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One hundred and ten years ago this month, on the banks of the River Meuse in north-east France, the longest battle of the First World War was just beginning. In an ambitious bid to bring the allies to their knees, Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, launched a tremendous assault on the fortress city of Verdun. The battle plan incorporated intense artillery bombardment – more than 1,200 guns were massed along an eight-mile front, firing two million shells on the first day alone – supported by units of fast-moving shock troops. The aim was to draw the French reserves into the area and inflict catastrophic losses on them – in a phrase that later became infamous, to ‘bleed them white’. The loss of Verdun was intended to inflict both a major strategic defeat and a crippling blow to French national morale.
What ensued was a ten-month siege in which more than 300,000 German and an even larger number of French soldiers lost their lives. The land was so churned up and poisoned that, after the war, it was impossible to return it to agricultural use. Whole villages were obliterated. Today the site is dominated by a 151ft-high, shell-shaped ossuary containing unidentified remains. Sloping away from the monument is France’s largest military cemetery, containing some 16,000 graves.
The ‘Mill on the Meuse’ was the equivalent for France of the Somme for Great Britain. How did Verdun survive the prolonged ordeal of February December 1916? This article explores the French defence, which transformed its mastermind, Philippe Pétain, from a little-known field commander to a national icon.
The fightback begins
Verdun’s defences consisted of a 17th-century citadel surrounded by a protective ring of forts, constructed after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 1871. More recently, they had been strengthened with layers of reinforced concrete, earth, and sand, in response to late-19th-century advances in firepower. New turrets housed retractable guns, encased in steel cupolas, while a network of passages linked the underground barracks, magazines, and store rooms.
Nonetheless, the Verdun salient projected into the German lines by 1916, and was vulnerable to attack on three sides. There were some other critical weaknesses. The French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre had ill advisedly removed a number of heavy guns to serve as field artillery. In addition, during the ‘quiet’ period that prevailed through 1915, there had been little maintenance of the trenchworks. Engineers were sent to patch up the defences as word of German troop movements started to filter through during the winter. But the high command’s attention was mainly focused on planning for a joint Anglo-French offensive on the Somme in the early summer.
Pétain was in command of the 2nd Army when he was summoned at short notice to take charge of the Verdun sector. His reputation as a master of defensive tactics made him a good choice; but the main reason for his selection was simply availability. The call came on 24 February, three days after the German offensive began. There was panic at Pétain’s Noailles headquarters, 40 miles north of Paris, as the general was nowhere to be found. But his aide-de-camp, Captain Serrigny, with an unerring instinct for his master’s movements, tracked him to a Paris hotel where he was ensconced with his mistress. Pétain received his orders from General Joffre the following morning and reached Verdun late on 26 February.
The 170-mile drive through freezing weather took its toll, and Pétain spent the first few days of his new assignment in the grip of pneumonia. The key decision to hold the east bank of the Meuse had already been taken on the advice of General Édouard de Castelnau, sent ahead of Pétain’s arrival to assess the situation. It would arguably have been more rational to stage a fighting retreat to the west bank and dig in there, but the symbolic effect of such a concession would have been disastrous. Pétain was committed in advance to defend both sides of the river.
The French position had appreciably worsened just before he took up his post. Fort Douaumont, four miles to the north-east, had fallen without a fight to a small number of German troops, who entered by surprise and disarmed the startled defenders. Douaumont was the largest of the forts, sitting on top of a 1,200ft-high ridge. Its defences had been upgraded at vast expense, but it was now undermanned and shockingly vulnerable. The cover story put out to the public, that the fort had been captured after desperate resistance by its occupants, was pure fiction.
The new commander made his presence felt from the start, reorganising the command structure and overhauling Verdun’s defences. There was to be a lightly held forward line, designed to blunt an enemy assault, with a ‘principal line of resistance’ 400 yards behind it, that must be held at all costs. To the rear was a third line from which counter-attacks could be launched. This was how Pétain sought to conserve his most vital resource – manpower. He was a strong disciplinarian, who did not fraternise with his soldiers, but he made sure that he was visible to them. He established his headquarters in the town hall at Souilly, 20 miles south-west of Verdun. From the steps he could see the infantry marching to battle or returning, and he made a practice of visiting the wounded in hospital.
Pétain also set about improving the artillery and concentrating it under central command. He had long been convinced of the importance of firepower: ‘artillery now conquers a position and the infantry occupies it’, he had once written. Visiting Verdun in March, The Times war correspondent Colonel Repington described Pétain’s ‘genius for heavy guns’ and, in particular, his ability to ‘concentrate their fire on different objects and destroy them by the feu d’écrasement’ (obliteration fire). The balance began to shift in favour of the defenders as the number of heavy guns increased from fewer than 200 at the start of the battle to more than 500. This enabled the French to sustain continuous flanking fire from the west bank of the Meuse. Meanwhile, as the spring thaw set in, the Germans struggled to move their guns forward over the muddy surface.
The sacred way
Pétain’s most important contribution to the defence of Verdun was the priority he gave to logistics. There was only one route, to the south of the city, along which reinforcements and fresh supplies could be moved by road and rail. The limited capacity of the narrow-gauge railway line, which could take 32 trains a day, meant that Pétain focused on the road, which later became known as the voie sacrée or ‘sacred way’ for the part it played in Verdun’s salvation. Fortunately, it had recently been widened to accommodate two lanes of traffic. Pétain made use of the civil engineering background of one of his staff officers, Major Richard. Under his guidance, labourers worked incessantly to shovel gravel on to the road, to be pressed down by the constantly moving lorries.
A fleet of 3,500 vehicles was assembled, making more than 6,000 journeys each day. At its peak, a lorry passed a point on the road every 14 seconds. In the first two weeks alone, the road carried 22,500 tons of ammunition, 2,500 tons of food and supplies, and 190,000 men; 6,000 civilians were evacuated by the same route. High priority was given to keeping the roadway open. If a vehicle broke down, it was simply pushed out of the way to await the arrival of a repair team.
The task of the lorry drivers was hard and exhausting. Each truck weighed five tons and carried a load of the same weight. Many vehicles skidded on the rough surface. The men had to force themselves to stay awake, to avoid collisions with oncoming lorries or with the one immediately in front, while straining to avoid running into the ditches at the side of the track. An American journalist memorably described the endless procession of lorries by night, with headlights glowing, ‘like the coils of some gigantic and luminous snake which had no end to it’.
Pétain was aware, too, of how draining it was for soldiers to spend long periods in the front line. Up to this point, the French had left their units at the front, topping them up as required with extra manpower and withdrawing them only when they became ineffective throug exhaustion. The Germans followed the same practice.
As an alternative, Pétain rotated divisions in and out every eight to ten days, so that soldiers had frequent opportunities to rest and recuperate behind the lines before returning to the action. If a division suffered particularly heavy casualties, it was relieved at once. He likened this to the noria or ‘millwheel’ – an ancient irrigation system in which a chain of buckets was attached to a wheel so that they were dipped one after another in the river, then came up to be emptied before descending once again. A drawback of this method was that troops necessarily gained less familiarity with the battle zone, but this was countered by its benefits to morale.
Defensive or offensive?
Pétain’s measures were vindicated as the Germans launched renewed assaults in March. They overran the first line but the principal line of resistance, which ran along the ridges of Mort Homme and Hill 304 and overlooked Verdun from the north-west, held firm for the time being. Both sides, however, took enormous casualties.
The action followed a similar pattern. After a short, intensive artillery bombardment, German stormtroopers raced out to find vulnerable entry points, followed by a larger infantry assault. The French responded with heavy gunfire and infantry counter-attacks across the cratered landscape. The fighting was brutal and confused, with soldiers firing from shell holes and trenches with machine-guns, trench mortars, and grenades. The flamethrower had made its first terrifying appearance in the early stages of the German assault. But French marksmen were now learning to pick off. the operators – in some cases igniting the fuel canister on the user’s back and turning him into a human torch.
By early April, the attackers were slowly gaining ground. Mort Homme fell, although Pétain’s rallying cry, ‘Courage! On les aura!’ (‘Courage! We’ll have them!’), helped to galvanise the French forces. After ten days of intense fighting, they recaptured Mort Homme. As heavy rain began to fall towards the end of the month, the position seemed to have stabilised and the Germans had lost all their initial gains.
The intensity of the fighting meant that Pétain was constantly demanding that Joffre allocate more reinforcements to the Verdun sector – a demands that put growing strain on the commander-in-chief’s patience. Forty divisions – almost half the strength of the French army – had passed over the ‘millwheel’ by the end of April, so that fresh troops were constantly available. By contrast, only 26 German divisions served at Verdun in the same period.
Joffre was under pressure to divert forces to the planned Somme operation, which was soon to commence. He was also keen to see Pétain take a more actively aggressive posture and urged him to prepare bold counter-attacks. Characteristically, Pétain did not yet feel ready to undertake a major offensive. Professional jealousy was another factor. Seeking a heroic figure to inspire the public, the press had started to print highly positive, illustrated articles about the defender of Verdun. Joffre privately resented the coverage given to his hitherto little-known subordinate. He had no option but to send support, but decided to limit the number of divisions that he made available.
An alternative to Pétain was emerging in the form of General Robert Nivelle, commander of 3rd Army Corps. Nivelle was Petain’s antithesis in almost every respect. An advocate of the all-out offensive, with little regard for casualties, he was charming towards politicians, a trait which aided his rise. This was in marked contrast to the habitually taciturn Pétain, who could be abrupt and discourteous towards VIP visitors to the front.
Matters came to a head with a restructuring of the command, announced by Joffre on 19 April. Pétain was kicked upstairs to command Central Army Group, covering the Western Front between Reims and Verdun, while Nivelle was handed control of the 2nd Army. The move was intended to give Nivelle day-to-day control of the Verdun sector. The new commander’s closest ally, General Charles Mangin, reinforced his preference for the all out offensive. Personally brave, Mangin was as careless of his own safety as he was that of his men, earning the nickname le boucher (‘the butcher’) for his profligacy with men’s lives. The transfer of power to these two men was a bruising setback for Pétain.
Survival
Joffre made it clear that a change of direction was expected by immediately bringing the ‘millwheel’ to an end: 2nd Army was now to take the battle to the enemy. Nivelle proved only too willing, announcing on his arrival at headquarters that he possessed ‘the formula’. This turned out to be a questionable claim. In early May, the Germans breached Pétain’s ‘line of resistance’ by taking Hill 304. Shortly afterwards, they repelled Mangin’s attempt to recover Fort Douaumont and regained control of Mort Homme. On 7 June, Fort Vaux, the second most important stronghold after Douaumont, surrendered, placing the future of Verdun itself in jeopardy.
Pétain continued to exercise authority at a distance through dialogue with Nivelle. After an abortive bid to relieve Fort Vaux, which resulted in 2,000 French casualties, he refused to allow any further attempts of this kind. But as Verdun came under renewed pressure, he supported Nivelle over the larger question of securing reinforcements. Pétain backed up his demand for a relief force by raising the possibility that the east bank of the Meuse might have to be abandoned. This was something which he had no intention of sanctioning, but it helped persuade Joffre to part with the necessary divisions.
The struggle for Verdun lasted until the close of 1916, but the survival of the fortress was more or less assured by the end of June. Despite the introduction of new methods, including the use of the deadly gas phosgene, the German assaults were beginning to lose momentum. Crucially, the onset of the Battle of the Somme drew troops away from Verdun. At the end of August, in a tacit acknowledgement of failure, Falkenhayn was replaced by Field Marshal von Hindenburg. In mid-October, the final French counter-offensive began, leading to the recapture of Douaumont and Vaux. Two months later, the struggle came to an end with the Germans driven back almost to where they had started.
Pétain was in command at Verdun for only two of the ten months of the battle. He was not directly responsible for the final autumn push. But he was known with some justice as the ‘victor of Verdun’. He had organised the defence of the fortress at a point when all seemed lost, enabling it to hold on until the offensive could be resumed. The eventual victory came at a terrible price in human suffering, confirming Pétain’s belief in the importance of conserving lives. This was to influence him in the different circumstances of 1940, when he sought an armistice with Nazi Germany and assumed the position of Vichy France’s head of state. That decision led him down a much darker path, on which he would forever lose his standing as a national hero.
Graham Goodlad has taught history and politics for more than 30 years. He is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to MHM.
Further reading:
• William F Buckingham, Verdun 1916: the Deadliest Battle of the First World War (Amberley, 2016).
• Ian Ousby, The Road to Verdun: France, Nationalism and the First World War (Jonathan Cape, 2002).
All images: Wikimedia Commons, unless otherwise stated
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