America's War for Humanity

by Thomas Herbert Russell

A TERRIFIC ARTILLERY DUEL.

For many weeks the battle for Verdun was signalized by the most terrific artillery fire in history. No words can tell of the ear-stunning roar of the guns, or depict the horror of the tons of steel daily crashing and splintering amid massed bodies of men, while the softly-falling snows of late winter covered, but could not conceal, the ensanguined landscape. Modern warfare was seen at Verdun in all its panoply of terror. Amid fire and fury, the rich and fertile countryside was transformed into a vast scene of ruin and desolation, while heroism and self-sacrifice abounded on both sides, men were maddened by the frenzy of the fight and the ghastly horrors of night and day, and Death stalked gloatingly and glutted, but never surfeited, over the bloody field.

The German attacks followed one another so fast and so furiously that the weeks of fighting became one prolonged battle, and a description of one attack will almost serve for all. Thus, a wounded French officer said of the seven days of continuous fighting which opened the German offensive against Verdun: "The first symptom of the battle favorable to the French was the inability of the Germans to silence the French artillery. The attack opened with strong reconnoitering parties advancing, wherein was noted an unusually large proportion of officers. For the first time the German officers were seen to be leading their men into battle, instead of driving them, as had been the rule—and this was said to be at the behest of the watching Kaiser. Then came the infantry in great numbers. During the next two days the fighting waxed fiercer and fiercer.

"At first fourteen German divisions were engaged, then sixteen, and finally seventeen divisions (340,000 men). The French command at this point carried out a maneuver which will be recorded as a masterpiece in military history.

"If the Germans had been only fifteen yards away, the French could have been submerged by the attack, providing the attacking forces were prepared to make any sacrifice, but the distance being 1,500 yards there was little chance for the Germans against the opposing artillery. The French troops were accordingly swung back to positions from which they could see the Germans approaching over exposed ground. The effect was that the immediate front of the attack, which was originally twenty-five miles in extent, was reduced to nine miles, but even this soon proved too wide. The German losses were so great that the attack could not be kept up at all points; and at the end of the seventh day the offensive dwindled to fragmentary attacks,—but only to be renewed with added vigor after a brief period of rest for the infantry on both sides, while the artillery kept up its daily and nightly duel without ceasing, until the entire terrain became an earthly inferno, thickly scattered over with the dead and the dying."

THE DEADLY MINE IN CAURES WOOD.

Frightful in result, too, was the tragic stratagem played on the Germans in Caures Wood, near the village of Beaumont. The whole wood had been mined by the French, and was connected electrically with a station in the village. When the Germans had advanced, fully a division strong, to attack the wood, the French regiment holding it ran, as if seized with panic, back toward the village. The Germans pursued them with shouts of victory. Soon the last Frenchman had emerged from the trees, but the French commander waited until the Germans were all in the mined area. They were just beginning to debouch on the other side when he pressed the button. There was a tremendous roar, drowning for a moment even the boom of the cannon. The wood was covered with a cloud of smoke, and even on the French trenches in Beaumont "there rained a ghastly dew." When the French re-entered the wood, unopposed, they found not a single German unwounded, and hardly a score alive.

GERMAN LOSSES AT VERDUN.

The German successes during the weeks of fighting in the vicinity of Verdun, consisting of a series of advances along the front, without any decisive result so far as the strength of the defense of the main fortress was concerned, were gained at the cost of enormous losses in killed and wounded. These losses were estimated on April 7 to have reached the huge total of 200,000—one of the greatest battle losses in the whole range of warfare. During the period from February 21, when the battle of Verdun began, to April 1, it was said that two German army corps had been withdrawn from the front, having lost in the first attacks at least one-third of their force. They subsequently reappeared and again suffered like losses, the German reinforcements being practically used up as fast as they were put in line.

Declarations gathered from prisoners and the observations of the French staff led the latter to estimate that at least one-third of the total number of men engaged were the minimum losses of the German infantry during the first forty days of the battle, or 150,000 men of the first fighting line alone.