Verdun—those two syllables that have already become historic ring out to-day like the brazen tones of a trumpet. In France, no one can hear them without a thrill of pride. In England, in America, if any speaker utters them, the whole audience rises as one man....
Of the battle, of the victory of Verdun, here is a single episode: that of Fort Vaux, beleaguered for three months and lost for a brief space on June 7.
Its defence takes us back past centuries emblazoned with military renown, and recalls our heroic poems of the Middle Ages. It is a Song of Roland in which the protagonist, unseen yet ever present, is the honour of France.
Even as Roland, blowing his horn, recounted from afar the drama of Roncevaux to Charlemagne as he went back across the mountains, so the fort, up to the last moment, kept the supreme command informed of its life and its death-throes by means of signals and carrier-pigeons.
I was able to realize the wounds it had suffered and its powers of resistance in the month of March, before the final conflicts of the early days of June. I examined its defenders at almost every shift. I heard its appeals for help and its last words. Hence I have sought to set down the records of its glory.
In spite of my studious efforts, which chance has favoured, I have been unable to collect all these records. Moreover, they lack that essential element which is the secret of the supreme command and without which one can present merely a pale shadow of history, not history itself. The war through which we are living is like the endless roll of the sea; we catch the rhythm, but we cannot count the waves. I crave forgiveness from all those forgotten heroes whose deeds I have been unable to rescue from the night of oblivion.
I have had the opportunity of following the various phases of the Verdun battle. I have snatched every spare moment—and they were none too many—to put together these fragmentary notes, which I have received sanction to publish. How can we resist the demon who drives us to write when such a theme lies ready to our hand? In the ordinary course of things I should have needed more time for doing it justice. But to-day time is doled out to each of us in scanty measure!
In point of fact, no episode of this war can be regarded as standing apart from the rest. A close brotherhood in arms links the warriors of Verdun with those of the Bukovina, of Galicia, of the Trentino, and of the Somme. What happened at Vaux was not a matter of indifference to any of the belligerents, or even to any nation on earth.
Whenever we speak of the victory of the Marne, our hearts swell with joy, and a hymn of deliverance rises inevitably to our lips. The departures for Champagne and the Somme have all the blitheness of a summer morning. The beauty of Verdun is more grim and austere. It is a struggle of patience and sacrifice, one in which the watchword is “Hold and keep.” The question here is not merely one of barring the road to a foe who may pierce our line, but also of pinning him down to the spot while the Allies draw up and carry out their plan of a general offensive. That is why the resistance of Fort Vaux serves a higher purpose than the defence of a mere scrap of territory. It is bound up with a victory, it forms part of a victory, if victory be measured by the thwarting of the enemy’s will and design.
There is beauty in that victory, a beauty born of necessity and endurance. May a reflection of it illumine the epic of Fort Vaux!