The Price of Glory Read online

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  As the unnatural lull stretches out between the two lines of tensely waiting soldiers, extending itself from day to day, it presents a good opportunity to look at the troops opposing each other before Verdun. We have seen the great warlords, but no battle in history was to be more of a ‘soldier’s battle’ than Verdun, and it was these humbler creations — more than the Joffres and the Falkenhayns — that were to be its principal actors.

  Of the German assault troops waiting in the Stollen, on the extreme right wing lay VII Reserve Corps, its boundary running from the Meuse to Flabas. Its men were Westphalians, northern Germans drawn chiefly from Münster, Düsseldorf and the Ruhr; with a strong admixture of farming stock — stolid but enduring. At the beginning of the war, VII Reserve Corps had captured the French fortress of Maubeuge, for which its highly competent commander, General von Zwehl, had been given the top German decoration—the Pour le Mérite. Later, at the Battle of the Marne, it was this corps that had been hastily thrown in to plug the fatal gap between the Armies of von Kluck and von Bülow. Next in line, from Flabas to Ville, came General von Schenck’s XVIII Corps, composed principally of men from Hesse, descendents of the famous mercenaries of yore. One of XVIII Corps’ regiments (the 80th) could trace its existence back to 1631, and during the German ‘War of Liberation’ against Napoleon, the Hessians had fought with equal distinction on both sides. In the Franco-Prussian War, the Corps’ 21st Division had won battle honours at Wissemburg, Worth and Sedan, its other division,1 the 25th, at Vionville and Gravelotte. In 1914 it had fought in the bloody battle of Neufchâteau, and later in the Marne, near Rheims. On XVIII Corps’ left, from Ville to Herbebois, was the vaunted III, or Brandenburger Corps, one of the elite units of the German Army. The Brandenburgers, had long been renowned for their dash and forcefulness on the attack; one of their regiments, the 24th, was soon to carry off a particularly notable feat at Verdun. Under von Alvensleben in 1870, III Corps had impetuously hurled itself against the whole of Bazaine’s retreating army at Vionville, thereby sealing off its escape route. In 1915 its commander, von Lochow, had won the Pour le Mérite for a brilliant action that threw the French across the River Aisne. One of its divisions, the 6th, had just returned from the Balkans, elated with its victory over the Serbs. It would be difficult to find three harder hitting corps in the whole German Army than these that comprised the main attacking force. In addition, on the left of the Brandenburgers, covering the line from Herbebois to Ornes, was XV Corps, though it was little concerned in the early stages of the battle. Finally, behind the lines and in the reserve, was V Reserve Corps, a unit of second-rate value with a strong element of elderly Silesian Poles, as well as men of Alsace-Lorraine, all of whom had an inconvenient habit of deserting to the French, bringing with them vital information.

  Opposite this formidable array was simply General Chrétien’s XXX Corps, comprising (from the Meuse eastwards) the 72nd Division (General Bapst), the 51st (General Boullangé), and the 14th (General Crepey) which was to play only a minor role in the battle, with the 37th (General de Bonneval) moving up in reserve. A contemporary observer described XXX Corps as ‘composed of bric-a-brac’, and it was certainly a heterogeneous mixture. Important sections of the line were held by elderly Territorials, a cross between the British Home-Guard and the Pioneer Corps. Behind were North African Zouaves in their red chéchias and Tirailleurs clad in the khaki of French colonial troops. Typical of XXX Corps was the composition of 72 Division. In the line at Verdun since mobilisation, it had not been in a major action since the autumn of 1914, but it was now to bear perhaps the heaviest burden in the initial attacks. Its élite were unquestionably Driant’s two battalions of Chasseurs. These were regulars recruited mainly from Paris and the North; hotheaded, unruly troops who took poorly to discipline in times of inaction, but—when led by a good commander, such as Driant—tough and magnificent fighters. There was the 324th Regiment, reservists from the soft and languid Mayenne and Orne in the West of France; not so tough as the Chasseurs, but more tractable. There were the Picard and Breton reservists of the 351st; and there was the regular 165th Regiment, composed principally of dour men from the Meuse itself, with a very personal stake in the defence of Verdun.

  The French soldier of 1916 bore hardly a resemblance to the insouciant neophytes in their red pantaloons that had marched to war behind the regimental music in 1914. The képi had been replaced (despite Joffre’s optimism) by the more practical steel helmet; in which, for once, the French were ahead of the Germans. Gone were the deadly pantaloons and gone was the pre-war spit-and-polish, even among units normally as proud of their chic as the Chasseurs. A new uniform, the horizon bleu, was slowly being issued (it was a compromise; though still not as well camouflaged as the British khaki or the German Feldgrau, after a few days in the mud of the trenches it blended with surroundings as well as any other. And in its pristine state, as British troops relieved by French units frequently noted, the sight of the horizon bleu was a tremendous morale-booster to stained and jaded troops in the line.) But it was still not widespread; in the Bois des Caures the Chasseurs continued to wear a motley of tattered sheepskins and tunics so patched as to be no longer identifiable as anything military. Despite their outward dilapidation, in the manner of veterans of the trenches, they never omitted to put a cork in the muzzle of their rifles or to keep a handkerchief around the bolt.

  Veterans they were, on both sides. After the initial losses had been made up, the front line soldiers were now comprised, in more or less equal parts, of survivors of 25 or 30 years old already wounded and repaired once or more times, of reservists in their forties, and boys of the new intakes of 18 or 20. Heavy unkempt beards (hence the ill-favoured nickname, poilu) gave these last the appearance of ageless veterans.

  Most Europeans alive today can conjure up some picture of existence in the trenches, but even to those who actually experienced it the intervening years have mercifully softened the full memory of its miseries. Modern imagination quails at the thought of human beings living month after month like rodents below the earth, usually in several inches of water, frequently a foot deep; never completely dry, never free of the evil-smelling mud, and free from lice only for brief periods following a spell out of the line. Dugouts were shared with huge rats that — like bloated profiteers — seemed to be the only creatures that actually thrived on war. They scurried across the faces of men asleep, gnawing food from their packs, and gorged themselves on the flesh of the unburied. But apart from this last, there was little enough to distinguish between the existences of the two species. To the French poilu, next to the arrival of letters and rations, the greatest pleasure life held was the hole burrowed laboriously in the side of the trench during quiet moments (this was rigidly banned in the British and German lines). Although one near miss from a shell probably meant being buried alive, to be able to sleep out of the rain, to be relatively dry, were risks well worth taking. Even without the enemy, life in the trenches to a normal, civilised man must have been hell, but on top of it there was the eternal ‘wastage’ (as the staff so euphemistically described it); the daily casualties to snipers’ fire, the men buried by the unexpected mortar blast, the ubiquitous stretcher-bearers carrying the muddy and bloody bundles to the rear, which nobody even glanced at any more.

  Whether due to lack of organisation or lack of material, or both, things usually seemed to be a little worse in the French trenches, and rather better than average in those occupied by Germans for any length of time. French carelessness about hygiene in the trenches never failed to shock visiting Britons; though, perhaps immunised by the rusticity of their normal peacetime sanitary arrangements, it rarely appeared to disturb the French. Even their squalid life in the trenches could not entirely repress the acute Gallic humour. With some envy, the immense fertility of the louse was noted; one born in the morning, the poilus swore, was a grandmother by the evening. The favourite quip on taking over flooded trenches was: ‘It’ll be all right so lo
ng as the U-boats don’t torpedo us!’

  These things could be put up with; provided, above all, the pinard (the rough red wine of the French Army) was good and abundant — and the same with the food. As might be expected, these considerations weighed perhaps more with French soldiers than with those of other nations. Yet so often, and generally through abysmal inefficiency, the catering system broke down. When, in December 1915, G.Q.G.’s propaganda section circularised a report describing in glowing terms how much better fed French troops were than the Germans, and claiming that ‘our soldiers have always enjoyed two substantial meals a day,’ two hundred thousand enraged letters were received from the front. Each company was supposed to be equipped with a mobile kitchen consisting of a stove and two great pots; but of a batch of three hundred thousand ordered, half were found to be unserviceable when they reached the line. Doubtless some factory owner had made a fat profit out of the Government. When the rations did arrive, with dreadful monotony they consisted of stringy and greasy tinned beef, known as ‘singe’ to the troops, inadequately salted cod, or rubbery macaroni; all, as often as not, liberally mixed with mud and dirt.

  Even out of the line, the French soldier’s life was no sinecure. When he moved up, unacquainted with the luxuries of ‘Company Transport’ familiar to Western troops of World War II, he moved on his feet, weighed down by kit that made him resemble a deep-sea diver; two blankets rolled up in a ground-sheet, a spare pair of boots, a sheepskin or quilted coat, a shovel or pair of heavy wire scissors, a mess tin and a large pail for rations, two litres of pinard in a large water bottle, rations for four days, 200 cartridges, 6 hand grenades and a gasmask, as well as his personal belongings — all crammed into three cumbersome haversacks. On average, the poilu’s total burden weighed over 85 lbs. It was hardly surprising that tired soldiers slipping on the slimy paths of the approach route to the front got up ‘less easily than a maybug that has fallen on its back’. When bivouacking out of the line, what accommodation existed was promptly occupied by the officers and NCOs, and the other ranks were left to fend for themselves; often having to pay avaricious peasants out of their own miserable five sous a day. Even in the permanent ‘Zones of Rest’, provision of proper lavatories, showers and kitchens were appallingly neglected, and — until Pétain’s reforms in 1917 — soldiers frequently had to share their beds. The old British Army principle that the officer’s first concern should be the welfare of his men seldom seemed to apply.

  One of the more curious things about the French Army of the First War is that, although it was the only ‘republican’ force of the major combatants and — in theory — relationships between ranks ought to have been more democratic than in the other armies, in fact, the dichotomies dividing officers, NCOs and men were far more pronounced than in either the British or even the Imperial German Army. They were epitomised by the subtly differentiating signs to be found at French railway stations:

  W.C. pour MM. les officiers

  Cabinets pour les sous-officiers

  Latrines pour la troupe

  The terrible gaps cut in the French officer corps during the first two years of the war (50 per cent of the regular cadres) had been filled to a large extent by former Sergeants and Adjudants (Sergeant-Majors), and no one clung to their social distinctions more than these new officers. By 1916 the division between officers and men was probably wider than it ever had been. Contact was at a minimum, limited largely to the actual battle itself. Allied observers were often shocked at the way in which French commanders, after a successful attack, left their troops lying out on the destroyed enemy position for days and nights after they should have been relieved. It was an attitude of mind not only confined to the higher ranks. Though the comparison is obviously extreme, in the relationship of French officers to their men in the First World War there is something that reminds one of Lord Cardigan riding back to his yacht after the Charge, without pausing to enquire about the casualties sustained by the Light Brigade. Often it seemed as if French officers felt that, once the action was over, so was their responsibility to the troop. But what officers lacked in personal contact with their men out of the line, they made up with leadership in battle that was composed of selfless example and fantastic gallantry. Their prestige was reinforced by a discipline that struck even Prussian officers as savage. In September 1914 special Conseils de Guerre had been established to try men, and officers, accused of dereliction of duty. Death was the sentence usually passed on those found guilty; there was no appeal, and the sentence had to be dispatched within 24 hours. The supreme penalty was frequently awarded for offences that, by modern standards, seem trifling; for lesser offenders, the French Army still abided by the system of ‘penal companies,’ earmarked for carrying out particularly dangerous tasks. When a regiment failed badly, its commander sometimes resorted to ‘decimation’ — that disgracefully unjust and draconian system — whereby men were selected from each company, often more or less at random, and were shot after a purely ritualistic court martial; pour encourager les autres. In 1917, a gross failure of leadership caused the devotion inspired by the French officers’ personal bravery to flag for one disastrous moment, and then even this iron discipline could not maintain the cementing bond. But, meanwhile, at the opening of 1916, morale and discipline in the French Army were about as good as they could be.

  The neglectfulness of his superiors seemed to dog the unhappy poilu even away from the army, on his rare spells of permission. No regular leave was instituted until the war was a year old, and even then the permissionaire wasted many valuable hours — sometimes days — travelling in crowded trains with broken windows. During his long waits on station platforms, there was nothing like the YMCA or the various welfare organisations that cared for the British soldier. Canteens were rare, and anyway he had little enough money to spend in them. Occasionally, through unbelievable bureaucratic muddles over soldiers’ passes, there were cases of soldiers not being able to get home to their families; instead, they frittered away their precious leaves in some strange and expensive big city. As compensation for all his miseries and discomforts, there was, finally, for the more fortunate poilu the benevolence of his ‘godmother’. The marraines de guerre began as a scheme for women to adopt an unknown soldier, keeping him supplied with woollen comforters, and had grown into a powerful propaganda instrument. Sometimes frightened soldiers were prompted into action more by fear of their marraines’ contempt than of their lieutenant’s revolver. For the majority, the marraine was simply an unseen, unknown Beatrice who wrote her soldier beautiful letters telling him to be brave and die well; the happy minority also sometimes found her willing to share her bed with him on leave. (Once in a while, the admirable system defeated its own purpose; there was the sergeant who collected 44 marraines, eventally found that his leaves were never long enough to keep them all contented, and deserted).

  Of all the factors that had contrived to the education of the novices of 1914, obviously none was more fundamental — for both sides — than the sickening effect that the new weapons of the industrial revolution had on the bodies of men. It was bad enough to be wounded at all, but at least a bullet was a relatively clean agent. If you were hit by either a rifle or a machine gun, the chances were that either you were killed outright, or eventually you returned to life more or less in one piece. However, in contrast to World War II, bullet wounds were the minority; the greater part of casualties were caused by the terrible effects of shell-fire. Also, by 1939, the march of civilisation had advanced metallurgy to a point where shells and bombs burst into smaller fragments; they killed more men with each burst, but they tended to do so more tidily. In the First War the crude iron of the shells (most of them many times bigger than anything used in the land battles of 1939-45) shattered into huge ragged chunks that sometimes two men would be unable to lift. The effect on the soft human carapace of impact with these whirling fragments may be imagined; Barbusse in Le Feu, one of the best French novels of the First World War describes it i
n a manner that is not just a piling of horror on horror —

  … men squashed, cut in two, or divided from top to bottom, blown into showers by an ordinary shell, bellies turned inside out and scattered anyhow, skulls forced bodily into the chest as if by a blow with a club…

  It was only astonishing how much of such mutilation flesh could surfer and still survive; Duhamel, a war doctor whose writings later brought him election to the Academy, tells of the riddled but living bodies, brought to his clearing station — ‘they reminded us of disabled ships letting in water at every seam.’ And then there was gas, many of whose victims (those that survived) were reminded of its choking, searing horror on damp winter days every year till they died; an experience mercifully altogether unknown to World War II combatants.

  To cope with these mutilations on so massive a scale, medical services were singularly ill-equipped. In this respect — as in many others already mentioned — France in 1914 was notably, and notoriously, behind both Britain and Germany. She remained so throughout the war. Her Medical Service had been prepared in 1914 for a short sharp war, and was hopelessly caught out. Its doctors, inculcated in the de Grandmaison notions of war en rase campagne and clean bullet wounds, also reckoned on an ‘aseptic’ war. Their miscalculation possibly cost France an army corps of men; for, with wounds impregnated by dirt and debris from the explosion of shells, hideous ‘gas gangrene’ became the single largest mortality factor among the wounded. Almost unheard of in World War II, once it set in it was only curable by prompt and skilful surgery; both usually lacking in the First War.