With Joffre at Verdun: A Story of the Western Front

"Down! Dead men again! Lower! What a business!" groaned Jules as he flopped himself on to the flags once more, his face turned towards Henri.

"S – s – sh! Shut up! They are all on their feet again. Confound that fellow! It was bad luck his suddenly looking up and finding us sitting here staring at him. We've got to move," whispered Henri.

"Soon too," Jules told him, "precious soon. My, isn't that Max in a rage, and aren't the lot of them bothered!"

Yet not so bothered that the noise which followed that piercing scream did not subside quickly. After all, screams were not unusual in those days of strenuous combat, when Germans were driven to the assault, time and again, and death and destruction were so near them – that terrible shell-fire which smote them from the missiles of the French 75's, the raking hail of bullets from machine-guns, the detonation of exploding missiles, the roar, the crash, the smoke, the ever-present danger. All had told on the nerves, not of one man here and there, but on hundreds of the Kaiser's soldiers. Men went mad in those days of attack on Douaumont, just as they went mad in the onslaught at Ypres in October, 1914; just, indeed, as they had lost their reason during other terrible periods. Yes, your German war lord is no sympathetic commander. Losses, frightful losses, do not frighten or trouble him so long as he is reasonably sure of obtaining his objective.

And German losses had been frightful enough in all conscience since the war started. Those losses were telling upon the German ranks now – had been telling for a considerable period – and were likely in the months coming, towards the end of 1916, to tell so severely, that it might be beyond the power of the Central Empires to hold their lines any longer. Yes, men went mad often enough, and no doubt the man in question was another such unfortunate individual.

"Confound him!" growled Max. "Why didn't he get shot as we came to the fort, or in the attack on that stairway? What's he want to disturb our rest for when we want every minute of rest we can get? for soon those Frenchmen will be returning. Turn in again, you men. We'll search for that rascal in the morning."

But would they? For listen: as the night grew older, as darkness became denser above the shattered fort of Douaumont, and the fire died down so that the Brandenburgers holding that central hall were no longer visible, figures began to collect behind the French trenches – the active, eager figures of gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps, a crack corps, to whom the task had been assigned of recapturing the fortress. A gun opened far behind, a rocket soared, and then a wave of figures poured over the parapet of the trenches and ten thousand shouting, furious Frenchmen streamed down upon the debris of Douaumont – that "corner-stone" of the defences of the salient, of the capture of which the Kaiser had boasted so loudly.

"What's that? French shouts! French bugles! A counter-attack! Get up," Henri whispered in Jules's ear. "We've got to take our chance to join them'."

CHAPTER XVIII

A Sinister German

What a sight that 20th French Corps – those noble Bretons – would have presented had it been daylight when they leapt from their trenches and advanced in one stupendous rush upon the captured fort of Douaumont! Filled with élan, determined to throw the invader backward, stung by the loss of trenches which had been French but a little while before, and eager beyond all words to bring assistance to that gallant yet sadly-thinned line which had staved off the Kaiser's hordes, this 20th Corps – the first of the reserves which General Petain had been able to rush to the scene of action – hurled itself impetuously at the Germans. Star-shells burst into flame overhead, showing dashing poilus, flickered from the tips of bayonets and lit up the smoke from exploding shells, where a canopy of it hung about the devoted heads of that gallant corps. In the darkness, in the fitful light cast by those shells, now and again augmented by the flashing beams of an electric search-light, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict took place.

The line of Bretons was halted for a few moments as it met the Germans, it wavered, perhaps, here and there just a trifle, and then it swept on as a flood sweeps down a road, washing the debris of the 6th Brigade of the Brandenburg Corps before it, submerging hundreds, and trampling not a few into the mud and into the pit-holes and craters dug everywhere by German shells.

"They come! A counter-attack! Prepare to receive the enemy!"

It was Max, that snappy little German officer, who gave the command and called his men about him.

"Man every loophole! And hold on at whatever cost! You – you are fit to fight," he suddenly snapped, turning upon one of the wounded wretches who had suffered from that explosion caused by the bomb tossed by Henri. "You are skulking, my friend. Up! Seize a rifle! Get to your loophole!"

The man staggered. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothing torn and tattered after the explosion, with one arm swinging loose in its sleeve. He looked at this peremptory officer in dazed fashion. Indeed, like Henri and Jules, he had been more than half stunned, and his wits were still wool-gathering.

"Seize a rifle! Go to a loophole, eh?" he ejaculated.

"Fool! Yes! Fight – fight for your life; fight for your Fatherland!" Max shouted at him. "Here – here's a rifle," he went on, tearing one from beneath the body of a fallen soldier, and handing it to him. "Now off with you, at once!"

"At once? Fight at once?" the man stammered, while those who watched, even in that fitful light – for the fire built by the officer in the far corner was still burning – noticed that a dribble of blood was oozing from the corner of his lips, "but, sir – " he began.

"No 'buts'!" bellowed Max at him; "to your duty!"

The man gripped weakly at the rifle, turned obediently to carry out the order, and then, staggering a pace or two, fell full length on the floor.

"Bah! A bad choice then! Well, one makes mistakes," Max said, a grim smile on his face. "But you," he called, selecting another individual seated on the ground, his back resting against the wall – a man whose pallid face told that he was suffering – "you get up and go about your duty."

As if determined that there should be no error and no backsliding, no hesitation in this case, he applied his boot to the unfortunate individual, and drove him from his position. "Now, you, and you, and you! About your business! Get to your duty!"

Henri and Jules came in for his attentions, for they had crept away from that hideous row of dead, and both gaped at him for a while in open-mouthed amazement, wondering, indeed, whether they were discovered, wondering in a half-bewildered sort of way what they ought to do. For still Henri's ears buzzed, and still his brain reeled; not so much from the explosion – for the wall separating the hall from the corridor outside had sheltered him not a little, but reeling from the effects of his tumble downstairs and the mad mêlée which had taken place there. As for Jules, the fellow was quite light-headed, for the bomb had sent him backward against the wall with a crash, and he too had taken his share in that desperate fight at the top of the stairway. He began to giggle, which was a way Jules had, and Max, happening to catch sight of him at the moment, and stung to fury by such mirth on the part of one of his men, by such a sign of insubordination, smote him across the face, little realizing that the one he struck was the same man, that very prisoner, whom he had struck not so long before, and whom he would willingly have executed.

"Come along!" Henri managed to whisper to his chum. "Better to be taken for Germans than to be discovered in our disguises. Let's get hold of rifles and take our post at some loophole. Those were French shouts we heard, and it may be that we shall have an opportunity of joining our people."

"And in any case one needn't fire into our fellows," responded Jules, his face still smarting from the blow that Max had dealt him. "But listen, Henri; if I get a chance I'll kill that fellow. Better still, if I get a chance I'll capture the brute, and carry him back to our lines, where he can be tried for offering violence to prisoners. Crikey! How wobbly a fellow feels! My feet are too big and too clumsy for anything."

It was a sorry band which obeyed the peremptory order of the bullying German. Men staggered across the littered floor of that hall, steering their way between fallen blocks of masonry and wounded men damaged by the explosion of Henri's making. Passing through the exit, they clambered over the bodies of the fallen Germans who lay thickly at the foot of the stairway, and across the bodies, too, of many a gallant Frenchman. Then, directed by the bullying Max, they climbed the stairway or went along the gallery, and presently were manning the embrasures through which the guns of the fortress of Douaumont – when it was indeed a fortress – commanded the surrounding country. Flashes could be seen through those embrasures – flashes close at hand, and others farther distant – while the air was torn and rent by the crash of distant guns, by the detonation of exploding shells, and by the sharp snap and rattle of musketry. There were yells, too – shouts of terror from the Brandenburgers, now being driven back towards the fortress, and the bellows of excited and triumphant men wresting ground from them.

"Keep an eye round you," Henri told Jules, for the two were posted at one embrasure, and no one else was in the chamber. "What's to prevent a fellow lowering himself from this point and joining our fellows? A rope is what is wanted, but it's a plaguey thing to find in such a place and at such a moment. Hold on here, Jules, while I go skirmishing."

Staggering away from his comrade, Henri reached the head of the stairway and clambered down it, leaning against the side wall with both hands, for his feet were terribly uncertain. Then, reaching the gallery below, he turned along it, and in a little while, was within easy reach of the hall in which he and Jules had been lying, when suddenly the noise outside increased. There was a rush of steps somewhere near at hand, a crashing explosion as a bomb was thrown through an embrasure somewhere beyond him, and then a torrent of figures poured into the place – a torrent of gesticulating, shouting Frenchmen, of gallant Bretons, who had won their way to the western edge of the fortress. Lamps appeared, and flaring torches too were brought in by the soldiers, who at once proceeded to search that part of Douaumont.

In a dream, as it were, shaken by what he had gone through, and overcome somewhat by the sight and sound of friends, Henri had tumbled to the floor again, as he heard an officer give vent to a sharp order.

"Drive the fellows on before you as far as you can," he shouted, "then build up barricades across every corridor and gallery, and hold them off till we can get more men in here and drive them out of the fortress altogether. Bomb them, mes enfants! Blow them out of the place! Douaumont belongs to France, and not to the Kaiser."

Yes, in a dream, Henri heard the words, and tried to raise his shaken figure, tried his utmost to join them; and in a dream, too, he watched the Bretons as they moved rapidly about and obeyed those orders. It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later, perhaps only a few minutes, but more likely half an hour after their first appearance, that, still in the same hazy sort of way, still somewhat in dreamland, his head whirling and his ears singing, Henri became aware of a strange fact, a fact, however, which hardly struck him as peculiar at that moment, that a man not far from him – one of those corpses stretched in the gallery and illuminated by a torch thrust into a crevice of the masonry not far away – was moving, was lifting his head craftily, was creeping along over other bodies, and was peering round corners and watching the Bretons.

"Strange!" thought Henri. "What on earth can the fellow be doing? And – Christopher! He's not a Frenchman!"

That indeed was a peculiar thing; and, still in the same dazed sort of way, Henri watched and wondered.

"Not a Frenchman," he was telling himself, "then a German, and I don't know – yes, I do believe I know – the figure. Small, eh? Dressed in field-grey, yet not the usual sort of uniform. Who is he? What is the fellow? Well, I never!"

In ordinary times Henri would have made up his mind in an instant, would have acted promptly, and would have taken in the situation without a moment's hesitation. But now, what with that horrible feeling of nausea which assailed him, what with his miserable brain, which reeled and buzzed and whirled, making vision almost impossible and hearing almost out of the question, he could not, try as he would, collect his scattered wits. Indeed, he had no energy left with which to make any sort of an effort; he just gaped, smiled, and certainly grimaced at that crawling figure. He knew he was an enemy, knew that the man he watched boded no good to his comrades, and knew also that the fellow represented some subtle form of danger. Yet he could not move, could do no more than gape and grin and grimace, and could not properly realize the meaning of the situation. Then suddenly he started, for another crawling figure came from behind him, and a hand gripped his hand sharply.

"You, Henri! You here! And did not return! Why, you're sick! You're half stunned still!"

It was Jules, who, finding that his chum did not return, had descended to the gallery to find him, and, coming upon him stretched there amongst the dead, noticed, with the help of a flickering torch, that Henri's head hung, that perspiration dropped from his forehead, and that his face was deadly white and pallid. Yet his coming seemed suddenly to rouse Henri; for the latter's drooping eyelids opened widely at once, a frown crossed his forehead, and in a moment he had seized Jules's hand, and, tugging it, indicated that he was to lie down beside him.

"S – s – h!"

"What's up?" demanded Jules hoarsely.

"Down!" whispered Henri; for at that moment the figure he had been watching, and which had stretched itself flat like one of the dead, doubtless because a Frenchman was approaching, had now begun to rise stealthily. "Look!" he whispered, pointing, and then watched Jules's face as the latter fixed his eyes upon that figure.

Henri noticed at once – and it was remarkable how his wits were assembling now that Jules had stimulated them – that Jules's eyes started, that an intent look came into them promptly, while something approaching a scowl gathered on his features.

"That man!" he heard him exclaim, and then watched as his friend flopped down amongst the dead and lay as close as possible. Then together the two watched as that German crept on still farther. A minute later and he had turned where the gallery swept round the corner of the fort abruptly and proceeded in another direction. Following promptly, creeping across the bodies of the fallen, or finding their way between them when they could – for it was not exactly nice to kneel upon the forms of men who, to whatever side they had belonged, had died fighting – Henri and Jules too turned that corner, only to find themselves now in almost complete darkness, with no light to guide them, with not a sound to tell them of the whereabouts of that sinister German, and nothing to indicate his presence.

"Stop! Let's wait and listen."

Henri's hand went out and gripped Jules's sleeve, while the two came to a halt at once, sitting up on their haunches, as it were, and peered into the darkness and listened – peered till Henri's bloodshot eyes positively ached, until tears of weakness dribbled down his face and splashed on to the pavement. As for his head, it throbbed as if a giant hammer were within it, and some demon were rattling the interior of his skull and were dancing a tattoo upon his ear-drums.

"Bah!" He felt that old nausea, and felt horribly giddy, and was forced to stretch his hands forward and lean upon them to support his weight, while everything went round and round, and, strangely enough, instead of darkness surrounding him, a thousand flashes appeared before his eyes. Jules coughed. With all his light-heartedness he was an observant and wonderfully sympathetic fellow, particularly where Henri was concerned, and now had double reason for showing him attention. Putting his arm round Henri's waist, he supported him for a while.

"Pull yourself together, Henri," he said, "for we've got to go on in a little while and trap that beggar. What's he up to? Some dirty game, you may be sure. For he's a German, don't forget, and don't forget, either, what Stuart would have said – "

"Stuart!" gurgled Henri, trying to laugh. "That good fellow! Stuart?"

"A splendid beggar!" agreed Jules. "He'd have said, bluntly enough, that every German was a dirty beggar, wouldn't he?"

Henri chortled. Somehow or other Jules had a wonderful way of stirring up his old friend, of "bucking him up", to use a slang expression; and now, just the mention of the gallant Stuart, that very breezy, hefty Englishman, fixed Henri's wandering thoughts for a moment on a far more pleasant subject, and seemed to help to steady his reeling brain, and first set him giggling and then laughing merrily.

"You'll think I'm an old woman," he told Jules at last, shaking himself like a dog.

"Indeed! Like an old woman? Well, now, old women don't usually fight terrific combats at the top of a stone stairway, and finally tumble headlong down that same stairway locked in the arms of a German. Polite old women don't do their utmost to strangle the subjects of the Kaiser; now do they, Henri? And, besides – of course this is only a very small matter – such old women as you have mentioned don't, when they've got a chance to escape the notice of such sinister gentlemen as we have been associating with lately – I mean that Max beggar and his Brandenburg fellows, who would shoot a helpless prisoner – such old bodies don't as a rule, mind you, get hold of a bomb and sling it amongst them.

"It was fine – fine!" Jules told his chum, stretching out a hand and gripping Henri's energetically.

"Oh, rot!" Henri contrived to stutter. He was getting quite indignant now. "What utter nonsense you are talking! As if any old woman would fight a German!"

"Just so! That's why I retorted when you asked me if, or rather suggested that, I thought that you were one."

"Look here!" began Henri, quite nettled, and becoming increasingly impatient, whereat Jules grinned. Indeed, it was his turn to be amused, for intuitively in the darkness he had guessed at Henri's condition; and knowing already how shaken he was, how nearly on the verge of unconsciousness, he had racked his brain for some method which might revive him. Stimulants, water, food, things of that sort, were out of the question; words alone could be employed, and somehow the clever Jules had contrived to pick the proper subject. The mention of Stuart, then, had helped to revive his friend; and now mention of Henri's gallantry had made the owner of that name quite indignant.

"Utter rot!" shouted Henri again; "as if slinging a bomb was dangerous; and as if – "

"There's one thing you can't deny," said Jules; "it saved my life, as it was designed to do, and I've not forgotten. But how d'you feel? Better, eh? Don't forget that we've lost sight of that German."

As if Henri had ever forgotten it since he had seen the lithe, cunning figure of the Brandenburger creeping in front of him. True, in that curious state in which he had been – a state bordering on unconsciousness – he had hardly been able to appreciate at times the significance of the German's presence; but now he had wakened fully to its importance.

"Jingo," he told Jules as they squatted there in the darkness, "we must find the beggar! He's armed, without a doubt; and, worse than all, he's behind our fellows, for they've gone forward into the fort. What's to prevent him shooting 'em in the back? What's to prevent him carrying on any sort of vileness? We've got to follow at once, and, by hook or by crook, we've got to capture or kill the beggar."

"Whichever you like – either will suit me," Jules responded; "and in any case, if he's caught, it'll come to the same thing. Once we've marched him back behind our lines, and handed him over as a prisoner, he'll be shot, my boy. We can prove that he would have deliberately shot a prisoner; so it seems to me that, if we meet the gentleman, the best thing will be to end the matter promptly. But we've got to find him first, and perhaps he'll have something to say when it comes to a question of shooting."

Max, that sinister Brandenburger officer, was indeed likely enough to have a considerable amount to say in the question of his own disposal. Knowing the class of man he was – his fearlessness, for that seemed to be his one virtue; his frightfulness, for bullying and terrible deeds seemed to be the characteristic of every subject of the Kaiser – it was likely enough that this fellow would do anything to outwit the Frenchmen, and, if he could, would shatter the fort and bring it down upon his own head rather than see the French victorious.

"Stop! Wait a moment! I heard something move! Come on!" said Jules suddenly.

And together, creeping on hands and knees, the two went forward along that gallery in search of the German.

CHAPTER XIX

Heroic "Poilus"

Who can describe the condition of affairs in the shattered fort of Douaumont on that night when the gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps hurled themselves against the captors of the position? The whole of the fighting round the salient of Verdun since that eventful 21st February – now seemingly so long ago, for so much had happened, yet in reality less than a week – had been marked by the incessant thunder of guns, the continuous detonations of exploding shells, the intermittent rattle of machine-guns, and by the crescendoes of rifle-fire mingled with the shouts and shrieks of men, the cheers of triumphant attackers, and the grim, hoarse commands of officers leading their sections.

There had been many a silent, yet grimly ferocious struggle with the bayonet; when men stood outside their trenches or struggled with the enemy in what remained of their battered positions. Such scenes we know had taken place inside the fort of Douaumont, for had not Jules and Henri participated in such an adventure on the stairway? And now they were being repeated – those scenes – in many an odd part of that fortress.

Bursting in by a gateway to the west, the Bretons forced their way forward; while the Brandenburgers, beating a hasty retreat, threw up barricades and fought for them. Thus, as Henri and his chum crept along that gallery, comparatively silent for the moment, for the fight had drifted forward, and the Brandenburgers were holding a position farther to the east of the fortress, they came within sound of the combatants, and heard the shouts of men and the crack of rifles. Yet never a sight did they catch of Max, the German, though here and there torches threw a fitful gleam about the masonry.

"Then on!" said Henri, now rising to his feet and staggering forward. "Where's the beggar gone to? And what's he up to?"

"Can't say. Perhaps he's merely trying to escape; or more likely he's trying to join his own people, for you can tell quite easily that they are still holding a portion of the fort."

Yet to follow in the tracks of the German was an impossibility; for, let us explain, the interior of a fortress such as Douaumont is not so planned as to make progress easy and direct at the best of times. Such a place is designedly erected in sections, so that, should one portion suffer capture, the others may be held intact; while often enough such works are constructed so that one portion of the fortress commands by its fire the works immediately surrounding and attached to it. That gallery, then, did not run in a straight line for long: it curved abruptly to the left just as it had done before at the point where the German contrived to evade our heroes. It dropped down a flight of steps, and opened into a wide hallway much like that other in which Jules and Henri had already seen some adventure; and from this hall galleries led off, some reached by means of stairways, and others once barred by doors, now for the most part lying blackened and shattered on the flags which floored the galleries.