Read Ebook: The Boy Allies at Verdun; Or Saving France from the Enemy by Hayes Clair W Clair Wallace

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Ebook has 2030 lines and 52249 words, and 41 pages

Hal, peering ahead by the glare of the searchlight on the large army car, suddenly slowed down; the car stopped. A group of mounted men rode up. Hal stood up and gave a military salute as one of the group advanced ahead of the others.

"I am from General Durand at Marseilles, sir," he said. "I have important dispatches for General Petain."

The French officer returned the salute.

"Follow me," he said briefly.

VERDUN

But Wilhelm II had learned a lesson. Verdun must be taken before he ordered his armies upon the French capital; and so it was that, upon February twenty-third, 1916, the German Crown Prince began a determined assault upon the historic French fortress.

In sheer human interest the battle of Verdun surpassed all other individual events of the war. For six months and more the defenders of the gateway to France withstood a storm at the fury of which the world stood aghast.

Foot by foot, almost inch by inch, the Germans forged ahead with a reckless disregard of their lives, a tenacity and cool courage which was only equalled by the cool determination of the French. Five months after the opening of this great battle, the unofficial estimate of German dead was a half million men. The assailants fought their way to within three miles and a half of the fortress itself, but there they were finally halted. It was then that the tide turned; and though the Germans surged forward day after day in heavy masses they progressed no further. It was the beginning of the end.

The Germans advanced confidently. The destruction of the fortress presented no hard problem to them. The utter worthlessness of similarly fortified positions had been proven in the earlier days of the war--in the destruction of Louvain, Li?ge, Brussels and Antwerp, the latter the most strongly fortified city in the world, with the exception of Paris itself. The huge 42-centimetre guns of the Germans had battered them to pieces in little or no time at all.

It was with the knowledge of the effectiveness of these great guns that the Crown Prince opened the battle of Verdun. The fortress of Verdun and the outlying fortifications, it was believed, would be shattered with little effort. With these facts in mind, the German Crown Prince opened with his big guns, first upon the fortresses guarding Verdun itself.

These approaches shattered, the Crown Prince ordered his infantry and cavalry to the attack. But where the onrushing Germans, according to the reasoning of the Crown Prince, should have found no resistance, they encountered strenuous opposition. Abandoning the outlying artificial fortifications, the French had thrown up huge earthworks and from behind these received the German attacks coolly.

Against these great earthworks the heavy guns of the attacking forces availed little. The force of even the great 42-centimetres was not great enough to penetrate the loosely built mounds of earth behind which the French reposed. The great shells struck the fresh earth, were embedded there and did no harm. The French general staff had realized the uselessness of fortresses as soon as had the Germans.

Therefore, while the Germans were able to destroy forts and fortresses at will, almost, it availed them little. The defenders were secure behind their breastworks of earth. True, German guns dropped huge shells in the trenches, a veritable rain of death, but the gaps in the defending lines were filled promptly.

There remained naught for the Germans but to try and carry the trenches, under the support of their artillery.

Day after day the Crown Prince launched assault after assault. The French met them bravely. But the Germans were not to be denied; and urged on by the Crown Prince, and often by the presence upon the firing line of the German emperor himself, they continued the herculean task without regard to loss of life.

Gradually the French were forced back. Hand-to-hand fighting for possession of the greatest strategical positions, fought daily, for a time resulted in advantage to neither side. Among the chief objectives of the German attack were two particularly important positions--Hill No 304 and Le Mort Homme . This name, which was fated to become historic, was gained only after days and days of constant hand-to-hand fighting and is now recalled as one of the bloodiest battlefields of the titanic struggle.

General Henri Phillip Petain, in direct command of the French operations at Verdun, endeared himself to the hearts of all his countrymen by his gallant conduct of the defense. While the decision of General Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, to give ground before the German attacks rather than to sacrifice his men in a useless defense of the fortresses, was criticized at first by the people, the resulting value of this move was soon apparent and censure turned to praise.

While the heaviest assaults of the Germans were launched in the immediate vicinity of Verdun itself, the great battle line stretched far to the north and to the south. When it appeared at one time that the French must be hurled back, General Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief, weakened his own lines to the far north to take over a portion of the ground just to his right and thus relieved the French situation at Verdun somewhat.

General Petain thus was enabled to shorten his own lines, and from that moment, with few exceptions, the French stood firm.

It seemed that the Germans, beaten off time after time as they were, must soon abandon the attempt to break the French lines at Verdun; but each repulse brought a new assault mightier than before. The Germans raced across the open ground under a veritable hail of lead. They fell by hundreds and thousands, but what few survived hurled themselves against the barbed wire entanglements of the French or into the trenches, there to die upon the points of the foes' bayonets, or to be shot down as they tumbled over the breastworks.

The German general staff drew heavily from its forces on the east front and added these new legions to the already large army occupied before Verdun; but the result was always the same. So far they could progress and no farther.

After almost five months of defensive tactics, General Petain began to launch assaults of his own. At first the Germans put these down with regularity, but at last the effort began to tell. The French made headway. Much of the lost ground was recovered. The French moved forward a bit day by day, occupied new positions and consolidated them. It was terrible work, but the French persevered.

Around Hill No. 304 and Dead Man's Hill the fighting was especially severe. There men died by the hundreds and by the thousands that one of the opposing armies might advance a few yards. Gains even were counted by feet--almost by inches. Gain of a few yards was accounted a day's work well done.

Not once did the French troops falter under fire; nor did the Germans, for that matter. Never was there greater bravery, loyalty and devotion. Called upon for tasks that seemed well nigh impossible, the men did not hesitate. They met death in such numbers as death was never met before.

Almost daily, after the French had taken a brace three and a half miles from Verdun, it seemed that the Crown Prince must give up the effort. It appeared incomprehensible that the useless sacrifice of men could continue. But the attempt was not given up; rather, it was pressed with greater vigor each succeeding day.

But, after five months, the fury of the German assaults gradually lessened. They were not delivered with the same effectiveness as before. The great guns continued to rage, scattering death over the field for miles, but the massed attacks of infantry, and cavalry charges, became more uncommon.

Then came a day when the Germans failed to attack at all. For more than twenty-four hours there was a lull. Weeks passed with the Germans launching only occasional drives. The same held good for the French. It appeared that each side was content to rest on its laurels, biding the time when a grand assault could be delivered with some degree of effectiveness.

The fighting was intermittent. It came spasmodically. Each side had fought itself out and had paused for breath. What advantage there had been, all things considered, rested with French arms. The losses on both sides, in killed and wounded, had been enormous--almost beyond comprehension. The number of prisoners taken by the French was large. Many French troops also had been captured, but not so many as Germans. Also, the French having been the defenders for the most part, they had suffered less in killed and wounded than had the foe.

This, then, was the result of the battle of Verdun six months after it had begun. There had been no decisive victory. Each side retained its positions, but each was ready to strike whenever the opportune moment presented itself.

Even while the fighting at Verdun was at its height there came the whisper of a grand offensive to be launched by the Allies. The whisper became louder as the days passed. There was more talk of Roumania and Greece throwing their armies to the support of the Allies, thus forming a steel cordon around the Central powers and their smaller allies, Bulgaria and Turkey, and forcing the Germans to shorten their lines. In the eastern war theater the Russians again were on the advance and were pushing the Germans and Austrians hard, threatening for a second time to invade Galicia and the plains of Hungary. It began to appear that the end was in sight.

Italy, too, had launched a new offensive with Trieste as the objective and the driving power of the Italian troops was beginning to tell. It began to appear that the Central powers must before long be placed upon the defensive in all war zones.

The world waited impatiently for the opening of the grand allied offensive that, it was expected, would be delivered simultaneously on all fronts. It was felt that it would not be long coming. There was talk of a new great field gun perfected by Great Britain--a gun that would be more effective than the German 42-centimetres--but so far it had come to play no part in the struggle.

But of all battles, land or sea, that had been fought in the greatest war of history, the battle of Verdun stood head and shoulders as the most important. It was the greatest and bloodiest struggle of all time, up to that period.

And it was in this battle that Hal and Chester, with the friend Anthony Stubbs, war correspondent, and other friends, old and new, were to play important roles. While each realized, as the three made their way to General Petain behind the French officer who had interrupted their wild automobile ride, that an important engagement was about to be fought, neither had, of course, means of knowing that they were to take part in one of the greatest of all battles.

It was with the satisfaction that they had arrived in time to prevent a surprise attack that they made their way to General Petain's quarters. But, as it transpired, they had arrived a trifle too late. For even as they reached the general's tent the German guns spoke.

GENERAL PETAIN

To the soldier the voice of the great guns speaks plainly. Their ears accustomed to the various forms of bombardments, Hal and Chester realized as well as the rest that this was no mere resumption of an artillery duel. It was not a single salvo from a single German position that had been fired. The great guns boomed from north and south; and continued to boom.

The officer who was conducting the three friends to the headquarters of General Petain turned and called a single word over his shoulder:

"Hurry!"

He broke into a run and the others did likewise. A short turn or two and they brought up before a tent somewhat larger than the rest. This the lads knew was General Petain's field headquarters.

Even as the French officer approached the entrance, the general himself rushed from the tent, followed by members of his staff. The officer who had conducted the lads there accosted him.

"Sir," he said, "despatch bearers from General Durand at Marseilles."

General Petain waved them aside.

"I've no time for them now," he said, and made as if to move on.

Hal stepped forward.

"Sir," he said, "the despatches we carry have to do with the impending action."

General Petain stopped suddenly and eyed the lad keenly. Then he said abruptly:

"Come with me."

He led the way into the tent, and Hal, Chester and Stubbs followed him. The general seated himself at a desk at a far end of the tent and demanded:

"The despatches."

Hal produced several documents, which he passed to the general. The latter broke the seals quickly and read. Then suddenly he sprang to his feet and dashed outside. The lads could hear him delivering sharp orders to members of his staff. A moment later his voice became inaudible.

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