure was told an instructive little story on one of the rather adventurous expeditions which he made to the neighbourhood of St. Mihiel some weeks after the German occupation had begun. So many stories of the same kind (including one, I believe, about a tennis-court at Tooting) were published in the first part of the war that one became rather shy of believing them, but I have my reasons for thinking that this one is probably true. Anyhow, here it is.
Two years before the war a German company, formed for the manufacture of chemical produce, rented a large plot of ground close to St. Mihiel for a term of thirty years. It was a big company and it had need of big buildings with solid foundations. So a floor about two hundred and fifty feet long by thirty wide was laid down in reinforced concrete. Then the company, after announcing that its money had come to an end, and that it could not proceed to put up the proposed buildings, was dissolved. But the plot of ground and the concrete floor, which, before the workmen left, was tidily covered up with a loose coating of earth, still belonged to it. When the army of Metz arrived on the scene some one had the curiosity or the intelligence to inquire what might be hidden under this covering of earth, which was accordingly removed. And there, by the greatest good luck in the world, they discovered not only the concrete floor, but a number of holes in it which proved to be admirably adapted for emplacements for the Austrian guns.
On the whole, I am inclined to back the story of the St. Mihiel concrete floor against the Tooting tennis-court, though in any case it would only add one more to the long list of undoubted cases in which German settlers were planted in the Woevre district in order to render valuable services to the Fatherland either before or during the war. The main point is that from some position near St. Mihiel, whether prepared beforehand or not, the big Austrian howitzers in a very short time silenced the guns and smashed up the turrets and bastions of the Camp des Romains fort, until at last the plucky garrison had no guns left to shoot with, and were finally smoked out after trenches had been pushed up close to the fort. When the asphyxiated survivors had recovered enough to march out the Germans presented arms in recognition of the fine courage they had shown in the defence, and though they were naturally made prisoners the officers were allowed to keep their swords. The destruction of Troyon, les Paroches, and the Camp des Romains was followed, a day or two later, by that of Liouville, where the damage done was particularly extensive. The holes ploughed by the big shells were the largest I have seen, and for acres round the fort almost every square yard of ground is littered with scraps of shell casing and rusty iron.
As for the Camp des Romains, it was so badly hammered that the Germans could not use it, even when they had taken it, and were obliged to construct a new fort close to it. From that time all the subsequent efforts of the French to dislodge them have been unavailing. Although with St. Mihiel it is the only point which they have captured in the line of the river forts between Toul and Verdun, and although since the end of September, 1914, they have never advanced one foot beyond it, its possession has been extremely useful to them, and a nasty thorn in the side of the French. For though in position the Camp des Romains fort is only the apex of the St. Mihiel triangle, it is in effect its base and sides and area, since, without it, the triangle would not exist.
CHAPTER XIX
THE “SOIXANTE-QUINZE”
The capture of St. Mihiel and the Camp des Romains was the last real triumph—I had almost said the only real triumph—that the Germans won in the east of France. For the scene of their other great positive success was not in France but in the annexed part of Lorraine, even though as the result of it they still hold one corner of the Department of the Vosges. But there, as everywhere else, since the end of September, 1914, they have not only made no progress, but have been on the whole driven further back. That is an obvious fact, but it is one which no one who studies the course and the probabilities of the war can afford to overlook. It is true that the French in all that time have made very little appreciable advance. Measured by distance the ground they have recovered is nothing in comparison with the number of lives that it has cost. But the sacrifice of lives must be made. It is the only way of deliverance, and every yard of blood-drenched soil that France has won back from the invader brings one step nearer the victory of freedom over oppression and of right over wrong.
Also it must never be forgotten that few though the steps have been every one of them has been away from Paris and towards Berlin. The Germans began the war. For more than forty years they had been preparing for it. In spite of all the warnings they gave us of what we had to expect, England and France and Russia were not prepared. From one point of view that is a good thing. It throws the onus of the crime against humanity on to the right shoulders, and at the same time exposes the grotesque absurdity of the German fiction, intended chiefly for home and neutral consumption, that it was merely the instinct of self-preservation which forced them against their will to take up arms, and that they attacked their neighbours only to secure themselves against annihilation.