Verdun to the Vosges : impressions of the war on the fortress frontier of France

Preface

AT the beginning of September, 1914, I was commissioned by The Times to go to France as its representative on the eastern frontier, and it so happens that, during the war, no other English newspaper correspondent has been stationed for any length of time on the long section of the front between Verdun and Belfort. One or two paid flying visits to Lorraine after I was settled there, but they were birds of passage, and were off again almost as soon as they arrived. In collecting the material for my despatches and letters I was helped more than I can say by my colleague, Monsieur Fleury Lamure, a French journalist who had already worked for The Times in Belgium, where he spent some exciting days in August dodging about in front of the armies of von Kluck, von Bulow, and von Hausen as they advanced on Charleroi and Namur. Before the war he had served two years as an engineer officer in the French and Eussian navies, and had also worked in Manchuria and the Near East, first as interpreter to General Silvestre, the French military attache at Kuropatkin's headquarters, and then as correspondent of the Novoe Vremya, with the Servians, in the second Balkan war. In the course of our wanderings together we found that the French military and civil authorities highly appreciated the fact that the newspaper which vi VERDUN TO THE VOSGES

most of them consider the greatest of English journals had associated a Frenchman with me in the work of writing about the operations of their frontier force. From the first our path was smoothed by what they looked upon as a graceful and sensible act on the part of the Editor. At a later stage in the war my French colleague, who has been twice reforme as unfit for the active exercise of his profession, offered himself at the Admiralty in Paris for one of the auxiliary forces, but was told that the best thing he could do for his country was to go on working for The Times.

From September, 1914, to January, 1915, after which no correspondents were allowed in the zone of the armies, we made our headquarters at Nancy. Between us, at various times, we visited a large part of the front from Verdun to Ferette, close to the Swiss frontier, and only fifteen or twenty miles from the Khine. Sometimes we were in the trenches, d bout portant of the enemy's rifles, and for four months hardly a day or a night passed when we did not hear the sound of the guns. From what we saw and from what we heard from those who took an active part in it, we were able to get what is, I believe, a fairly correct idea of the general run of the fighting on both sides of the frontier. We were well placed, not only for judging the temper of the civil population of the invaded provinces, but also the spirit and fighting qualities of their defenders.

Before we came to Lorraine we had both seen a little of the early fighting in Belgium — at Namur and Mons, and Charleroi and Dinant. But it was at Nancy that I really got to know something of French soldiers and learnt to admire the wonderful cheerfulness and courage of the XXth Army Corps and the other splendid

PREFACE vii

troops who talked with the enemy in the gate of France, and blocked the passage with their dead bodies.

All that is long ago, though not so long as it seems after the weary waiting of more than a year's work in the trenches. But the end is not yet. Those army corps, or their successors — for nearly all of the original officers and men are dead or wounded — are still steadily pressing the enemy back, almost on the same ground as when we were there, and, though the full story cannot be told even now, it is neither too late nor too soon for an Englishman to try and give some idea of the debt which England owes to the French armies of the east.

But I should like to say a word about England too. It is always difficult to see ourselves as others see us. Till long after I had gone abroad for this war — to be quite frank, till the end of 1915 — I had no real idea of the view which other nations held at the beginning of the chances of our taking a hand in it. I knew, of course, that many Germans had declared since it began that they for their part had never believed that we would draw the sword. I knew from Englishmen who were in Berlin two days, and even I believe one day, before we did declare war, that Englishmen at that time were received in the streets with cries of " Vive 1'Angleterre," or rather " Hoch ! England ! " and that the bitter revulsion of feeling against us only began when we had thrown down the glove. But that — as I then thought — extraordinary miscalculation and misunderstanding of our national temper, the infuriated reaction from which found vent in the " Gott strafe England " campaign and the " Song of Hate," I put down to an inexplicable blindness peculiar to the German nation, and to the viii VEBDUN TO THE VOSGES

sort of fury to which we are all liable when other people on important occasions do not act as we wish and expect that they will. Since then — but only lately — I have learnt better, from the vantage ground of a neutral nation.

It is a fact that not only the Germanophil but the Francophil Swiss were genuinely and deeply astonished when they learnt — from the official communiques — that we intended to intervene in the war because the soil of Belgium had been invaded. When the thing was done they accepted it as a fact. They were bound to. But they did not anticipate it. They found it hard to believe that with an army, as they thought — and they were not so far wrong — of only 150,000 men, with nothing to gain and everything to lose, we would be so quixotic as to throw ourselves into a contest in which we were not directly concerned, and to send our " contemptible little army " (even smaller than their own) to fight in a foreign country the battles of another state against the overpowering military might of Germany.

It is also a fact — and to me a still more astounding revelation — that a month after the war had begun there were people in France, and among them soldiers of high standing, who were honestly surprised at what we had already done in the war, as well as profoundly grateful, and who even then honestly doubted whether we really meant to put our backs into it to any purpose.

One can understand their astonishment at what we have done since. Even an Englishman may say, without excessive national conceit, that the work of our Navy, the huge volunteer armies raised in a year from the Mother-country and our Dominions and

PREFACE ix

Colonies and India, and our subsequent if only partial acceptance of the principle of National Service, are not everyday affairs. But the initial Swiss doubt or scepticism as to our possible action, once the neutrality of Belgium had been violated, and the fears of our friends in France at the beginning, that having set our hand to the plough we might turn back before the furrow was finished, are not so easy for us Englishmen to comprehend. We had thought that they knew us better. No matter what Government had been in power, once the Germans had declared their intention of passing through the country of the Belgians, we must inevitably have drawn the sword to defend or avenge them ; more than that, even if Belgium had not been invaded, we must no less have put our sword at the disposal of invaded France, for the one wrong was in reality as great as the other. And, no matter what Government may be in power to-morrow or the day after, the spirit of England will not change. We stand by the side of France and our other Allies to the end. And by now, I fancy, the French have found that out.

But do we, even now, realize fully what the war means, and what, as a nation, we have got to do before we can expect to win it ? I have just come back to England after an absence of a year and a half. I find that though Parliament and the great mass of the people in all ranks have accepted the principle of National Service, there are still in some quarters powerful organizations which are vehemently opposed to it. I find that in spite of all the warnings that have been issued in the Press and by other means as to the imperative necessity of thrift, and in spite of all the efforts made by countless individuals and large sections of the x VEBDUN TO THE VOSGES

community to model their lives in accordance with those warnings, other individuals and other sections of the community pay no attention to them at all. Money is being earned in unexampled and hitherto undreamt-of profusion, and is being spent with reckless prodigality. Thrift there is on all sides, but cheek by jowl and hand-in-hand with it there is appalling waste.

We have got to get rid of that word thrift altogether. At the best it is an affair of calculation, and can never inspire us to great deeds or counteract the personal and ignoble motives by which human nature, even in the greatest crises, is too often swayed. There is nothing lofty or idealistic or spiritual about it. We must get into an altogether higher region than that of economics. We must learn the lesson not of thrift but of self-sacrifice. Only that can save us. Without it, even though we have the dreaded ships and the splendid men and the all-necessary money too, we shall be in this war as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. With it, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, we shall move mountains and overcome the world — the world of the powers of darkness. It is the lack of it, and nothing but the lack of it, which is at present preventing us from winning the war and putting an end to its intolerable misery and evil.

G. C.

LONDON, March, 1916.

Chapter I Pachs

Departure from London, September 8th, 1914 — A German officer's analysis of the invaders' plan of campaign — Paris— General condition of doubt and uncertainty — Travelling during the Battle of the Marne — Effect in France of the news of the victory ;'i. 1

CHAPTEE II

DIJON TO BELFORT

Arrival in Dijon— The laisser-passer difficulty— Besangon — An anxious moment — Arrival at Belfort — Doubtful reception — A Socialist private — Manifesto "Aux Camerades Socialistes" — National Service— A Capitalists' War— The Strike of Strikes— The struggle for freedom— Etat de siege— A city of darkness — Welcome by the Governor 11

CHAPTEE III

On German soil — Montreux Vieux — The first ruined village — Towards the Rhine — A night reconnaissance in Alsace — Ferette — Covert drawn blank— Cheerfulness of the French soldier— His longing for home — His home at the front— Taube " over"— A Colonel's hobby— An army in earnest ... 21

CHAPTEE IV

ROBBERY UNDER ARMS

Eve of the War — French neutral zone along the frontier— German raids in time of peace — Sunday, August 2nd — The affair at Joncherey — First blood — A German epic — The Suarce raid — Eobbery under arms — Political importance of the incident — Prisoners of war where no war was . . . . . . 33

xi xii VERDUN TO THE VOSGES

CHAPTEB V

BBLFOBT TO NANCY

PA.G15

News of Nancy — German lies — Security of Belfort — After twelve months — Breakdown of German plans — Visit to the Preset of Belfort — A Prefect's duties and position — Check on militarism — Special duties during the war — The Prefets and Sous-Prefets of the frontier Departments — Posts of danger — Example and precept — Return to Dijon — Chalindrey — British Tommies — Wounded French officers — Toul — Arrival in Nancy ... 39

CHAPTER VI

Discouraging start in Nancy — General de la Masselliere — Visits to the Prefect and Mayor — Their appointment — Madame Mirman — Their example — The Lorraine stock — Nancy by night — The sound of the guns — A united people — The French renaissance — Nancy newspapers — Nancy hospitals — Nursing sisters . . 48

CHAPTER VII

The German territorial gains— Bearing on peace proposals — The French offensive— General moral effect — Uncertainty as to direction of German attack — Sources from which eastern armies were drawn — Their offensive — General account — In the Woevre — Verdun and Longwy — From the Moselle to Mulhouse — The frontier force — Justification of the offensive — Description of frontier — Of Alsace — Importance of the Vosges — The Sundgau — First French advance on August 7th — Altkirch retaken . 61

CHAPTEB VIII

Advance on Mulhouse — Unopposed entry — Popular rejoicings — German counter-attack — Smallness of French force— Their repulse — Terrorism — Harsh treatment of foreigners — Reorganization of French under General Pau — Second advance on Mulhouse — Battle round the town — Victory of the French — Second occupation began 77

CHAPTER IX

MOEHANGE

Description of the Vosges — French advance— Triumphs in Lorraine — The check at Morhange — Why the French fell into the trap— The disaster — New birth of the army — Bad news — The offensive abandoned . . 88

CONTENTS xul

CHAPTER X

PACK

Combination of reverses for France — Soldiers' ignorance of contemporary events — Eeliance on barrier of fortresses — Determination to fight in the open — Different conditions — Position after Morhange — German advance — Troue'e de Charmes — Epinal — Vesouze, Mortagne, and Meurthe — Brave resistance of Dubail's army — The reverse of the picture — The terrorists' Credo — Condemnation of frightfulness — An example — The German excuse 100

CHAPTER XI

Gerbe"viller — Visit with M. Mirman — The ruins — Murder of old men — How the town was taken — Incendiarism — Soeur Julie — An act of "sacrilege" — Other martyred towns — Badonviller — The first occupation — The second — Fight in the streets — St. Benoit— Col de la Chipotte 114

CHAPTER XII

BATTLE OF THE GRAND COURONNE. I

The battle of the Grand Couronne — Two parts — The position south of the Meurthe — Transport of Dragoon regiment from Alsace — Arrival at Charmes — Towards Luneville — Procession of fugitives — Description of field of battle — South and north of Meurthe up to Nancy-Luneville road — General Bigot's divisions — Eetreat of the XVth and XVIth Army Corps— General retreat — Luneville abandoned — Position of XXth Army Corps — The troops from the south reformed — A miracle — The battle begins — Germans cross Mortagne and Meurthe — A battle symphony — Across the field of battle — Scenes of desolation — The battle continued — German attack checked — Eetreat turned into advance — The XVth Army Corps leaves for the Argonae — Their regeneration 125

CHAPTER XIII

BATTLE OF THE GRAND COURONNE. II

Nancy, the woman-town — Absence of fortifications — Attitude of her defenders — The pivot of the line — Kaiser's dreams of conquest — Description of four German lines of attack — Of the country — General de Castlenau's line — Champenoux villages — Eemereville — Farms and cottages — Loopholed blockhouses — The wounded — The refugees — Account of Nomeny — German brutality — Eottenness of German civilization — Germany's future — Inspiration of soldiers of Lorraine — The part of the women — A woman's letter . * ... 141 xiv VERDUN TO THE VOSGES

CHAPTER XIV

BATTLE OF THE GRAND COURONNE. Ill

PAGE

The attack on Nancy from the north— St. Genevieve— The assault — How it was repulsed— The attack from the east— Dombasle — Courbesseau — Reme"re"ville — Soldiers' disregard of fire — In Champagne — French disadvantages in Lorraine — Their gallantry — Individualism — Main attack from north-east — Attack on plateau of Amance — September 8th— Importance of the date — What it meant to the Kaiser — Final assault on Amance — Relations between Battle of the Marne and Battle of the Grand Couronne— Bombardment of Nancy — The German retreat — Last struggle in Champenoux— Losses of the victors — Their graves — The horror of the horizon — The reassurance of the front .... 155

CHAPTEE XV

Effect of Battle of the Grand Couronne on Luneville— Extent of damage in the town — Entry of Germans — Familiar faces — M. Minier, M. Mequillet, M. Keller — Faubourg d'Einville burnt — German Governor's proclamation — Hostages — Plight of inhabitants—Outside the town— The turn of the tide— France and Germany — A duel to the death— Last fights before the town — German bestiality— General Joflre's message— The last advance — French enter the town — Eestored to France .... 178

CHAPTER XVI

After the storm — A Prefect's duties — Newspaper correspondents — War a serious matter — Enemy's means of information — On the battlefield — " Behind the front " — German dread of newspapers — Their own — French and British — The truth concealed — In Belgium — Effect in neutral Switzerland — Change of opinion due to knowledge of state of internes — Confidence of M. Mirman — The Times an agent for good — Expulsion from Nancy- Hopes of return 193

CHAPTER XVII

A DAY WITH A PREFECT

A Conseil de Revision — Comparison with English recruiting — French boys' enthusiasm — Their experience of terrorism — A greybeard — The Mayors of Lorraine — A war to kill war — Lunch at the Prefecture— Through the French army— At the front — A deserted village — Towards Nomeny — A check — Retreat — M. Puech — A souvenir — French sang-froid . . 206

CONTENTS xv

CHAPTEE XVIII

PAGE

Position after Battle of the Grand Couronne — German failures reviewed — Mystery of Manonviller — Position of Toul — Of the barrier of fortresses — Description of the Woevre — Troyon — The first bombardment — German demand for surrender — The attacking force — Relief from Toul — The attack abandoned — Renewed bombardment of the river forts — Formation of the St. Mihiel triangle 218

GHAPTEE XIX

The Emperor William — His advisers— The modern Huns— The barrier of the trenches — The Soixante-Quinze — Its superiority to its German rival — The French gunner — Pride of the nation in its artillery — Determination in the workshops — The struggle of the trenches —A German description 244

CHAPTEE XX

Second period of the war — Germany besieged — The pressure on the west — Partial offensives — The lack of shells — Its effect on the war — "Craters of Death" — Monotony of the trenches — A National Army — Soldier-priests — Their contempt of death — Their self-sacrifice — Their spiritual work — Influence on the troops — The realities of life — Church and State — The example of the State — Spirit of unity — Points of attack — Hammer and tongs — The St. Mihiel salient — Chauvoncourt — Les Eparges — Bois d'Ailly— Bois Brul6— Bois le Pretre— The Vosges and Alsace — The soldiers of France — France and England — The Boche standards of right and wrong — The German cancer and the end of the war 263

CHAPTEE THE LAST

Pride and prejudice — English pride before the war — Pride of France — Pride of race — Noblesse Oblige — Pride of Germany — Pride of the parvenu — Peaceful pre-war invasion of German commerce and kultur — Neutral views of Germany's guilt — French views of England— Redemption by hate— What is "the right"?— Greater Germany? — Tannenberg's views— The Kaiser's conversion— Germany's designs on neutral countries — The new year — The dead 282

EPILOGUE . . ... 301 By M. LEON MIBMAN

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PACIMG PAGE

General de Castlenau Frontispiece

Les Halles, Kaon 1'Etape 22

French Advance in Village Street of Magnieres .... 36

M. Leon Mirman 44

M. Simon . 50

French Advance at Sainte-Barbe 92

General Dubail 104

Gerbeviller 116

Farm of Leomont 134

General Foch 156

Infantry Attack on Farm of Saint Epvre, on the Heights above

Outside the Prefecture, Nancy 202

Nomeny 214

Eemereville 222

Chateau de Haraucourt 222

French Attack from Cemetery of Eehainviller near Luneville . 258

Church at Drouville . 286 xvii

LIST OF MAPS

PAGE

Eastern Frontier 59

Alsace and the Vosges 71

Lorraine Frontier Facing page 126

La Woevre 272 xix

CHAPTEB I

WE left London on the evening of September the 8th with passports vised for Dijon, and a faint hope that, if we were lucky, we might succeed some day in getting to Belfort, the immediate object of our journey. In ordinary times, and even now, after more than a year of the war, that is not a very difficult undertaking. In the second week of September, 1914, it was in its way quite a little adventure. Everything was obscure, everybody was in the dark. For all that most of us knew the retreat that had begun at Mons three weeks before was still going on. The possibility of the enemy pressing on to Paris was by no means at an end, and even in the eyes of those who had some inside knowledge of what was happening on the different fields of battle the risk was still so great that the French Government had left that capital for Bordeaux some days before.

Nowadays we rattle gaily along in the trains between Paris and Boulogne or Dieppe, safe in the assurance

i B that though the Germans are not so very much further off there is between them and us a great gulf of entrenchments fixed, as well as two huge French and English armies, to say nothing of Bang Albert and the Belgians. There were practically no trenches in those days, and the enemy were in almost overpowering force. General French's army, though not so contemptible as the German Emperor believed, was certainly little. There was still good reason for anxiety about the possible fate of Paris. After I left Belgium in the middle of August I had spent some time in Holland, where I saw a good deal of a young Prussian engineer, who had offices in London, and was also an officer in the Imperial Flying Corps. He had to report himself at headquarters in Germany, but had been given short leave to go to Flushing, and there wait for his English wife, who was to follow him from London. That was the story he told me, and I believe it was true, as far as it went, though it is possible that he may also have been connected with the Intelligence Department of the German army, or what is commonly termed a spy. In any case there was no doubt about his own intelligence, which was remarkable, or his fund of information, which was extensive. Day after day, at the time when the retreat from Mons had begun and afterwards, he predicted to me (with many apparently genuine expressions of sympathy for the evil fate that was in store for the British army and for England) what the next step in the victorious German advance would be, and day after day he proved to be right. It was not till I had left Holland and was well on my way to Belfort that I had the satisfaction of knowing that some of his prophecies were beginning to go wrong.

I find it interesting to recall now what they were, because they undoubtedly represented at the time the German plan of campaign, as it was mapped out by the General Staff, and confidently anticipated by most of the thinking rank and file of the German army. The great drama, as everyone knows now, was to be preceded by the violation of Belgium as the lever de rideau. But the plot of the front piece was felt to be weak, and it had to be strengthened. So the fiction was invented that French soldiers were already in Belgium before the war began, and that evidence had been discovered in Brussels of a promise by the Belgian Government to allow the Allies free passage into Germany through their territory. The proofs of this conspiracy (the alleged story of which was not so widely known then as it is now) would, my young Prussian assured me, be produced at the end of the war. Without that piece justificative there could be, he admitted, no excuse for Germany's preliminary step. He knew other things that were not at the end of August common property — outside Germany and the Germans — about Zeppelins and guns and submarines and other not-to-be-divulged surprises which were to be sprung on us during the course of the war. He was able, for instance, to tell me all about the mammoth 42-centimetre guns, served not by ordinary artillerymen but by specially and secretly trained artificers from Krupp's works, which were to batter down the vaunted French fortresses as they had smashed the forts of Liege.

They looked, he said, less like cannons than huge unwieldy antediluvian animals compounded of wheels and levers. They had been assigned an important part in the final act of the drama to be played in front of Paris, which was timed to finish by the end of the year. More in sorrow than in anger he explained how Paris would be reached. The armies of the German right wing which had poured through Belgium (von Kluck's and the rest) would be rushdd forward in irresistible masses and by incredibly rapid stages so as to envelop the French and English left wing from the north. At the same time a corresponding hook (he was continually talking of this " hook " as the be all and end all of German strategy) would take place from the south. Under the command of von Haeseler, the idol of the German troops (a man of iron will with ribs of silver which he wore in the place of those he lost in the Franco-Prussian War), the left wing were to advance through the Vosges, Lorraine, and La Woevre, crushing the cupolas of Belfort and Epinal and Toul and Verdun on their way like so many egg-shells, and, with the Crown Prince's army as the connecting link between them and the northern hook, to round up the whole of the French and British armies, on or near the plain of Chalons. Meanwhile a specially detached army was to march on Paris and inform the Government and its inhabitants that unless the terms of peace proposed by Germany were immediately signed the city would be bombarded, and the French, he assured me, sooner than see their beloved Paris reduced to ruins by the 42-centimetre mammoths, would certainly comply, and leave Germany free to turn her attentions and the super-mammoths which she was preparing for their especial benefit to London and England.

To-day all this sounds very fantastic and foolish — the idle vapourings of an irresponsible young man of no importance. But that it was in outline the German plan there is no doubt, and, but for the heroic resistance of de Castlenau and Foch and Dubail on the eastern frontier and the taxi-cab march of Gallieni's Paris army and the other circumstances which caused that curious flank march of von Kluck's on the north at the moment when his part in the programme was on the eve of completion, it might have gone near to succeeding. We know that if it had it would not have ended the war, for the French would undoubtedly have sacrificed Paris and fought to the bitter end, rather than agree to the proffered peace. But up to the end of the Battle of the Marne no one could say with any approach to certainty that they would not be put to the test.

That was the position when we started for Paris. The whole ordered course of modern civilized life had been upset, and anxiety and uncertainty had taken its place. Telephones and telegraphs were only used by the official world, who were nearly as much in the dark as the rest of us. Channel boats were few and far between. Long-distance trains were either not running at all or were restricted to not more than two journeys in the twenty-four hours, and they felt their way like skirmishers advancing over open country, stopping and making a prolonged halt at every single station. The journey from Havre in a carriage dimly lit by a single candle seemed as if it would never end, and I had plenty of

6 VERDUN TO TltE VOSGES

time to reflect with mixed feelings on certain articles which had recently been published in The Times pointing out the crying necessity of reducing the time of the whole journey between the two capitals to something under seven hours. This time it took rather over thirty. I was beginning to learn the first lesson of the war, the sovereign virtue of patience.