IV
THE FIRST FIGHTS ROUND VAUX
(March 9, 10, 11)
From the road, I see soldiers stretched out on the grass, basking in the spring sun, fishing in the river, or playing ball like schoolboys. Motor-omnibuses picked them up suddenly, not far from the Verdun battlefield, to carry them to this abode of rustic peace. They do not even hear the guns any longer. It is strange to contrast this bucolic scene with the fiery furnace of Vaux.
Among the valleys of the Meuse region, which are generally rather grim and gloomy, the valley of La Saulx is the most smiling, the richest in flowers, the most attractive. A crystal-clear brook waters its meadows and seems, with all its meanderings, to run an endless course. Here is Montiers-sur-Saulx, where the 303rd Brigade is billeted for a few days. The Sire de Joinville lived there; in the archives of the town hall one may read the charter by which he allowed the villagers the use of a part of his forest. Jeanne d’Arc went through it, dreaming of her mission. The troops in blue-grey caps who stroll round the central square where the military band plays are not so very different, in their bright uniforms, from the men-at-arms of bygone days.
In little groups the men walk about, light their pipes, and chat with the natives. The whole scene looks like a day of peace-time manœuvres, and the very gait of the men is so brisk that one might fancy them to be fresh troops recently detrained here and ready to proceed again to the front.
Yet the sentry who is mounting guard at the town hall wears a cap that has been pierced by a bullet. Other caps are indented or knocked out of shape. More than one of these peaceful ramblers has his head bandaged or shows some scar on his face. The colonel in command of the brigade has on his cheek a sabre-cut on which the blood has just dried—a trifling wound which has not been deemed worthy of dressing.
These are the men who broke the back of the German assaults on the village and fort of Vaux on March 8, 9, and 10. They can scarcely remember that they forced the enemy to retreat; they are too much occupied with forgetting their miseries—the cold, the snow, the lack of sleep, the long hours they spent crouching down in rifle-pits, their lost comrades, the continual presence of death during the bombardment which shatters men’s nerves and stuns their brains.
None of them of his own accord makes any allusion to his recent experiences: merely a word or two here and there, which cannot be understood save by those who have been through the mill. Later on, at home, or in some other theatre of war, when the events are really buried in the past, they will tell the story after their own fashion. Nor will they hesitate to weave into the tale other episodes drawn from earlier or later combats. For the moment they content themselves with saying that Verdun beats everything—the Argonne, Artois, Champagne, Ailly Wood, Le Prêtre Wood. These comparisons by men who know give a correct order of merit. They find no satisfaction in raking up what is past and done with, except to say that the Boches will not break through, in spite of their confounded heavy artillery. They revel in the joy of living quietly and without danger. They are almost inclined to pinch themselves so as to make sure that they are still alive. The nightmare visions that haunt them yet might leave them in doubt on the point. One must associate for a long time with officers and men in order to unravel the truth little by little and reconstruct the earlier Vaux engagements.
Properly speaking, there were no earlier Vaux engagements. The series of operations forms an unbroken chain. Masters of Douaumont on February 25, the Germans at once tried to profit by their success. Douaumont could not be of any real use to them unless they succeeded in debouching from it to march on the line formed before Verdun by the hill of Froideterre, the village of Fleury on the other side of the ridge, Fort Souville, and Fort Tavannes. With this aim in view they will try to make progress to the east, in Nawé Wood, which is intersected by a series of ravines favourable to an offensive, going down from the slopes of Douaumont towards the Meuse (the ravines of Helly, La Couleuvre, and La Dame) to reach the earthwork of Thiaumont, and from there that of Froideterre. Their manœuvres will be the same to the east, in the wood of La Caillette and that of Gardaumont, which are also split up by ravines (those of La Caillette and La Fausse Côte) to descend into the ravine of Le Bazil and to climb up again by Vaux-Chapître Wood in the direction of Souville. On both sides they will find the road blocked, and they will fall tooth and nail upon the village and fort of Vaux, to the east, positions whose capture is equally essential to the realization of their scheme. Driven back from La Caillette Wood, they will approach, by way of Hardaumont Wood, the village which gives the key to the ravines of Le Bazil and Les Fontaines. They will make a frontal attack on the fort by its north-eastern slopes, aided by the formation of the ground which, once the foot of the slopes is occupied, enables them to advance, out of sight and out of artillery range, on account of the angle of descent, to within three or four hundred yards of the counterscarp wall.
Our 303rd Brigade (408th and 409th Regiments) occupies, during the night of March 1 and 2, the section from La Caillette to Damloup; a battalion of the 408th holds the slopes of the fort, and two battalions of the 409th hold the cemetery and the village. The fort itself has for a garrison two companies of the 71st Territorial Regiment, composed of worthy natives of Anjou, level-headed and hard-working. But let not the reader imagine a line of continuous, fully-equipped trenches, with communication passages, dug-outs, store depots, and so forth! The violence of the German attack launched on February 21 against Verdun has for the time being substituted field fighting for siege warfare. The lines of defence have been carried back to the rear, and the artillery has swept the terrain to such an extent that it has destroyed all the existing defences. Nothing is left but shell-holes and rubbish heaps. It was imperative to hold fast to this devastated soil, to hang on it, to break it up with the pickaxe and, failing pickaxes, with the bayonet, with finger-nails, to live on top when one could not get below ground, to keep awake and watchful, to shoot, to kill, to die without accepting defeat.
During the early days of its occupation of the sector the brigade makes a little progress in Hardaumont Wood. A company seizes the southern earthwork and entrenches itself there. But on March 5, 6, and 7, the bombardment is so violent that it is impossible to consolidate the position. Replenishing is done with difficulty. An attack is imminent. It takes place on the 8th about eleven o’clock in the morning, towards the village. It is led by the famous Guretsky-Cornitz Brigade (6th and 19th Regiments), which was destined next day to be immortalized in the German wireless. It debouches partly from Hardaumont Wood, where our earthwork is lost, partly from the railway embankment which skirts it and has served as a screen. The waves of enemy infantry succeed in outflanking our first line and swamping an entire battalion. Our machine-guns bring them to a halt at the entrance to the village, which they have succeeded in reaching; they even occupy a few houses. Before our fire the breakers recoil, but with the prisoners taken from our outflanked first line.