Under the tornado of fire—for the enemy knows how to keep what he has won—our infantrymen advance. They want to go on until they get into touch with their comrades. They will go on.
A shell penetrates into the C.O.’s headquarters. The telephone apparatus remains intact, but the operator has both hands cut off by a splinter. He holds out the stumps to his chief and apologises:
“I can no longer telephone.”
Like the attack of June 6, that of the composite brigade succeeds in encircling the fort. The enemy, however, occupies the superstructure, and his machine-guns work great havoc in our ranks. His reinforcements are constantly coming up. The battalion on the right can only just hang on to the terrain, after very slow progress. In the centre, the advance continues up to the ditches of the fort. It is at this moment that the German machine-guns do us the most serious damage. The leaders of the expedition fall one after the other, among them Major Gilbert and Major Jérôme de Mouy. The latter was a cavalry officer who had passed the staff college; he had returned from Morocco and been awarded a staff appointment, but asked for the command of a battalion of Zouaves.
The two battalions, deprived of their officers, are compelled to give up the scheme of recapturing the fort and to entrench themselves in the parallel lines from which they started.
Suddenly an explosion occurs in the fort, and a dense black smoke issues from casemate 5.
There is no human being left alive in this last stronghold.
At eight o’clock in the morning the battalion of the colonial regiment which acts as a support still has no precise information about the operation that has been embarked upon, save that the two attacking battalions have not returned. Hence they have had to advance, and they need munitions to ward off the imminent counter-attacks. A fatigue party of eighty men is told off, under the command of a lieutenant and of Cadet Jacques Bégouen. They carry grenades, rockets, and Bengal fire to stake out our lines. Their progress can be followed in detail, thanks to Cadet Bégouen’s notes, from which I will quote a passage. He too, later on, will be among the chroniclers of the war. A son of Count Bégouen, whose historical learning is well known, he has two brothers serving with the colours—one of them, like himself, belongs to that heroic colonial regiment of Morocco which distinguished itself at Dixmude in December 1914, and which, in the battle of Verdun, added new lustre to its crown of glory.
From Cadet Bégouen’s Notebook
“June 8.
“So we have started in miscellaneous contingents to fulfil one of the most perilous missions, one where there is need of mutual knowledge among the men concerned and of good officers and N.C.O.’s who have confidence in you.
“The guide marches slowly at our head. The men know their orders—all must follow. We go through a copse of dense undergrowth, where a deep communication trench is hidden, a place that cannot be taken under the enemy’s fire. We sink in the watery mud up to our calves. All is going well.
“We have marched up the counter-slope, and are once more facing the German sausages.
“At this point begins the zone of curtain fire and of mathematical pounding which stops only at the French first lines.
“Having come to the end of the road, we climb the steep slope leading to the ridge. Already the trees and shrubs have been blasted by the firing.... The battering process begins. But the German sausages have not yet seen us, and we endure the usual punishment; barely fifty or sixty shells fall to the right and to the left of the little communication trench.
“Before crossing the ridge, we take a brief rest. The first contingent, in front, continues its journey little by little.
“Suddenly the guide says to me, ‘Where am I to lead you?’ ‘To the first line, I am told.’ ‘But I’ve got to stop at the Colonel’s headquarters.’ He does not know the way to the first line. We advance all the same. Here we are on the plateau where so much blood has been spilt: the communication trenches have become mere tracks, the forest a few sparse trunks stripped of their branches, the soil is made up of scraps of all kinds, and the corpses, lying in batches just as they fell, are in every conceivable attitude....
“I bid my men follow me, jumping across the shell-holes, and we begin marching for two hundred yards.
“At this moment the guide stops us: ‘Here on the right is the communication trench leading to the Colonel’s place.’ I still insist, ‘But I have to go to the first line.’ ‘I don’t know the way: I am going to the Colonel’s quarters,’ and in less time than it takes to tell he hurries away in that direction. What can we do? The men are restless, and won’t march without a guide.... We all rush in the direction of the Colonel’s quarters. In places, the communication trench cannot be traced, for it is chock-full of corpses. All classes of troops are there: engineers, foot-sloggers, colonials.... In this blend of mud and dead bodies we mark time, and all that amid an acrid smell of blood and putrefying flesh.... Our nerves are on edge; we begin to become the supermen that we shall be when the gunpowder has scorched us....
“We come to a relief post for scouts. Our guide is here. I am on the point of scolding him severely and asking for an explanation, when a substitute comes to lead us, this time to the first line. This fellow actually does know the way. We about turn to go back again upon the road towards Fort Vaux. The men are tired out. We break off for a rest.
“Urged by the guide, who maintains that the faster we go the better it will be for us, we resume our march. Once again we are on a good road. The first fatigue party, led on the direct route by its guide, is far on ahead. It has passed the plateau and is now descending the slope of the Ravine of Death. At this moment the Boches begin to aim at them and start curtain fires; a rain of steel, projectiles of all calibres, proceeds to fall ... everywhere one sees things flying in the air....
“Forward! It is a terrible dance of death. The men begin to spread out; if I stop, they will not start off again....
“The whole countryside is ablaze with sunlight.... An unrivalled opportunity for taking a splendid photograph: in the background, on the left, Fort Vaux; on the right, the Woevre plains; on the left, the few tree-stumps that mark what was once La Caillette Wood, blackened with 210 rounds of gunfire. In the foreground, the stricken field where the shell-holes adjoin each other, full to the brim with dead. And everywhere great geysers, as it were, of earth and war-material leap into the air under the impact of the shells.... It was a unique scene, and so easy to photograph, since it was a part of my duties to do so.... But my camera was at Fort Tavannes....”