America's War for Humanity Part 61

"On the forty-mile semicircular firing-line around the French fortress, from the River Meuse above St. Mihiel to Avocourt, the Germans probably have several thousand guns, at least 2,500, in action or reserve. Were each gun fired only once an hour, there would be a shot every second.

"As probably half the guns are of middle and heavy caliber, the average weight per sh.e.l.l is certain to be more than twenty-five pounds. It follows that even in desultory firing about 160,000 pounds of iron, or from four to five carloads, are raining on the French positions every hour. And this is magnified many times when the fire is increased to the intensity which the artillerymen call 'drumming' the positions of the enemy.

"To the German guns must be added the tremendous amount of artillery used by the French in their defense, estimated to be almost as large now as that of the Germans. The conclusion is that more than 6,000 cannon, varying from 3-inch field guns to 42-centimeter (16-inch) siege mortars, are engaged in hurling thousands of high explosive sh.e.l.ls hourly in the never-ceasing, thunderous artillery duels of the mighty battle of Verdun."

FROM A GERMAN OFFICER'S VIEWPOINT.

The stories told by those who, on the German side, lay in trenches under sh.e.l.l-fire before Verdun for days at a time and week after week, freezing, thirsting, in mud and water, between the dead and the dying, thrilled the hearer with their pathos and devotion. These were the men who, like the waves of the sea, beat almost incessantly against the obstinate fortifications of Verdun, and there learned a new respect for the French enemy. Such a story was written from the front in April by a German officer named Ross--a man of Scottish descent--who, before the war, was editor of a newspaper in Munich. In the Berlin Vossische Zeitung he said:

"It is a worthy, embittered foe against whom this last decisive struggle is aimed. France is fighting for her existence. She is no weaker than we are in men, guns, or munitions. Only one thing decides between us--will and nerves. Every doubting, belittling word is a creeping poison which kills joyful, strong hope and does more damage than a thousand foes.

Only if we are convinced to our marrow that we shall win, shall we conquer.

"In this colossal combat, where numbers and mechanical weapons are so utterly alike, moral superiority is everything. We have more than once had the experience that the effective result of a battle has depended upon who considered himself the victor and acted accordingly. Often the merest remnant of will and nerves was the factor that influenced the decision.

"War, which only smoldered here and there during the endless trench fighting, like damp wood, burns here with such all-consuming fire that divisions have to be called up after days and hours in the trenches, and are ground to pieces and burned up into so many cinders and ashes.

"Such intensity of battle as is here before Verdun is unheard of.

No picture, no comparison, can give the remotest conception of the concentration of guns and sh.e.l.ls with which the two antagonists are raging against each other. I have seen troops who had held out in the fire for days and weeks, to whom in exposed positions food could hardly be brought, on whose bodies the clothes were not dry, who, yet reeking with dirt and dampness, had the nerve for new storming operations."

BATTLE OF CAILLETTE WOOD.

Among the fiercer struggles before Verdun, the battle of Caillette Wood, east of the fortress city, will have a place in history as one of the most b.l.o.o.d.y and thrilling.

The position of the wood, to the right of Douaumont, was important as part of the French line. It was carried by the Germans on Sunday morning, April 2, after a bombardment of twelve hours, which seemed to break even the record of Verdun for intensity. The French curtain of fire had checked their further advance, according to a special correspondent of the Chicago Herald, and a savage countercharge in the afternoon had gained for the defenders a corpse-strewn welter of splintered trees and sh.e.l.l-shattered ground that had been the southern corner of the wood. Further charges had broken against a ma.s.sive barricade, the value of which as a defense paid good interest on the expenditure of German lives which its construction demanded. A wonderful work had been accomplished that Sunday morning in the livid, London-like fog and twilight produced by the lowering clouds and battle smoke.

FORMED A HUMAN CHAIN UNDER FIRE.

While the German a.s.saulting columns in the van fought the French hand to hand, picked corps of workers behind them formed an amazing human chain from the woods to the east over the shoulder of the center of the Douaumont slope to the crossroads of a network of communicating trenches 600 yards in the rear.

Four deep was this human chain, and along its line nearly 3,000 men pa.s.sed an unending stream of wooden billets, sandbags, chevaux-de-frise, steel shelters, and light mitrailleuses--in a word, all the material for defensive fortifications pa.s.sed from hand to hand, like buckets at a country fire.

Despite the hurricane of French artillery fire, the German commander had adopted the only possible means of rapid transport over the sh.e.l.l-torn ground covered with debris, over which neither horse nor cart could go. Every moment counted. Unless barriers rose swiftly, the French counter-attacks, already ma.s.sing, would sweep the a.s.sailants back into the wood.

Cover was disdained. The workers stood at full height, and the chain stretched openly across the hillocks, a fair target for the French gunners. The latter missed no chance. Again and again great holes were torn in the line by the bursting melinite, but as coolly as at maneuvers the iron-disciplined soldiers of Germany sprang forward from shelters to take the places of the fallen, and the work went on apace.

USE THE DEAD AS A SHELTER.

Gradually another line doubled the chain of the workers, as the upheaved corpses formed a continuous embankment, each additional dead man giving greater protection to his comrades, until the barrier began to form shape along the diameter of the wood. There others were digging and burying logs deep in the earth, installing shelters and mitrailleuses or feverishly building fortifications.

At last the work was ended at fearful cost; but as the vanguard sullenly withdrew behind it, from the whole length burst a havoc of flame upon the advancing Frenchmen. Vainly the latter dashed forward. They couldn't pa.s.s, and as the evening fell the barrier still held, covering the German working parties, burrowed like moles in the ma.s.s of trenches and boyeaux.

FRENCH PLAN TO BLAST BARRICADE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VERDUN--THE WORLD'S GREATEST BATTLEFIELD. _--Chicago American._

Approximate Positions of German Troops at Various Dates, and More Important Actions of the Verdun Campaign in in Their Chronological Order.--See Key to Letters and Numbers on Opposite Page.]

THE VERDUN BATTLEFIELD

Key to Map on Opposite Page

Battle lines showing the approximate positions of the German troops at Verdun at various dates are designated in the map as follows:

A. Positions Feb. 21, 1916, when German offensive was begun.

B. Positions on Feb. 23.

C. Positions on Feb. 25.

D. Positions on Feb. 27.

E. Bethincourt salient, April 7, before French retired.

F. Positions on April 18.

The more important actions of the Verdun campaign in their chronological order are indicated as follows:

1. Germans open offensive against Verdun, piercing French lines.

2. French evacuate Haumont, Feb. 22.

3. French recapture Forest of Caures, Feb. 22, but lose it again.

4. Germans pierce French line, taking 3,000 prisoners.

5. Germans capture Brabant, Haumont, Samogneux, etc., Feb. 23.

6. Berlin reports capture of four villages and 10,000 French prisoners Feb. 23.

7. Germans capture Louvemont and fortified positions Feb. 25. Fort Douaumont stormed by Brandenburg corps, then surrounded by French, but relieved by Germans March 3.

8. Germans take Champneuville Feb. 27, with 5,000 prisoners.

9. b.l.o.o.d.y encounters at village of Eix on Woevre plain, Feb. 27.

10. Germans occupy Moranville and Haudiomont, Feb. 27.

11. Champlon and Manheuilles fall Feb. 28; 1,300 French prisoners.

12. Verdun battered and set on fire by 42-centimeter guns.

13. French evacuate Fort Vaux, after heavy bombardment, March 1.

14. Germans begin violent bombardment of Dead Man's Hill, March 1.

15. Germans capture village of Douaumont, March 2; 1,000 prisoners.

16. Fresnes captured by Germans, March 5.