FOOTNOTES:[3]6.45 German Summer Time, 5.45 English Summer Time, 4.45 Greenwich Time. The Summer Time was used in all the Armies.[4]The well-known 4·2" gun.[5]Known to the British Army as High Wood and Devil's Wood respectively.[6]Telephone and Command Dug-out.[7]6 a.m. English summer time.[8]German Heavy Artillery is organised in "Bataillons" of four batteries.[9]The Germans had apparently heard rumours of the coming of the "Tanks." It was asserted in the Army on the 16th September, that a motor-cyclist carrying a definite warning had been killed by one of our shells in the early morning of the 15th, on his way from H.Q. to the front line.[10]Panzerkraftwagen, lit. "armoured power wagons," was and is the official German designation of the "Tanks." The word is also applied to armoured cars.
FOOTNOTES:
[3]6.45 German Summer Time, 5.45 English Summer Time, 4.45 Greenwich Time. The Summer Time was used in all the Armies.
[3]6.45 German Summer Time, 5.45 English Summer Time, 4.45 Greenwich Time. The Summer Time was used in all the Armies.
[4]The well-known 4·2" gun.
[4]The well-known 4·2" gun.
[5]Known to the British Army as High Wood and Devil's Wood respectively.
[5]Known to the British Army as High Wood and Devil's Wood respectively.
[6]Telephone and Command Dug-out.
[6]Telephone and Command Dug-out.
[7]6 a.m. English summer time.
[7]6 a.m. English summer time.
[8]German Heavy Artillery is organised in "Bataillons" of four batteries.
[8]German Heavy Artillery is organised in "Bataillons" of four batteries.
[9]The Germans had apparently heard rumours of the coming of the "Tanks." It was asserted in the Army on the 16th September, that a motor-cyclist carrying a definite warning had been killed by one of our shells in the early morning of the 15th, on his way from H.Q. to the front line.
[9]The Germans had apparently heard rumours of the coming of the "Tanks." It was asserted in the Army on the 16th September, that a motor-cyclist carrying a definite warning had been killed by one of our shells in the early morning of the 15th, on his way from H.Q. to the front line.
[10]Panzerkraftwagen, lit. "armoured power wagons," was and is the official German designation of the "Tanks." The word is also applied to armoured cars.
[10]Panzerkraftwagen, lit. "armoured power wagons," was and is the official German designation of the "Tanks." The word is also applied to armoured cars.
NACH VERDUN!
Inthe long luxuriously furnished saloon car of the special train an officer clad in the field-service uniform of a South-Eastern Power sat in conversation with a colonel of the German General Staff. The deference shown to him made it immediately obvious that he was a distinguished personage representing a neutral whose friendliness was important. His dark, clever eyes rested thoughtfully upon the groups of officers with whom the car was overcrowded. All round was a buzz of talk, of suppressed excitement. The air was thick with cigar smoke.
"Ja, Excellenz," said the German colonel, podgy little fingers drumming the table between them. "The secret is out. You have rightly guessed our objective." His eyes were those of a rather clumsy and not too scrupulous diplomat. His smile was deliberate flattery. "Allow me to congratulate you upon your good fortune. You will see the machinery of ourKriegswirtschaftlichkeit,"[11]he throated the word impressively, "at the moment when it works at its highest power to shape for Germany her final victory."
The distinguished neutral smiled also, perfectly courteous. He spoke with a faint Austrian accent.
"I can understand your desire for the final," he underlined the word ever so lightly, "victory, Herr Oberst."
The German stared at him, suspicious of the nimbler brain.
"Who would not desire it, Excellenz? This awful slaughter," he waved a deprecating hand. "It is terrible that our adversaries do not recognise they are already beaten."
The neutral nodded.
"Bar-le-Duc and the Upper Marne, I suppose—Paris!"
The German colonel's eyes went dead.
"Excellenz, I believe the supreme command reserves to itself the honour of enlightening you on its plans."
The conversation languished. The train rolled on, heavily comfortable. The staff officers talked earnestly among themselves, the word "Majestät" oft repeated. Orderlies, garbed as soldiers but obviously royalKammerdiener, stole noiselessly in and out of the car, went frequently into the car beyond. On those occasions the distinguished neutral had a glimpse of a world-familiar figure, upturned moustaches on a tired face, a uniform of grey hung with many decorations.
The train rolled into a station, stopped. The blare of a military band started on the precise instant of its arrival. The platform was thronged with officers, bright with the red of the General Staff.
The distinguished neutral took little interest in the ceremony outside. He busied himself withcollecting the small articles of his kit. Through the large windows he glimpsed the salutes of the rigidly-erect officers. Above the noise of the band he heard the repeated "Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!" of soldiers who cheered as they drilled, exactly synchronous.
He stepped on to the platform, followed by the Colonel appointed to be his conductor. "Majestät" had already departed. Officers were thronging to the exit, laughing and talking, much excited, revealing, despite the grey and red of the staff uniform, the essential childishness of the crowd-mind. "Nach Verdun!" said one of them, very close to the distinguished neutral, nudging another in the ribs. "Nach Verdun!" He repeated the just given watchword of victory as a schoolboy repeats the latest smart expression. The officers around him laughed. The crowd buzzed with high spirits.
Outside the station the roadway was choked with waiting motor-cars, lined with soldiers readjusting their helmets after tumultuous "Hochs!" Some cars—those containing the highest personages—had already departed. One after the other those remaining were filled, swerved out and sped away. The distinguished neutral and his companion found a vehicle reserved for them. The colonel led him to it with an air that suggested: "See how the smallest details are thought out!" They, too, sped away through the walls of infantry.
Behind the soldiers were a few listless French inhabitants; from the windows of that French town hung German flags, but no French faces looked out. The shops were open but their owners stood not atthe doors. The neutral noted these things. The complete apathy of the population was in contrast to stories his companion had related in the train. In many of the side-streets long convoys of ammunition and ration wagons were halted to allow them passage. On one of those foremost wagons was scrawled in big chalk letters: "Nach Verdun!"
"Nach Verdun!" that was the Leitmotiv underlying all the intense military activity that filled the town and, as they shot out beyond the houses, the countryside also. Every road was choked with columns of marching infantry, with endless trains of wagons, of limbers, of ambulances. Even cavalry was in evidence, riding with tall lances and saddle-hung rifles on wretched-looking horses. "Nach Verdun!" The German colonel, though he warily gave no information, could talk of nothing else. Under that grey February sky pulsed and boomed the distant detonations of artillery. The neutral listened to it with a professional ear, was puzzled. It was persistent enough, but it was certainly not the prolonged roar of a preparatory bombardment.
The car swung into the drive of a park. A tunnel of winter-stripped trees, brown above, green streaking the bark, and then a large château drew itself across the vista. Thither the other cars had preceded them. They stood now ranked in a mass. There was a throng of officers round the great doors, the buzz awakened by the recent passage of the All-Highest. The neutral was shown to his room, the German colonel volubly regretting that exigencies of space forced him to share it.
Some hours later the neutral was ushered into a vast, lofty apartment whose tapestried walls were almost completely rehung with the huge maps pinned upon them. On easels stood other maps, strange diagrams in curves and slants of red, green and black ink. On a large table was a horizontal relief model of hills and woods, a river with tributary streams, a splash of red in the valley, thin lines of red converging upon it, passing through, opening out again. On all these maps, on the splash of red in the relief model, the name "Verdun" was repeated again and again.
All these things the neutral officer noticed with the corner of his eye—the large writing-tables behind which sat officers of high rank, other officers grouped in a corner. His direct gaze was held by the figure he saluted. Spare, of medium height, in the grey field-service uniform of a general, gold cord looping across his right breast, a star upon the left above the Iron Cross, gilt epaulettes, gilt leaves upon the red gorgets of his collar, the would-be conqueror of the world stood stiffly erect, graciously acknowledged his salute. The brushed-up moustache was still dark, though the short hair on the head was grey, almost white. The face was deeply furrowed with endless anxieties, but the blue eyes—pouched though were their under lids—gleamed with excitement. He spoke in a jerky but distinct manner that betrayed a temperament of long ill-controlled impulses.
"Guten Abend, Herr General!Welcome to Germany's greatest hour! You shall see our sun mount triumphantly to its zenith, breaking through the darkclouds of foes who cluster over against us in vain!" The tone was that of a rhetoric practised until it has become a habit. The right hand gesticulated with quick motions, the left arm was conspicuously still. "General!" he turned to one of the officers sitting at the tables, "be so good as to explain everything to our friend here."
It was to be clearly understood that the All-Highest was flatteringly gracious.
The neutral officer bowed, expressed his thanks courteously, ventured a request: "That I may be allowed to admire your War-Machine in all its work, Majestät—go where I will."
"By all means, General. We have nothing to hide. You will find much to interest you, much to relate to our well-wishers in your country. General! see that a pass is given to our friend that will give him the fullest freedom." The All-Highest answered the neutral's salute in a manner that terminated the conversation.
Seated at the huge, carved writing-table with the officer to whom he had been addressed, the neutral found himself looking at a pair of keen grey eyes that peered through pince-nez under bushy white eyebrows. The German spread out maps, indicated positions. He drew notice to the fact that all roads squeezed through a bottle-neck over the river at Verdun, spread out in a fan on the east bank to a long line of positions that climbed from the river over the Heights of the Meuse and fell into the plain of the Woevre across which they bent southward.
"Die Sache ist äusserst einfach!"[12]he said with the air of a man explaining a chess-problem. "The French have three divisions of Territorials in front of us to hold the entire sector. That force is not strong enough to defend it and certainly too weak to have kept the trench-systems in good repair. In fact we know that they have been allowed to fall into ruin.[13]We have fifteen divisions in front line, fifteen divisions in reserve. We do not intend to fling those divisions away. No. Step by step our artillery will blast a passage for them—see, here are our artillery positions," he showed concentric lines one within the other on the map, round the doomed sector. "It is the greatest artillery concentration the world has ever seen. Even our concentration on the Donajetz last year is surpassed. We shall obliterate the positions in front of us—other batteries will drench the only avenues of supplies with shells, they must all go through the town—our infantry will merely march into the devastated position, wait for the clearance of the next step. I may tell you that the French have only one small branch railway line which is safe from our fire. We have built fourteen new lines, besides those already existing. In the great problem of supply we have an overwhelming superiority. We believe we have the advantage of surprise. Certainly the French have no concentration within easy reach. In four days we shall be in Verdun. The Western Front will have been broken."
"In four days?" The neutral officer looked atthe map as a chess-player looks at the board. "And—if I might ask the question—supposing you do not take Verdun in four days? There is said to be an enormous Allied force somewhere in France."
"We have yet another day," said the German a little wearily, as though resenting the effort to explain the unnecessary. "We have five clear days before any reinforcements can be brought up against us—all the chances have been calculated, you see. If we are not in Verdun by the evening of the fifth day—well, the battle will continue. But, I repeat, we shall be in Verdun within four days. The thing is certain!"
"Of course it is, General," said another voice above their heads. Both officers looked up, rose to their feet. "In four days we shall be in Verdun. In a fortnight—Paris!"
The speaker was a youngish man, with a long nose in a long face, somewhat bald upon the brow, a clipped moustache above a long thin mouth. There was something in his manner which suggested not too reputable finance doubled with Monte Carlo and thecoulisses. He repeated, smacking his hand familiarly upon the back of the distinguished neutral: "In a fortnight—Paris!" He named the famous city with a smack of the lips.
"Undoubtedly, Highness," said the German general, his professional manner replaced by the obsequiousness of the courtier. "The army led by Your Highness cannot fail to conquer."
"Verdun—Paris! This time it will not fail, General." He walked across the room, smackinga riding-switch on his tall, patent-leather hussar boots, and chanting: "Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun—Paris!"[14]
The morning of the 21st February, 1916, opened damp and bleak. Over the heavy clay fields of the Woevre plain the mist hung persistently, enclosing all vision in a few hundred yards. Through the obscurity the poplars lining the roads loomed up like ghosts, dripping moisture from each bare twig. In the copses and the larger stretch of woodland known as the Forêt de Spincourt the conglobulated mist fell like rain. From either of the high knolls known as the Twins of Ornes, just south-west of the Forêt de Spincourt, the wooded slopes of the Heights of the Meuse—Merbebois and the Bois de Wavrille—rose dark and indefinite, discernible only when a little puff of the raw east wind, coming up the valley of the Orne, broke a rift in the fog.
The neutral and the German Oberst who was his inseparable companion stood on the more southerly of the twin heights. About them was a group of artillery officers. In their immediate front was the deep dug-out, sod-roofed, where telephonists sat and waited. It was an artillery observation post. The light was yet dim though the wet fog was white. It had been quite dark when the two spectators had made their way over roads deep in mud to this position of vantage.
The journey had been long, for their car had had to squeeze, lurching and slithering, past endless columns of infantry plodding over the atrocious roads. In the darkness those thousands of men had been scarcely more visible than phantoms who sang continuously as they marched, chorusing to the tune set by picked singers at the head of each company. Those who were merely the chorus broke off frequently to shout witticisms at the labouring motor-car. In high spirits, they wagered that they would be the first, after all, to arrive in Verdun.
On the hill-top of the Twin of Ornes, where the officers clustered, was tense expectation. The fog did not lift. Only at rare intervals was there a faint glimpse of the wooded heights towards which all gazed with thrilling foreknowledge. As yet all was a quiet broken only by an occasional isolated detonation that rolled heavily down the Orne valley. It echoed in a dull repercussion from the mist-filled woods upon the great scarp that was the far-flung rampart of the doomed city. An officer looked at his watch. The example was infectious. The seconds, the minutes passed slowly. It was like waiting for the curtain to go up. The watches marked 8.13 (German time)—8.14—8.15!
There was one simultaneous vast roar that leaped from an arc stretching from far in the north-west and passing round behind them to the south. It did not cease. Minute after minute it continued, unabated, prolonged. In the first sudden shock it appeared one colossal bellow of sound, evenly maintained. But as the ear became accustomed to it, instinctivelyanalysed it, it was possible to distinguish spasms of even fiercer sound than the general welter: the ponderous concussion of especially heavy ordnance; the frenzied hammering of the quickfiring field-guns. The sense of hearing was overwrought, but the view changed not. The mist still hung over the landscape, was a curtain before the straining eye. Only down below them to the right a howitzer battery, adventurously pushed forward, rent the fog with stabs of orange-red flame.
It seemed, in the overpowering blast of the German guns, that the French artillery was making no general reply. From time to time a shell came whining over towards them, finished in an ugly rush and a crash somewhere upon the knoll. They scarcely noticed these occasional djinns of death, so ineffective were they by contrast to the whirlwind of destruction that swept the other way. The habituated ear could now pick out the rumbling tramcar-like progress of the heavy shells overhead, the fierce rushing drone of the missiles from lighter guns, mingling interwoven with the uninterrupted sheet of sound.
What was happening over there among the dank, wooded hills? Nothing could be seen, but the experienced imagination sketched, conscious that it fell below the reality, fearful havoc distant in the fog. Trees suddenly blasted, toppling; parapets leaping into the air—horrors among the spout of earth that had been a sheltered dug-out; trenches whose walls fell in; men who cowered, fear-paralysed, in a shambles; overhead a ceaseless cracking that rained down death; shock upon shock; chaos—suchflitted through the minds of those who strained their eyes at the fog. An artillery observation officer turned to the neutral.
"Five hours of this, Excellenz," he said with a smile, "and then, the first step to Verdun!"
The Oberst expatiated on the wonderful German system for supplying all these batteries indefinitely at this intensity of fire. "Who can resist us?" was the implied corollary to his dissertation. The neutral was duly impressed, his dark clever eyes serious.
The bombardment continued, became monotonous. The fog thinned somewhat but permitted no clear vision. The batteries were firing by the map, according to a prearranged programme. The Oberst suggested to his distinguished guest that further stay was useless.
"I would like to see your guns at work, Herr Oberst," said the neutral, and the colonel saw himself forced to put aside his hopes of returning to Corps Headquarters forMittagessen. He speculated on the Divisional Messes in their vicinity as he replied:
"By all means, Excellenz."
They scrambled down the rough path of the knoll, through a thin growth of birch, passed into the denser mist below.
They found themselves suddenly among long ranks of resting infantry squatting and lying in close proximity to their piled arms. The feld-grau uniforms merged, were lost in the fog, but there was an indefinable suggestion of the presence of many thousands. The Oberst and his guest might walkwhere they would, the shadowy grey forms still loomed up out of the mist. All were cheerful and confident. The officers in little groups smiling as they conversed, bent over a map. The men grinning. They were waiting for the guns to level the path for their "promenade."
At last the ranks of infantry ceased. They came upon a field battery that was firing furiously. The guns were in the open, their upturned caissons—lid upright to form a shield, exposing the pigeon-holed bases of the cartridges—close against the left wheel. Grouped behind each were the busy gunners, in rapid movement of arms and torso, crouching, labouring with swift concentrated intensity as they passed the long, gleaming projectile from hand to hand, thrust it into the breech, closed and fired. Behind them was a heap of brass cartridge-cases, the flat compartmented baskets that had held three rounds. The watching officers, helmeted, in long closely-buttoned coats, stood behind their sections. The battery hurled out its stream of death in absolute immunity. No enemy shell came to seek it. The fog veiled its target.
Beyond that battery was another, in the open like the first, almost wheel to wheel with it. And beyond that, another and yet others, an endless chain of them, all scorning concealment, all firing as fast as sweating, straining men could load and pull the lever. From behind came the prolonged, heavy, linked detonations of yet other batteries of more weighty metal. Overhead the rumble and rush of hurrying shells was as the sound of heavy traffic.
The neutral and his guide turned eastwards towards the zone of the great howitzers. Once more they were entangled in waiting masses of grey-clad infantry. The mist had thinned, permitted quite long vistas. Everywhere there was infantry, battalion upon battalion, regiment on regiment, brigade after brigade. The time had passed—by the neutral, at least, almost unnoticed, so much was there for his brain to register—it was now almost noon. The infantry was standing to its ranks, forming into column of route, marching forward with songs and shouts, their spiked helmets decorated with sprigs of fir. "Vorwärts!" came the sharp, barking commands of the officers. "Nach Verdun!" shouted the excited men, drunk with the prospect of superbly easy victory.
And ever the indefatigable batteries hammered and crashed, spewing forth death in volumes that the men they served might live. From behind every hedge, every hillock; in long lines across the open—so many that they could afford to neglect the enemy's reply; their tongues of flame shot out, flickered indefinitely repeated into the distance. Their infinitely reiterated detonations smote splittingly upon the ear, were gathered into one overpowering roar.
The dark mass of the Forêt de Spincourt was riven by red flame that lit and was gone momentarily in every part of its recesses. As the two officers approached it, they saw a faint film of smoke hanging over the tree-tops, saw the quick flashes gleaming through the undergrowth of the verge. They entered its obscurity. The air choked one with the fumes of burnt explosive, beat against the face in gusts withthe disturbance of the multiplied discharges. The wood was a nest of howitzer batteries. On platforms of concrete and timber the monsters squatted, bowed their head to receive yet another shell, raised it again with slow, determined movement, the great round jaws gaping upward to the sky, belched with a sudden eructation of vivid flame, a tremendous shock of which the stunning noise was only part. The spectator behind the gun, looking upward, saw a black object speeding high into the air, rapidly diminishing, the while a rain of twigs pattered down upon his face. As the barrel was lowered again, the breech opened, slow curling tongues of flame licked round the muzzle. Behind each weapon were great stacks of shells. Hurrying men, two at a time, a tray supported on two short poles between them, carried more food to the iron monster, fed its fuming breech for yet another roar.
Further within the wood were still greater monsters, so huge that their aliment was trundled to them on light rails, swung into their maw by overhanging cranes. The earth shook, the trees rocked, with the vehemence of their discharge.
"Frau Bertha has a most persuasive voice,nicht wahr?" said the Oberst to his guest. The neutral agreed as courteously as was possible in this chaos of bludgeoning noise. His dark eyes rested a little contemptuously on the dapper, somewhat podgy colonel whose soul, even in this crisis of nations, was still essentially the soul of a commercial traveller. The order to Krupp's was not yet given.
It was one o'clock—noon to the anxious Frenchgeneral far over there in the terrible distance. As suddenly as it had commenced, the vast bombardment ceased. There was an uncanny silence. All knew its significance. The German infantry was advancing to the assault. With what resistance would it be met? Every ear was at strain—machine-guns? There was no sound. Suddenly the bombardment opened again, as violent as before. The German guns were putting a screen of death behind the doomed positions, barring off all help. Far away huge shells were crashing down from a curve that was four miles high at its zenith, making an inferno of a once quiet cathedral town, wrecking the bridges across a flooded river, blocking every avenue of supply to the defenders agonising on the plateau.
That night in the Army Headquarters was a night of jubilation. Courtier soldiers—who none the less laboured into the small hours at the intricate calculations and orders that would improve the victory on the morrow—glanced at a youngish, very exalted personage and murmured platitudes about the pardonable intoxication of success. An even more exalted personage strode from general to general in the great tapestried, map-hung apartment and gave instructions that were received as the inspiration of genius and then merged, lost sight of, nullified in the mass of orders that emanated from those fiercely toiling brains.
The distinguished guest sat at the table with the keen-eyed, white-browed general, had everything patiently explained to him.
"All has gone exactly according to schedule," saidthe German. "The first line positions are ours. There has been a counter-attack in the Bois de Caures, but we have stemmed it. Elsewhere there has been no serious opposition. The first day has been a brilliant success. We have pierced the line where we intended to pierce it. If the French maintain their flank positions their disaster is certain. The battle will be developed to-morrow. We shall drive right through to the Ornes-Louvemont road. The French defence is dead, was annihilated by our bombardment. To-morrow disintegration will set in and our progress will be rapid. On the third day we shall take Fort Douaumont—the key to Verdun."
"And on the fourth day?" queried the neutral, his dark eyes gazing at the map in front of him.
"We shall be in Verdun!" said the German.
"Verdun! Verdun! Nach Verdun—Paris!" chanted an unsteady voice across the room, finished in a suspicious resemblance to a hiccup. There was a moment of tense, awkward silence in the great apartment, and then a buzz of low voices earnestly discussing technicalities.
Day followed day, surcharged with fateful issues. Men who flung themselves down, utterly wearied, to snatch a brief sleep, woke from it with an oppression of the breast, a tremor of the nerves. Their fiercely excited brains begrudged an instant's unconsciousness where every minute was a vehicle of destiny, once ahead never to be overtaken. Strenuously, night and day, laboured the Staffs in the ArmyHeadquarters, in the Corps, Divisions, Artillery Groups—desperately, for after the second day they were behind their time-table. On that second day the French defence they had fondly thought annihilated woke to sternly resisting life. There had been terrific fighting on the whole front from Brabant to Ornes. Once more a frightful bombardment had opened with the dawn. Once more the German infantry had advanced in masses. They found the trenches in front of them weakly held, had occupied them. Buten routea storm of shells had rained down on the swarming columns, had strewn the ground with dead and dying. Further advance was barred by sheets of rifle-fire, torrents of machine-gun bullets. There were ugly rumours as to losses. The day's objective had not been reached. Counter-attacks had flung the grey infantry out of positions already conquered.
During the black night of the 22nd-23rd, while the gun-teams of the German batteries strained and stumbled forward over a shell-torn ground to new positions, the French left flank had fallen back from Brabant. The German guns hurled an avalanche of projectiles blindly upon the new lines of defence, more or less at hazard since no longer did they have them accurately marked upon the map. Once more the grey masses swept forward, once more the hail of shells beat them down. The end of that day saw the centre pushed in with wild confusion, but the French resistance still alive, determined to perish rather than break. Once more the objective had not been attained. Douaumont was not even menaced. Thetime-table was hopelessly out. That night the French fell back on both flanks, withdrew from Ornes.
The fourth day dawned—the appointed day for final victory—and still the struggle continued, fiercer than ever. Slowly, slowly, the German infantry pressed forward, leaving behind them a sea of helpless bodies—a grey carpet as perceived from a distance. The artillery fire swelled and mounted in paroxysms of incredible violence, the German guns hammering in savage persistence, the French batteries lurking for their target, overwhelming it in a deluge. On and on pressed the grey infantry, thrust dangerously as night fell straight at the heart, towards Fort Douaumont. A fierce conflict—body to body, rifles that flashed in the face of the victim, bayonets perforce shortened for the thrust, griping fingers clutching at the throat as men wrestled and swayed—raved and roared in an indescribable tumult upon the Ornes-Louvemont road. The defenders had made a supreme rally. The Germans fought like men who grasp at victory, maddened that it is withheld. The French fought like heroes, desperately outnumbered, who know their duty is to die. When night fell the defence was still intact, but the French had withdrawn to their last line, covering Douaumont.
"We have still one more day," said the German general to the distinguished neutral that night in the great map-hung apartment. "We allowed that margin of time. To-morrow will see our greatest effort, Douaumont in our hands, Verdun untenable." The dark eyes of the neutral read a certain nervousness in the German's face, despite the confident tone.
"It has proved rather more difficult than you expected?"
"The French field-guns have been terrible—terrible," replied the German. "Without them——" He waved an expressive hand. "But to-morrow we shall deliver thecoup de grâce. We have not boasted idly, Excellenz." His eyes looked searchingly through their pince-nez on the calmly interested face of the neutral. "When Germany threatens she performs."
On the morning of the 25th the German guns roared over white fields of snow, through veils of the softly falling flakes that fluttered inexhaustibly from the leaden sky. Their thunder swelled louder and ever louder as the batteries which had changed position, consequently upon the French withdrawal during the night, got to work, searching for their target, more or less accurately finding it despite the difficulty of observation. Not a minute was to be lost. The anxious German staff knew that the reinforcements of their foes must be hurrying—hurrying. Some perhaps had already arrived. If night fell without definite victory, the morrow would surely see fresh masses against them, reinvigorating the defence. Victory to-day—complete victory—Douaumont captured, the pursuit pressed into the streets of Verdun—meant victory indeed. Mighty therefore was the effort. By noon every German battery was firing at its maximum. Under the leaden sky, over the white ground, in the still cold of a bitterfrost, their thunder swelled and crashed, roaring in a never-ending frenzy. Eighteen German divisions were massed to break down all opposition. Already they had attacked—again and again. Again and again, the rapid detonations of the French guns had leaped into the din, smiting desperately, frantically, to stay them. Over there, in the mist-hung gullies of the plateau, on its bare open spaces between the woods, the snow had ceased to be white—save where it fell freshly upon the huddled bodies of the fallen.
In the afternoon the weather cleared somewhat. More distant views were possible. On the higher of the Twins of Ornes, the knolls just south-west of the Forêt de Spincourt, stood the figure who more than any other individual would have to dare the answer for all the agony rolled out there before him, for all the agony that no eye could measure, spread over continents, crying to strange stars. Spiked helmet on his head, long grey cavalry-cloak wrapped about him, his field-glasses held to his eyes by the right hand only, he gazed upon the now distant conflict. At his side stood a younger figure, his face masked also by binoculars. Behind them was a group of dignitaries, generals of high position, the distinguished neutral and the Oberst who never quitted him. All gazed to the wooded scarp of the Heights of the Meuse, their glasses pointing south-south-west.
The great masses of woodland rose dark from the snow of the plain a long stretch of undulating, climbing tree-tops. Beyond them the bare bulk of the plateau humped itself yet higher, dirty grey againstthe sky. It rose to a culminating knoll—Douaumont! All that bare plateau was whelmed in a drifting reek, but the highest point was like a volcano in eruption. Great founts of smoke shot up from it incessantly, spread in the air in heavy plumes that overhung. It was the objective of the 3rd Corps (Brandenburgers), attacking under the eye of the Kaiser so particularly their chief. Their orders were that Douaumont was to be taken at all costs. On the Twin of Ornes operators from Army Headquarters had taken over the telephone dug-out. Behind them the line was clear to Berlin—waiting—waiting for the triumphant announcement that should thrill the world.
Somewhat impatiently the neutral scanned the lofty distances where the great drama was being enacted. Innumerable puffs of bursting shells indicated the conflict but gave no hint of its varying fortunes. The professional instinct was strong within him, the report to his Government an ideal to which it strove. To perfect that report he must see the fight at closer quarters, must describe the effects of the French fire as a complement to the already written minute on the German batteries. His keen eye picked out a position of vantage on the Heights. Then he waited for an opportunity, alert for the moment when the eye of majesty should rest itself from the distant view, should fall upon him. The opportunity occurred. The glance of the All-Highest swept over him, preoccupied. The neutral stepped forward, saluted, indicated the far-off point.
"Ich bitte um Erlaubnis, Majestät,"[15]he said.
A frowning glance rested upon him for an instant, intolerant of aught save the mighty contest whose issue was the fate of nations.
"Gestattet,"[16]was the curt, indifferent reply.
The German Oberst, standing behind the neutral, changed colour. He had no option but to accompany this damnable foreigner in his mad adventure into unnecessary danger. He, too, saluted "Majestät," followed the neutral to the spot where a number of orderlies stood at the heads of saddled horses. They had been sent forward in case the dignitaries should require them.
In a few moments the two officers, followed by mounted attendants, were slithering down the snowy side of the knoll, were cantering across the valley towards Ornes.
High above them towered the dark Bois de la Chaume as they threaded the débris-covered street of the wrecked village. It was packed with Brandenburger infantry waiting to advance. They followed the road southward, at the foot of the hills, towards Bezonvaux. Everywhere the infantry stood thick, waiting. The cannonade mounted to a frightful intensity, appalling even the ears now habituated to it, bewildering the senses, troubling the sight. French shells came whining, screaming, rushing, to burst with loud crashes in the woodland rising on their right hand, on the road and the fields through which it passed. Domes of dark smoke leaped upward from the earth, preceding the stunning, metallic detonation. White shrapnel puffs clustered thickly abovethe trees. Bezonvaux was a ruin. They turned off from it to the right, up a rough track that climbed into the woods. The snow on the track had been trampled into a dirty slush. All about them lay bodies, grey and blue; weapons pell-mell as they had fallen from a suddenly opened grasp. Their horses shuddered, whinnied, jerked nervous ears, moved disconcertingly sideways from red stains soaking deep into the snow.
Just under the edge of the plateau the neutral stopped, dismounted, threw his reins to an orderly. The Oberst followed his example. His face was blotchy white, he trembled in every limb.
"We shall see nothing, Excellenz—absolutely nothing," he asseverated appealingly.
"We can at least try," replied his guest. "Something is happening over there."
Above them, some distance ahead, was a tremendous uproar, a chaos of violent thudding slams, splitting crashes, a faint troublous murmur of human voices. Behind them, up the rough track, a column of infantry was advancing, overtaking them. They ascended with a steady progress, splashing through the slush; officers waving swords, shouting; rank upon rank of tense faces that had lost their humanity in the tremulous brute; glazed staring eyes under the spiked helmets; singing, singing like drugged, doomed gladiators marching to the arena. They passed upward.
The neutral, to whom his conductor had nervelessly surrendered the initiative, led the way. They left their horses behind them, struck off at a tangentto the right, through the woods, climbing always. They emerged upon the plateau, in a clearing. Across the open space, from a whelm of smoke and noise in the distance, groups of grey men were running swiftly towards them, shouting inarticulately. Along the edge of the woods was a line of pickets. Their weapons rose to the shoulder. Sternly, every fugitive but those wounded was driven again into the fight. Those who hesitated, screaming under the menace of the rifle, dropped shot.
The neutral hurried along the verge of the wood, scanning every tall tree carefully, expectantly. "Ah!" He had found what he sought. Against the green bark of a lofty beech dangled a rope ladder. It was an abandoned French artillery observation post. He scrambled up the ladder, followed by the trembling, shivering Oberst. High up among the topmost branches was a little platform.
The neutral settled himself, adjusted his binoculars, pushed aside the twigs. He looked out over an undulating terrain, dark with woods that ceased raggedly in deep indentations short of a bare hog's back that gathered itself into a hump. That bare ground was smothered in a turmoil of smoke that fumed to the grey sky, far to right and left. But through it, in chance rifts, his glasses revealed a dark mass upon the highest point. A reek of white smoke drifted away from it as from burning buildings, mingling with the darker clouds of incessant explosions. He had a glimpse of a rounded cupola. It was Douaumont!
The snow on the open space between the fort andthe woods was grey. It was moving with crawling life like the festering of a stagnant pool. Over it burst occasional puffs of shrapnel.
"Ah!" The cry was involuntary from both the watching men. From the woods emerged masses of running tiny grey figures, running, running towards the fort. The open space was covered with them. A moment of tense expectation when the heart seemed to stop—and then, as by a terrible magic, great fountains of dark smoke and darker objects leaped up among those running figures, countless explosions. A canopy of vicious little shrapnel bursts in thousands spread itself over them. Under it men sprawled in great patches, seemed to be fighting the air ere they tumbled and fell. A horrid screaming came faint through the uproar. More masses rushed out, were beaten down. There was a running to and fro of men bewildered—a headlong flight.
The storm of fire did not cease. It rolled over the plateau towards the woods, remorselessly following the fugitives. Louder and louder, nearer and nearer, the crashes, the fountains, the puffs—the great mingled reek of the inferno—rolled towards the two men in the observation post.
The Oberst clutched the neutral's arm.
"Excellenz!" he shouted stammeringly. "We must go. I insist. I have superior authority—written authority—my discretion—I insist!" he almost screamed. His hand groped for a scrap of paper which he waved. "Arrest!" he cried like a maniac. "Arrest if you do not come!"
The storm of French shells was a very near menace. The neutral acquiesced with a shrug of his shoulders. Nimbly they descended the ladder.
On the ground they found themselves among a swarm of slightly wounded, terror-stricken men. One of them, a tall, bearded Brandenburger, his clothes torn to rags, was shrieking and laughing in a manner horrible to hear. His comrades drew away from him as he clutched at them. He was insane.
"Only I am left!" he cried. "Only I! They are all dead—dead—out there. They were meant to be dead. They were dead men before we attacked—all dead men running on—I could see it in their faces—only I was alive! And now they are still crawling—crawling—dead men!" His tone emphasised the horror of his words, struck a chill. A sentry lowered his rifle, irresolutely.
The maniac turned, waved a hand to the westward. The sun, on the point of setting, showed itself in a rift of the threatening snow clouds, sank, a great ball of glowing fire, over the rim of the plateau. Its last rays were lurid on the face of the madman, as he stood, arm outstretched, his eyes flaming, his tangled beard falling upon his rags, like some antique prophet of the wilderness.
"Woe! woe!" he shrieked. "Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!"[17]He finished in a scream of maniac laughter, glorying in the crazy assonance of the words. "Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!"
The neutral and the Oberst hurried through the woods to their horses.
A rapid ride with the German always in front, and once more they ascended the Twin of Ornes. As they arrived at the summit they found themselves among wildly cheering men. "Douaumont! Douaumont is taken!" Far away to the south-south-west, rocket after rocket shot up into the darkening sky. Already the great news had gone—electrical—to Berlin.
The crowd of dignitaries descended the steep path in the gloom to where the motor-cars were ranked in waiting. Along the road passed streams of wounded who could walk, phantoms half-distinguished in the dim light. Joyous were the voices of the War-Lords. One, a familiar tone, chanted: "Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun—Paris!"[18]
Out of the darkness came a screamed reply, a burst of insane laughter.
"Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung! Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!"
It was the voice of the crazed Brandenburger. There was a scuffle, the sound of a man hurried away, resisting.
All through that dark journey as the car bumped and lurched over the atrocious roads, the words beat in a refrain through the mind of the neutral. "Nach Verdun—Verdunkelung!" He wondered. Eclipse? Was it the sun of Germany that set on the French position? The Oberst was loquaciously cheerful.
That night, in the great map-hung apartment, theWar-Lords received the news that their further advance was barred.
Next morning a furious counter-attack surrounded a handful of defenders in the fort for which they had paid so much. The French reinforcements had arrived.