“J. 3,” came the staff command, “must be held until further orders.”
We lost five hundred men in holding it. The trench and all in it were thrown up by mines. Among those killed was the Hon. Lyndhurst Bruce, the husband of Camille Clifford, with other husbands of women unknown.
Our guest told the story of the massacre in Neuve Chapelle. “This is a death sentence,” said the officers who were ordered to attack. But they attacked, and died, with great gallantry, as usual.
“In the slums,” said our guest, “we are expected to die if G.H.Q. tells us so, or if the corps arranges our funeral. And generally we do.”
That night, when the snow lay on the ground, I listened to the rumbling of the gunning away in the salient, and seemed to hear the groans of men at Hooge, at St.-Eloi, in other awful places. The irony of that guest of ours was frightful. It was bitter beyond justice, though with truth in the mockery, the truth of a soul shocked by the waste of life and heroism; … when I met him later in the war he was on the staff.
XII
The world—our side of it—held its breath and felt its own heartbeat when, in February of that year ’15, the armies of the German Crown Prince launched their offensive against the French at Verdun. It was the biggest offensive since their first drive down to the Marne; and as the days passed and they hurled fresh masses of men against the French and brought up new guns to replace their losses, there was no doubt that in this battle the Germans were trying by all their weight to smash their way to victory through the walls which the French had built against them by living flesh and spirit.
“Will they hold?” was the question which every man among us asked of his neighbor and of his soul.
On our front there was nothing of war beyond the daily routine of the trenches and the daily list of deaths and wounds. Winter had closed down upon us in Flanders, and through its fogs and snows came the news of that conflict round Verdun to the waiting army, which was ours. The news was bad, yet not the worst. Poring over maps of the French front, we in our winter quarters saw with secret terror, some of us with a bluster of false optimism, some of us with unjustified despair, that the French were giving ground, giving ground slowly, after heroic resistance, after dreadful massacre, and steadily. They were falling back to the inner line of forts, hard pressed. The Germans, in spite of monstrous losses under the flail of the soixante-quinzes, were forcing their way from slope to slope, capturing positions which all but dominated the whole of the Verdun heights.
“If the French break we shall lose the war,” said the pessimist.
“The French will never lose Verdun,” said the optimist.
“Why not? What are your reasons beyond that cursed optimism which has been our ruin? Why announce things like that as though divinely inspired? For God’s sake let us stare straight at the facts.”
“The Germans are losing the war by this attack on Verdun. They are just pouring their best soldiers into the furnace—burning the flower of their army. It is our gain. It will lead in the end to our victory.”
“But, my dear good fool, what about the French losses? Don’t they get killed, too? The German artillery is flogging them with shellfire from seventeen-inch guns, twelve-inch, nine-inch, every bloody and monstrous engine. The French are weak in heavy artillery. For that error, which has haunted them from the beginning, they are now paying with their life’s blood—the life blood of France.”
“You are arguing on emotion and fear. Haven’t you learned yet that the attacking side always loses more than the defense?”
“That is a sweeping statement. It depends on relative manpower and gun-power. Given a superiority of guns and men, and attack is cheap. Defense is blown off the earth. Otherwise how could we ever hope to win?”
“I agree. But the forces at Verdun are about equal, and the French have the advantage of position. The Germans are committing suicide.”
“Humbug! They know what they are doing. They are the greatest soldiers in Europe.”
“Led by men with bone heads.”
“By great scientists.”
“By the traditional rules of medievalism. By bald-headed vultures in spectacles with brains like penny-in-the-slot machines. Put in a penny and out comes a rule of war. Mad egoists! Colossal blunderers! Efficient in all things but knowledge of life.”
“Then God help our British G.H.Q.!”
A long silence. The silence of men who see monstrous forces at work, in which human lives are tossed like straws in flame. A silence reaching back to old ghosts of history, reaching out to supernatural aid. Then from one speaker or another a kind of curse and a kind of prayer.
“Hell! … God help us all!”
So it was in our mess where war correspondents and censors sat down together after futile journeys to dirty places to see a bit of shellfire, a few dead bodies, a line of German trenches through a periscope, a queue of wounded men outside a dressing station, the survivors of a trench raid, a bombardment before a “minor operation,” a trench-mortar “stunt,” a new part of the line … Verdun was the only thing that mattered in March and April until France had saved herself and all of us.
XIII
The British army took no part in that battle of Verdun, but rendered great service to France at that time. By February of 1915 we had taken over a new line of front, extending from our positions round Loos southward
