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Page 48
"The enemy began by massing a surprising force on the western front.
Tremendous energy and organizing power were the marks of his supreme
efforts to obtain a decision. It was usually reckoned that the Germans
maintain on all fronts a field army of about seventy-four and a half
army corps, which at full strength number three million men. Yet, while
holding the Russians from Riga to the south of the Pripet Marshes, and
maintaining a show of force in the Balkans, Germany seems to have
succeeded in bringing up nearly two millions and a half of men for her
grand spring offensive in the west. At one time her forces in France and
Flanders were only ninety divisions. But troops and guns were withdrawn
in increasing numbers from Russia and Serbia in December, 1915, until
there were, it is estimated, a hundred and eighteen divisions on the
Franco-British-Belgian front. A large number of six-inch and twelve-inch
Austrian howitzers were added to the enormous Krupp batteries. Then a
large proportion of new recruits of the 1916 class were moved into
Rhine-land depots to serve as drafts for the fifty-nine army corps, and
it is thought that nearly all the huge shell output that had accumulated
during the winter was transported westward.
"The French Staff reckoned that Verdun would be attacked when the ground
had dried somewhat in the March winds. It was thought that the enemy
movement would take place against the British front in some of the
sectors of which there were chalk undulations, through which the rains
of winter quickly drained. The Germans skilfully encouraged this idea by
making an apparent preliminary attack at Lions, on a five-mile front
with rolling gas-clouds and successive waves of infantry. During this
feint the veritable offensive movement softly began on Saturday,
February 19, 1916, when the enormous masses of hostile artillery west,
east, and north of the Verdun salient started registering on the French
positions. Only in small numbers did the German guns fire, in order not
to alarm their opponents. But even this trial bombardment by shifts was
a terrible display of power, calling forth all the energies of the
outnumbered French gunners to maintain the artillery duels that
continued day and night until Monday morning, February 21st.
"The enemy seems to have maintained a bombardment all round General
Herr's lines on February 21, 1916, but this general battering was done
with a thousand pieces of field artillery. The grand masses of heavy
howitzers were used in a different way. At a quarter past seven in the
morning they concentrated on the small sector of advanced intrenchments
near Brabant and the Meuse; twelve-inch shells fell with terrible
precision every few yards, according to the statements made by the
French troops. I afterwards saw a big German shell, from at least six
miles distant from my place of observation, hit quite a small target. So
I can well believe that, in the first bombardment of French positions,
which had been photographed from the air and minutely measured and
registered by the enemy gunners in the trial firing, the great,
destructive shots went home with extraordinary effect. The trenches were
not bombarded--they were obliterated. In each small sector of the
six-mile northward bulge of the Verdun salient the work of destruction
was done with surprising quickness.
"After the line from Brabant to Haumont was smashed, the main fire power
was directed against the other end of the bow at Herbebois, Ornes, and
Maucourt. Then when both ends of the bow were severely hammered, the
central point of the Verdun salient, Caures Woods, was smothered in
shells of all sizes, poured in from east, north and west. In this manner
almost the whole enormous force of heavy artillery was centered upon
mile after mile of the French front. When the great guns lifted over the
lines of craters, the lighter field artillery placed row after row in
front of the wreckage, maintained an unending fire curtain over the
communicating saps and support intrenchments.
"Then came the second surprising feature in the new German system of
attack. No waves of storming infantry swept into the battered works.
Only strong patrols at first came cautiously forward, to discover if it
were safe for the main body of troops to advance and reorganize the
French line so as to allow the artillery to move onward. There was thus
a large element of truth in the marvelous tales afterwards told by
German prisoners. Their commanders thought it would be possible to do
all the fighting with long-range artillery, leaving the infantry to act
as squatters to the great guns and occupy and rebuild line after line of
the French defenses without any serious hand-to-hand struggles. All they
had to do was to protect the gunners from surprise attack, while the
guns made an easy path for them and also beat back any counter-attack in
force.
"But, ingenious as was this scheme for saving the man-power of Germany
by an unparalleled expenditure of shell, it required for full success
the co-operation of the French troops. But the French did not
co-operate. Their High Command had continually improved their system of
trench defense in accordance with the experiences of their own hurricane
bombardments in Champagne and the Carency sector. General Castelnau, the
acting Commander-in-Chief on the French front, was indeed the inventor
of hurricane fire tactics, which he had used for the first time in
February, 1915, in Champagne. When General Joffre took over the conduct
of all French operations, leaving to General Castelnau the immediate
control of the front in France, the victor of the battle of Nancy
weakened his advance lines and then his support lines, until his troops
actually engaged in fighting were very little more than a thin covering
body, such as is thrown out towards the frontier while the main forces
connect well behind.
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