As a child which one of us has not stood at the grave of some unknown hero of forgotten days, thrilling with rapturous, fearsome awe? On the heights north of le Mesnil in the Champagne there is now a grave of this sort which should be dear to every German heart, but it is not the grave of an unknown hero of bygone days. Many brave men of our own glorious army, much noble blood of our beloved German nation have found their last resting place there on French soil. Our own brothers, sons and husbands are interred there. Many thousands of heroes, who have entered the last long silence, slumbering there under the very sod which they themselves, dauntless, fearless, reckless of danger, defended to the last breath, cry to us from beyond the grave, "Do not forget the cause for which we died, for which we gladly and willingly gave our lives."
We, the living, who know what these dead heroes accomplished and how they furthered our cause, lower the sword in memory of them, and, in spirit, lay a laurel wreath upon that hill, vowing that we will go and do likewise.
In order to comprehend thoroughly the significance of the war in the Champagne and to appreciate the magnitude of the achievements of our troops we must briefly summarize the circumstances which made the campaign imperative, the end which it was intended the titanic struggle should compass, and the conditions which made this victory such an important one to us. A few sentences will suffice to make all this clear. It was necessary to crush the first large aggressive movement on the part of the French, who, by hurling their finest army corps and an enormous artillery force against us in the Champagne, tried for weeks and months, at whatever cost, to force a wedge into our lines in order to break one link in the steel chain with which the German army had encircled their land.
If, as intended, they had succeeded in breaking through our lines with a strong contingent, it can readily be seen how disastrous this would have been for us. As regards consequences, our success in the Champagne was at least of as great importance as the victories of Tannenberg, the Masurian Lakes, near Augustow and on the San; but when we take into consideration the demands which were made upon individual endurance and courage in the face of the most harrowing conditions imaginable, it is doubtful whether the work done in the Champagne by our troops has ever been equalled.
II—THE PRINCE PRAISES HIS TROOPS
In order thoroughly to appreciate the heroic steadfastness and the patient endurance shown by our troops, which transcended all praise, and to appraise properly the difficulties which beset leaders and men alike during the long, bitter weeks of the battle, we must remember certain facts.
When the French offensive was begun on a large scale on February 16, our troops had already seen months of the hardest sort of service in repulsing the French First and Seventeenth Army Corps, with only a few very short intervals of rest—our Eighth Army Corps having been engaged in this region since December 8, and the Eighth Reserve Corps since December 19, 1914.
Our regiments, therefore, were far from unfatigued at a moment when they were called upon to enter the severest phase of a struggle into which our foes hurled the flower of their troops. Moreover, the French had at their command an almost inexhaustible supply of ammunition, and were able, therefore, in a steadily ascending scale, gradually to reach the full amplitude of their fighting capacity in their efforts to break through our lines. If we fully visualize this fact then we must realize that an almost incredible glory accrues to the work done by our troops. Only an iron will, a discipline which had become second nature and utter forgetfulness of self could lead to victory in the face of such odds. That these qualities did ultimately assure us the victory will redound to the undying glory of all the troops which did active service in this great engagement.
The prodigious masses of iron and humanity which our foes hurled against us day and night, their marvellous ingenuity in making attacks, their doggedness in defense, all this was admirably calculated to crush larger numbers than those of our Third Army. It was a struggle between iron and steel. It is true that a heavy mass of iron can through sheer weight bend and indent a narrow band of steel, but it cannot break the steel. Thus, through continually renewing their attacks and by training upon us an artillery fire the violence of which beggars all description, the French succeeded in bending back our lines here and there. Sometimes at one part, sometimes at another they took several hundred mètres of intrenchments; but they paid a horrible, a ghastly price in blood for these minor and valueless successes, which profited them nothing save that they taught them the bitter lesson that German will power and German discipline can be broken by nothing. The French had scornfully proclaimed that they had broken the backbone of our resistance, but we broke their attack and imposed upon them our own. In the end the French attempt to break through our lines was utterly foiled, and the Third Army was victorious.
During this time the French attacks were directed principally against the left, i. e., the eastern half of the Third Army, so that the Eighth Army Corps and the Eighth Reserve Corps bore the brunt of the attacks, most of which took place along the line between the position of Perthes and Beausejour.