26 - 29 February 2016. Days 6-9.

After a week of fighting at Verdun what had begun as a crisis was quickly turning into a disaster.

The fall of Douaumont reverberated through the French army and began to have a major impact on morale.

Douaumont was a symbol of French resistance to Germany yet had been captured in circumstances that bordered almost on the comic. The French high command were now faced with a crucial decision as to what their strategy at Verdun should now be.

At some point in the immediate aftermath of the news of Douaumont's fall being received by Joffre, his Chief of Staff, Major-General de Castelnau, insisted his Chief be woken from his sleep and what followed sealed the fate of Verdun and the fate of tens of thousands of French soldiers. It is this curious  meeting that Taylor appears to have confused with some other meeting between Joffre and Briand. This is explained in more detail here.

Major-General de Castelnau

Major-General de Castelnau made two key decisions. First, he appointed General Henri Philippe Omer Petain as the defender of Verdun with the simple order that the Meuse be held on the right bank. Second, there would be no surrender at Verdun, France would fight to the end. For more analysis of Petain's appointment - look here.

Petain

25 February 1916. Day 5 - Douaumont

Douaumont was the largest and most prestigious fort constructed from the 19th century onwards to defend France from German attacks across the plains north east of Verdun.

Douaumont seen from the air before 1916. The fort is angled roughly to the north east and looks out over the Woevre Plain to the east and across to the forests around Brabant, Haumont and Beaumont to the North. Entry to the fort was through an approach road and tunnel that can be seen bottom and centre of the photograph.

Since building began in 1885, Douaumont had been constantly improved and modernised. The most recent upgrade had taken place in 1913 and it was generally felt that the fort was impregnable.

The design was based on those of the great French military architect, Vauban. The fort measured almost 400 meters across at its widest point and was surrounded by a deep system of trenches, railings and dense coils of barbed wire.

Each point of the fort was covered by counterscarp galleries that offered a field of fire cover along all sides and across all angles.

Troops could move from one part of the fort through a series of underground tunnels and passages. The levels of the fort below ground contained bakeries, barracks, chapels, administration rooms, workshops and washrooms - all linked to gun placements that could be raised through the heavy three metre coverings of concrete and sand that had been smoothed over the underground city.

Fort Douamont showing the village from which it takes its name in the bottom right hand corner.

in 1914, Douaumont had a permanent garrison of around 500 French infantry. This was not the case by the time the battle around Verdun began in 1916. 

On the fifth day of the battle, the mighty fort of Douaumont was seized by a small handful of German soldiers.

The seizure of the fort is one of the most astonishing events in the whole battle.

The implications of losing Douaumont were enormous and virtually ensured that the battle would be dragged out through the spring and summer of 1916 and back again to the cold eastern winter.

An in-depth study of Douaumont may be found here.

Douaumont village before 1916.

24 February 1916. Day 4 - German advances, French losses

By the end of the third day of the battle it was beginning to dawn on French commanders that they were facing an increasingly desperate situation.

In his book 'The First World War: An Illustrated History' (1963) AJP Taylor  recounts a peculiar tale involving the French Prime Minister, Briand, and the Commander of French forces on the Western Front, Marshal Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre. A more detailed analysis of this event will eventually appear elsewhere on this blog.

The German focus on the fourth day of the battle remained concentrated on the right bank of the Meuse. French artillery on the left bank, still unmolested by German bombardments began to concentrate fire on German movements to the east of the river.

As the fourth day of the battle came to a close, German forces had occupied a number of key strategic points to the north of the city. These included Cote 344, the Bois de Fosses, the Bois de Chaume and the village of Ornes.

A German postcard of the aftermath of the Battle in the Bois de Fosses.

The Bois de Chaume - February 1916.

The village of Ornes joined the list of east bank communities that were not re-built after the war and becomes one of the 'ghost villages' of Verdun. Even though a few houses and a handful of permanent residents remain, the village is classified as having "died for France".

Ornes - before and after 1916

A note on the geography of the battle . . . 

The River Meuse cuts through the centre of the city of Verdun.
Accounts which refer to the 'left bank' of the Meuse are focussing mostly on the 'west' bank.
References to the 'right/east' bank are usually referring to events that are to the north of the city.

23 February 1916. Day Three. Samogneux and other ghost villages

Villages mentioned in this post - top/centre (click to enlarge)

Samogneux was one of the small villages strung out along the hills, forests and valleys on the eastern bank of the River Meuse.

In February 1916, Samogneux, Brabant, Beaumont and Forges became key points for those French soldiers escaping the slaughter in the forests to the north. They also became targets for the German artillery gunners who continued to use planes and balloons to target the retreating French forces.

Brabant sur Meuse before 1916

Brabant had been evacuated early in the third day. Three hours later, a message was delivered to the front line stating that the previous order had been a misunderstanding. Brabant should be reoccupied as a matter of some urgency with the added order that 'not too many men be used in the operation'.

Not for the last time, the lack of understanding between front line forces and distant commanders was obvious. There were no French soldiers capable of regaining the village and German forces easily took the strategically important position.

The third day ground on in a flurry of order and counter order. There were some successful French counter attacks but communication and any sense of coordinated strategy resulted in growing disorder and confusion. 

Beaumont before 1916

Beaumont - late February 1916

The village of Beaumont occupied a slight rise of higher ground and was now occupied by a number of French platoons who had been drawn towards it at the end of the first day of battle. This had been the destination of Driant's attempted escape from the Bois des Caures.

German attempts to take the village were costly - a 'day of horror' according to the official German history of the battle. Machine gunners hidden in the cellars and houses of Beaumont took a heavy toll of the advancing German Hessians. Only the destruction of the buildings on top of the French defenders finally allowed the Germans to take the village; at huge cost. 

It was the German experience of attempts to take villages such as Beaumont that gave the Germans a false sense of the scale of the defence that faced them and that went some way in checking their advance during the first days of the battle.

The focus of the battle hinged around the village of Samogneux by the late afternoon and illustrates once again the utter confusion of the French defenders.

Survivors from the Bois des Caures and the other forest redoubts to the north had started to flow away from the frontline back towards the city of Verdun itself. At some point in the chaos it was reported that Samogneux had fallen to the Germans. This message was relayed back down the line and the order was given to recapture the position.

German troops in Samogneux - February 1916

Samogneux - before the battle

At 10:00pm the French artillery set their coordinates on Samogneux and the bombardment begin. This was a ghastly mistake. Samogneux had in fact not fallen to the Germans, it was being held by a small number of French defenders. 

Realising that they were under fire from their own side the French in Samogneux sent up a series of green flares, the pre-arranged signal of 'cease fire'. The flares were ignored.

By 3:00am the defence of Samogneux was over and the Germans had quickly taken advantage of the situation.

Samogneux also registered the end of an entire French military division - the 72nd. It had lost almost 10,000 soldiers and almost all the officers.

*

In the freezing cold night at the end of the third day of the battle it is apparent now that the German high command underestimated the position they were in. The brave defence in pockets along the hills to the east of the city gave a false impression of the French position. By the fourth day of the battle, the Germans were actually closer to victory at Verdun than they could have imagined.

The villages today

To the modern day visitor to Verdun the villages along the left bank of the Meuse offer some of the most spectral reminders of the battle.

This Reuters site offers very good before/after images.

I will produce a special 'ghost village' post later in this blog.

22 February 1916. Day Two. Captain Emile Driant.

Captain Emile Driant's graduation portrait.Saint-Cyr military academy, 1877

The Bois des Caures provided the French with their first hero-martyr of the battle.

Captain Emile Driant, like many high ranking officers in the French army, had his first military experience in Africa before returning to France in 1888 to marry the daughter of a prominent nationalist, General Boulanger.

As Commander of the 1st Battalion of Chassuers (1899) Driant found his military career stifled by a combination of his strong catholic views and the even more controversial nationalist views of his father-in-law.

Resigning from the army in 1906, Driant became a career politician and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies for Nancy (1910) became a strong advocate of strengthening the defences of France.

Driant was a prolific writer. His journalism on topics of defence quickly developed into a wide range of guerre imaginaire (imaginary war) novels.

'The War of Tomorrow' written under the pseudonym Captain Danrit

Although the majority of Driant's novels concerned the certain victory of France over Germany, his 1902 work, 'The Fatal War' tells the story (1,200 pages) of the total defeat of the British Empire by the French.

These cheap, mass produced novels were very popular in pre-war France and Driant became the most industrious 'future war' novelist of the period,  producing hundreds of stories and longer (very long) novels for a receptive audience.

Driant was recalled to the army shortly after the outbreak of war in 1914.

He was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel denied to him before the war and given the command of two chassuer battalions (56th, 59th).

His political career continued. He continued to speak in Parliament and was a key figure on the committee commissioned to create what became the 'Croix de Guerre'.

At Verdun

Driant criticised the French high command's neglect of the defences around Verdun. 

His battalions had been sent to establish defences in the Bois des Caures after their participation in the Battle of the Marne  (1914) and had remained their in what many saw as a 'comfortable' posting.

As the German plans for the attack on Verdun moved towards their final stages, Driant became ever more convinced that they would seek a symbolic victory at Verdun and that defeat here for the French would be a national disaster. 

Few people, however, were listening to the author of 'War by Balloon'.

Driant, third from right, in the Bois Des Caures, January 2016

Driant predicted the attack almost to the hour. 

60 minutes before the German bombardment began he had removed his wedding ring and had given it to his soldier-servant, along with letters to his family. When, at his command post 50 minutes later the first shells began to hit the dense woodland, he visited the chaplain and received absolution.

All communications in the Bois des Caures were destroyed in the first hour of the bombardment. Driant found himself depending on runners and messengers as he attempted to make some sense of the carnage around him.

That so many of the 56th and 59th Chasseurs survived the first terrible day was mainly due to Driant's planning. Unlike other sections of the Western Front he had not constructed endless systems of connecting trenches but had concentrated instead on redoubts and strongholds that were well constructed and well dug-in.

One of Driant's fortified positions today.

On day two of the battle German shells crashed down again on the Bois de Cuares in an attempt to wipe out what remained of the French defence. By mid-day the shelling lifted and German troops poured into the shattered woods looking to deliver the final blow.

At around 1pm a foward platoon of German infantry and flamethrowers were 800 meters away from Driant's command post in the centre of the Bois des Caures. 

Driant stepped out into the defensive redoubts and directed the fire of the Chasseurs still around him. Deciding, at some point mid-afternoon, to withdraw to the nearby village of Beaumont, Driant led a small group of Chassuers from shell-hole to shell-hole.

As Driant stopped to give first aid to a wounded Chasseur he was shot through the temple and fell to the ground.

*

Driant had commanded 1,200 Chassuers at the start of the previous day, around 500 made it out of the destroyed Boi des Caures and back to French lines at the end of the second.

The bombardment of the woods at Boi des Caures exemplified the struggle at Verdun. This was, above all, a gunner's war.

The Bois Des Caures after one week of bombardment

Driant had been proved correct. His dreadful 'imaginary war' novels may have been produced for a cheap and uninformed readership yet his grasp of the vulnerable situation of Verdun proved to be correct. Driant and his Chasseurs were the first of many at Verdun to pay for the earlier neglect of the French high command.

*

The defence of the Bois des Caures elevated Driant to the status of national hero, even German newspapers acclaimed his brilliant defence. When his body was found a German Baroness sent his personal belonging's back to Madame Driant with a letter of sympathy.

Buried by the Germans in 1916, Driant's bdy was exhumed in 1934 and re-buried in the newly growing woods of the Bois des Caures.

Driant's grave in the Bois Des Caures.

This could be a scene from one his 'imagined wars'. A highly romanticised view of Driant's death.

21 February 1916. Day One.

The attack began in the early morning. It was Monday.

Under cover of the dense Meuse forests to the east of Verdun the Germans had pushed naval guns mounted on narrow gauge rail lines to within 30 km of the city. In the Forest of Spincourt the order was finally received to aim a 380mm gun at Verdun and for the bombardment to begin.

The Bishop’s Palace in Verdun took the first hit, an entire corner of the Cathedral destroyed.

Bishop's Palace - Verdun. 21 February 1916

In reality, it had been a near miss. The real target was more likely to have been one of a number of bridges in Verdun that crossed the River Meuse but the propaganda value of a direct hit on a Cathedral was not lost by a French government desperate to maintain public fear of German ‘barbarism’.

The next salvo of shells found their targets on and around the main railway station in Verdun.

Closer to the front line, in the Bois des Caures, a slightly elevated wood between the towns of Flabas and Ville-devant-Chaumont, the main French defence under the leadership of Colonel Driant slept on.

Chasseurs in the Bois des Caures before the attack

Three hours after the first shell had exploded on the Cathedral the bombardment of the Bois des Caures began.

Bois de Caures - top right/centre between Flabas and Ville

Survivors recalled the world ‘disintegrating’ around them.

‘…a storm’

‘…a hurricane’

‘…a tempest that grew ever stronger…it seemed to be raining paving stones’

Shells fell and exploded in a constant wave. Trees were uprooted, flung to the ground only to be immediately flung back into the air by the next salvo of metal.

Soldiers were buried by the churned-up earth from near-by explosions. Scrambling to the surface they then found themselves buried again by new explosions. Each wave of shelling buried and killed and maimed hundreds of the French Chasseurs.

Observers spoke also of the mathematical pattern of the bombardment as they watched sections of the wood blasted by shells in waves of steel in repeated 15 minute ‘cycles’ of destruction.

All sections of the Verdun front were subjected to the same terrible barrage that fell on both fortified positions and the deeper supply and communication lines. German gunners used both gas and high explosive.

Around midday the bombardment paused.

In the Bois de Caures, Brabant, Haumont and Maucourt, survivors of the attack staggered from their dug-outs and fortified bunkers to survey the devastation around them.

German artillery observers on higher ground - as well as in balloons and aircraft - telegraphed back to the gunners to inform them where the bombardment had been less successful. German artillery re-calibrated their mortar fire and resumed their bombardment of the French first line of defence. 

Heavy shells were quickly falling at a frequency of 40 every 60 seconds. Altogether, the barrage lasted almost continually between 7 a.m and 4 p.m. In that period, around 80,000 shells fell on the Bois de Caures alone.

The German infantry began their attack at 4 p.m. accompanied by flamethrower units, a new addition to the carnage of the Western Front.

Three waves of German infantry advance east of the Bois de Caures - 21/2/16

After nightfall, the German guns opened up again.

Verdun

The Battle of Verdun was the largest and longest battle on the Western Front during World War One.

By the time the fighting finally died away (officially 16 December 1916) the French had lost 315,000 casualties, the Germans 281,000.

Verdun was the only offensive on the Western Front where the defensive cost was greater than the offensive. This casualty ratio is unusual in modern warfare and unique in World War One battles.

The geographical scale of the battle is in direct contrast to the casualties. Verdun saw the most intense concentration of troops in any given space during the war. Along a front that stretched barely more than 8km at its widest point, over 115 divisions (78 of them French) were fed into what the historian AJP Taylor referred to as the 'mincing machine' of Verdun.

The Battle of Verdun came close to destroying the French army and in places brought it to the brink of mutiny, precisely what the Germans had intended when they planned the attack during 1915.

The French held Verdun. For a town with little strategic or tactical value, the costs - militarily, politically, socially and psychologically - were enormous.

Posts will follow - roughly - a chronological order but will also concentrate on themed reflections on the battle that have occurred to me since I first visited Verdun over 20 years ago.