“Just let me put down the last two, the 16th and 17th.”
The 3rd Battalion of Light Infantry will give its historian trouble. It has fought on every front. On August 10, in Lorraine, it repulsed by itself, at Provenchères, four German attacks, four battalions strong. On the 14th it is in the Saint Blaize combat. On the 19th it is in action at Valerysthal, where it is subjected to furious assaults. From August 29 to September 5 it holds La Chipotte Wood. Then it is recalled to take part in the Battle of the Marne. At the beginning of October it is sent to Artois. It is the first to enter the first house of Ablain-St.-Nazaire. It is then sent farther north, to the long and stubborn battle of Ypres. The men thought they would never go through anything worse, but Verdun is to come. In December it returns to Artois, to the Lorette region. On May 8, 1915, it attacks the White Earthworks with superb dash; in June, the Square Wood and the Hollow Way; in October, the Wood of the Axe. And Verdun comes to crown all these memories like a bunch of flowers decorating a housetop. It is a Homeric catalogue, but how many of our regiments could tell a similar story!
It has lost two of its commanding officers, Major Renaud at Bréménil on August 19, 1914, and in Artois, on May 8, 1915, after the attack on the White Earthworks, that young Major Madelin, who was the most finished type of an officer, cool-headed, yet always inspiring his men, well-groomed, genial, brilliant, and cultured, a brother of my dear comrade in letters and in arms, the historian, now Second Lieutenant Louis Madelin, whom the fortune of war has suddenly thrown into my company, and who offers me a refuge in his plank-built hut. Major Madelin was succeeded in Artois by my friend Major Pineau, whom I find again with the Staff; then by Major Tournes, who has just come down from the Vaux sector, where I met him preparing an attack.
Suddenly there is bustle in the courtyard. A company, whose losses I can guess, is gathering in a circle round the Captain and the Sergeant-Major. To judge by their craning necks and the gleam in their eyes, the report is of peculiar interest. Very likely it is a question of rest billets or, perhaps, of furlough. Furlough, the mirage in which a man’s house and loved ones appear before him! I draw near. The Sergeant-Major is reading the order of the day addressed on March 10 by the Commander-in-Chief to the soldiers of Verdun!
“Soldiers of the Army of Verdun!
“For three weeks you have endured the most formidable assault that the enemy has yet attempted against us.
“Germany counted on the success of this offensive, which she thought irresistible and to which she had devoted her best troops and her most powerful artillery.
“She hoped that the capture of Verdun would encourage her allies and convince neutral countries of German superiority.
“She had reckoned without you!
“Night and day, in spite of an unparalleled bombardment, you have withstood all attacks and held your positions.