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

by Gerald Campbell

It is on this side that the pressure of the siege bears most heavily upon her, and that in all probability the breach in her defences will be made. But, as has been ably pointed out in The Times by Colonel Repington, whose military judgment carries more weight in France than that of any other English writer on the war, that breach will only be made by an even and continuous distribution of the pressure exerted along the whole of the western line, simultaneously with a sustained attack on the eastern front. It will not be effected by local offensives, however carefully prepared and however gallantly carried out. The day of brilliant cavalry charges on a grand scale is over. Even combined advances of infantry are a form of tactics that must be used as sparingly as possible, because of the enormous waste of life which under present conditions they necessarily entail. The slight advantage gained by the English last September at Loos and the French in Champagne was far too dearly earned. It was magnificent, but it was not siege tactics, and it is only by acting on the principle that the war, more particularly in the west, is not a series of battles but a siege, that it can be won. The time has come when it must be realized that partial offensives of this kind, carried on over a minute section of the front, are not worth the cost. The advance must be made by continuous sapping, that is to say by hammering away with artillery, and, so far as is possible, with nothing but artillery, along the whole line of the enemy’s trenches at the same time, without giving them any rest or any chance of shifting reinforcements from one part of the line or from one front to another.

During the months of comparative stagnation which are now, it may be hoped, drawing to a close, this policy has not been adopted, partly, no doubt, because it could not be. There were not enough guns and not enough high explosive shells. Once or twice they have been massed in huge quantities at some given point, as on those twenty-five miles between Auberives and Massiges in the Champagne country, and they have shown what can be done—provided that too much is not attempted. Our one object is to drive the enemy back. We have to oust them from the ground which they now occupy. That is what is going finally to break the morale of Germany and the German army. We shall never do it, except at a prohibitive cost, as long as in our attacks we sacrifice length to depth. It is far more valuable to us, and far surer and less costly, to gain say one hundred square miles of ground by advancing a quarter of a mile along a front of four hundred miles than to win back the same acreage by pushing the enemy back five miles along a front of twenty.

But all this is in the future, and is the business of strategists and generals, and not of a newspaper correspondent, who may, after all, be completely wrong in his ideas. All that he can usefully do is to try to give his personal impressions of the way in which the present (or the old) plan has worked. Up till now it has in all probability been the only method that could be adopted, because of the lack of the guns and munitions necessary for a more comprehensive plan of action. It is commonly supposed that in this respect the French have been better off than the English. But in any case they, too, have been hampered in their general scheme of attack by a similar necessity for a sparing use of artillery ammunition, and it is this shortage which has principally dictated their conduct of the war of the trenches ever since it began.

At certain points all along the line, from the Channel to Verdun and from Verdun to the Vosges, there are what the German journalist quoted in the last chapter called “Craters of Death,” where, as the siege has progressed, both French and English have, so to speak, brought their battering-rams to bear on the defences. These points have not been chosen because they are the weakest, for there are no weakest points in continuous lines of trenches. One part of the system is as strong as another. But there are, though it sounds paradoxical to say so, strongest points, where the enemy, either because he is particularly well served by lines of communication behind, or because he is particularly anxious for strategical reasons to break through in front, has for months past concentrated greater numbers of guns and men. And since these strongest points have no “weakest” points on either side of them by which they might be turned, it is precisely there that the besiegers have been obliged to concentrate their attack. At the same time any attempt to rush the less thickly manned lines of trenches in between them has been rendered practically impossible by the fact that owing to aeroplanes and telephones and motor-traction any given part of the line can be very quickly strengthened, even to the extent of bringing fresh bodies of troops halfway across Europe for the purpose. Under these conditions the position of stalemate to which both besiegers and besieged have very nearly been reduced was practically unavoidable.

This second stage of the war, that is to say the whole wearisome period of the fighting in the trenches, I do not propose to follow at all closely. Even in the struggles round the “craters of death” there was, except on rare occasions, a sameness and a lack of dramatic incident which would be bound to depress the spirits of the general reader. As regards its bearing on the final issue, by far its most important feature is that it has not depressed the spirits of the French soldiers. Even more remarkable than the heroism which from time to time they have shown in making or repelling attacks on a more or less extended scale is the extraordinary cheerfulness with which they have accepted the dreary monotony as well as the wearing daily attrition imposed upon them by the stagnant immobility of the trenches. I have spoken already of this remarkable buoyancy of spirits, which so far as I have seen is characteristic of the whole of the French armies, and need not enlarge upon it again, except to remark that it is one of the most valuable assets upon which the Allies are able to count.

But there is one special aspect of it about which I should like to say a word or two, though it deserves a whole volume to itself. Because the Army of the Republic is a national army, there is no trade or calling or profession which is not represented in its ranks. France not only expects but requires that every able-bodied man of military age shall do his duty in the defence of his country, unless she has other work to put into his hands. Amongst the rest she calls upon the clergy, and with one consent these men of peace, instead of beginning to make excuse, have answered to the call with a fervour of patriotism which is excelled by no single class of their fellow-countrymen. Before the divorce between Church and State, garrison chaplains, bearing duly specified military grades, were part of the regular equipment of the army. When the State refused to recognize them any longer as functionaries, all priests became at once liable along with the laymen of their own year to ordinary military service. Consequently in the present war, either as men on the active list or as reservists or territorials, thousands of abbés and curés, besides monks, novices, choristers, lay brothers, and other servants of the Church, are now serving with the colours.

As far as possible they are employed in the non-combatant ranks, but large numbers of them, both as officers and privates, serve shoulder to shoulder in the trenches and on the field of battle with the other fighting-men. As a body they seem to be inspired, even more than most soldiers, by the courage which springs from contempt of death. In nearly all the countless stories that are told of their heroism the dominant note is the same. Having once, in the pronouncement of their clerical vows, laid down their lives in the service of God, they are always ready to lay them down again in the service of their fellow-soldiers, whenever and wherever the need arises, without for one moment counting the cost. Time after time, like the many humble village curés, too old or too weak to serve their country in arms, who have nevertheless gone to meet the barbarians and death without flinching, they have shown to the enemy and to all the world that France has no more gallant sons and soldiers than her priests.

But they have done something more than that. Though they have become the soldiers of France they have remained the soldiers of Christ. Here is one of many instances that come crowding into my mind. A private soldier, badly wounded, was lying in one of the military hospitals, and, believing that he was on the point of death, asked anxiously for the services of a priest. At the moment none was to be found. The man in the next bed, with his thigh hideously shattered by a shell, was lying almost unconscious in a state of partial coma. Gradually, however, he realized what the doctor and the nurses of the ward were talking about. Weak and exhausted as he was, he managed to make one of them understand that he was himself a priest, and would pronounce the absolution of his fellow-soldier if she would hold up his hand; and then, as he whispered the words that brought to the other the comfort that he wanted, his own soul passed away.

That story is typical of the kind of lives which numbers of these men in their double capacity have led and are leading at the present moment. In out-of-the-way corners of the field, far from any church or chaplain, it is an everyday occurrence for some private soldier, with his clerical robes hastily thrown over his uniform, to celebrate mass for the men and officers of his regiment before the battle begins; or, when it is over, with the grime and the blood of it still thick upon him, to hear the confessions of the dying and give them the last consolations of their faith. Undoubtedly the influence of these soldier-priests and the influence of the religion for which they stand have had a large share in maintaining the wonderful morale of the French troops. Even the franc maçons, consciously or unconsciously, are affected by it. The war has brought the whole nation as well as the armies face to face with the realities of life and death. They have this enormous advantage over the Germans, that for them the war they are engaged in is a holy war. They are not fighting for what they can get. They are fighting to defend and to free their homes, and therefore they feel and know that they are on the side of freedom and justice and right. In their trouble and peril they have turned instinctively to the consolations and the sustaining strength of what through long ages was their national as well as their personal religion. They have returned to the faith of their fathers. Not only individual soldiers and civilians but the authorities of the State themselves have awakened to the fact that in the great crises of life men and women have a natural craving for something spiritual, something outside of and higher than themselves.

Right at the beginning of the war the official rulers of the State and the Army did a wonderful thing. They took the step of reappointing regular aumoniers, or military chaplains, to the troops of the Republic; that is to say, they had the courage to undo their own work by deliberately revoking part of the anti-clerical legislation which, some years before, the Government had imposed on the country. In the autumn of 1914 I saw in a town near the eastern frontier a remarkable example of this same disposition on the part of the officials of the State to close, at all events to some extent, the breach between State and Church. In the cathedral of the town (a favourite target for the bombs of German aeroplanes), a solemn service was being celebrated in memory of the soldiers who had fallen during the war. And inside the rails of the chancel, on a chair placed opposite to the throne of the Archbishop and by the side of the General commanding the district, was seated the Prefect of the Department. It was the first time for fifteen years that a Prefect of France, acting in his official capacity and wearing his official uniform, had attended any form of public religious service. To the congregation, therefore, his presence at that solemn moment, while the thunder of Beethoven’s funeral march on the cathedral organ was almost drowned by the thunder of the guns on the heights outside the town, was a fact of the deepest significance. It was the outward and visible sign of the spirit of national unity and brotherly love which sprang into life all over France at the moment when war was declared. It was one of many proofs that for France and her highest interests the war has not been fought and the dead have not died in vain.