breakout, his subordinate General Sir Henry
Rawlinson envisaged the Somme as a ‘bite
and hold’ offensive, rather like Falkenhayn’s
initial conception at Verdun.
The German plan, codenamed Gericht
( judgment), was executed in less than two
months. Falkenhayn allocated to the initial
assault only nine infantry divisions of the
German 5th Army commanded by Crown
Prince Wilhelm, the kaiser’s son, whose
playboy lifestyle and gangling appearance
earned him the British nickname ‘the
Clown Prince’. By contrast Falkenhayn did
not stint on artillery, which he seems to
have expected to do most of the work.
Some 1,200 pieces were assembled to
saturate a front of little more than eight
miles. This was pounded by everything
from huge 420mm mortars (called ‘Big
Berthas’ by the British), to blast the French
forts, to the dreaded Minenwerfer,
weapons that tossed canisters of mines in a
slow tumbling motion through the air to
clear out barbed wire, bunkers and bodies.
Delayed by snowstorms, the onslaught
began at 0712 hours on 21 Februar y 1916
around the Bois des Caures. To German
astonishment, the initial nine-hour bombard-
ment did not eliminate all resistance but after
three days of hard fighting in bitter cold they
had penetrated the strong French front lineand were up against weaker defences and
second-rate troops.
The day of 25 February was one of
disaster for France. Key to the network of
forts guarding Verdun was Douaumont – a
polygon of stone and reinforced concrete,
sunk into the ground and surrounded by a
deep ditch, which crowned the highest
point of the right bank’s defences. Looking
up at its long, angular shape, German
soldiers nicknamed Douaumont ‘the coffin
lid’ (der Sargdeckel); the French public
assumed the fort was impregnable. But in
fact Joffre’s asset-stripping in 1915 had
reduced it to little more than a barracks,
with a handful of men under an elderly
warrant officer. When soldiers from the
24th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment
neared Fort Douaumont around 1500 hours
on the 25th, French resistance melted away
and the Germans were soon inside,
rounding up its shell-shocked garrison in a
couple of hours.
“Douaumont ist gefallen!” trumpeted
the headlines next day in the Reich.
Schools closed and church bells rang out in
jubilation. Shocked by the news, French
soldiers began to desert and civilians were
ordered to evacuate Verdun, fleeing in a
chaotic flood of cars, carts and prams that
foreshadowed the hell of 1940.Fear of a French rout
Joffre’s deputy, General Édouard de
Castelnau, raced to Verdun to see the
situation for himself. Although there might
be a military case for conceding the right
bank, even Verdun itself, and falling back to
stronger positions further south, Castelnau
knew that retreat could easily turn into rout.So he stiffened the defenders and moved the
French 2nd Army – already out of the line to
prepare for the Somme – into the sector
under its commander General Philippe
Pétain. Although in direct command for only
10 weeks, Pétain played a decisive role in the
battle, earning the title Saviour of Verdun.
(His image, of course, would change
dramatically after 1940 when he led the
notorious Vichy regime.)
Pétain, though no military genius,
proved the man for that moment. In
contrast with the attacking philosophy of
most generals of the time, he was defen-
sive-minded: his maxim, in the era of
industrialised warfare, was ‘firepower kills’
(le feu tue). Pétain consolidated the French
artillery, previously in small groups, into a
unified system under his overall direction
to sweep the whole battlefield. To improve
morale, he instituted a pattern of rapid
troop rotation – ideally only eight days in
the front line – which is why so many
French soldiers served at Verdun. And he
made a point of standing outside his
command post at the town hall in Souilly,
to be seen by his men as they marched up
to Verdun or straggled back.
Logistics were crucial. Pétain’s staff
turned a country road from Bar-le-Duc,
the nearest railhead, into a ruthlessly
managed supply artery, with an up and a
down-lane from which any broken-down
truck was pushed off into the ditch. By
night, said one observer, the convoys of
vehicles looked like “the folds of some
gigantic and luminous serpent”. The road
became sanctified in French myth and
memory as the Voie Sacrée – the
sacred way to the Calvary of Verdun.Heavy firepower
A German gunner at the battle
of Verdun, where German
artillery played a major role,
commencing with a nine-hour
bombardment on 21 FebruaryMAP BY MARTIN SANDERS – MAPART.CO.UK