of the Army Group he telephoned to Gen. Herr confirming the orders of the commander-in-chief. On the 2 5th Gen. Joffre telegraphed simultaneously to Gens, de Castelnau, Petain and Herr: " Yesterday, Feb. 24, gave the order to resist on the right bank of the Meuse to the N. of Verdun. Every commander, who, under these circumstances, gives an order to retreat, will be arraigned before a council of war."
It is true that great is the glory of those who carried out this order, and who by their military prowess, their knowledge of their men and their personal action, won this great battle. The chief actor, who from the first act to the last scene of the drama never ceased in removing from others the heavy burden of responsibility that chief actor was Gen. Joffre. History must not forget this.
General dc Langle de Gary accordingly issued his orders: he laid down that on the right bank they should hold fast facing N. ; the movement of the XX. Corps, provisionally suspended, was to be continued; he evacuated the Woevrc, however, withdrawing to the fort of the Meuse heights.
General de Castelnau arrived at 7 A.M. at Gen. Plerr's head- quarters, and his presence alone brought calm and relief. The 37th and iS3rd Divs. had been engaged as brigades and even as regiments; these reinforcements had been sufficient to limit the progress of an attack which had been carried out on too narrow a front.
During the zsth the XX. Corps under Balfourier relieved the XXX. Corps under Chretien, whose two divisions had lost 61 % of their effectives (16,000 out of 26,000). The 37th Div. under Bonneval, believing its right to be on the point of being outflanked, evacuated the height of Talon and that of Poivre and withdrew to the Belleville height, a withdrawal of seven kilometres. A fortunate initiative stopped the enemy by an artillery barrage, and enabled the 3Qth Div. to regain the great part of the ground which had been given up. But if the enemy had been able to fight desperately on that day he would have engaged untried reserves at a propitious moment; he would at least have reached the foot of the Belleville height, and this advance would have made the occupation of the right-hand exceedingly difficult. On the left bank the whole French line would have been taken in rear and forced to retreat. As the German attacks were limited between the Meuse and in the Woevre, the arrival of an adequate number of reinforcements was sufficient to close the breach.
In the centre fighting had been continued the whole day round Fort Douaumont; Number 1 55 turret had fired almost unceasingly for four days; the fort had no garrison except the crew of 23 gun- ners, who manned this work, and who, at the end of their tether, slept after the fall of night. A patrol of the 24th Brandenburgers, finding the drawbridge lowered, entered the fort and settled themselves there without firing a shot. Such was the result of a badly understood order, which converted entrenched camps into fortified regions; it was due, perhaps, to insufficient liaison between two units in the first line, who should have got into touch in Fort Douaumont instead of maintaining themselves, one to the E. and the other to the W. of the fort, which at the beginning of the battle found itself 8 km. within the French lines without a garrison of its own. It was for the local com- mander to occupy it.; but the prejudice against permanent fortifi- cation was such that no one on the spot thought about it. On the evening of the 24th Gen. Chretien had, moreover, ordered his sector commanders to occupy all works. The important work of Hardaumont, which completed the defence of the Douaumont and Vaux forts, had no garrison, and was likewise abandoned to the enemy without the slightest resistance.
The day was a bad one. The capture of Douaumont was announced to the whole world Jh a triumphal communique : " To the E. of the Meuse, in the presence of His Majesty the Emperor and King we have gained important successes. In a vigorous advance the Brandenburg regiments reached the fort and village of Douaumont, which they captured by assault."
This glaring travesty of the truth made this name symbolic of a great victory; but when, taking up the challenge, the French were to retake Douaumont, the value which the Germans gave to its possession was to be the measure of their defeat.
General Joffre sent for Gen. Petain to come to Chantilly; the latter had been supervising in the rear the training of divisions sent back in succession to rest. After Joffre had given him his instructions he sent him to take over the command of the army in process of formation on the left bank of the Meuse, which was to intervene when the right moment arrived. General de Castel- nau thought that the moment had already arrived when Gen. Petain appeared on the scene, as events were getting beyond the powers of the cadre of the fortified region, whose general staff-was not adequate to direct operations of such importance.
General Petain took over command on Feb. 26. He brought the I. Corps under Guillaumat into line on the left of Balfourier's XX. Corps. The front was immediately put into a state of defence foot by foot, and vigorous counter-attacks were carried out. The front was divided into sectors; the heavy artillery which had arrived was assigned to each; the Bar-lc-Duc- Verdun road (the sacred way) which was cracking up under the ever- increasing weight of the motor lorries, was constantly repaired by gangs of territorial troops and doubled by lateral tracks.
The situation remained confused; it was the German com- munique which informed Gen. Petain of the capture of Douau- mont, and then he was nervous about the forts of Vaux and Souville, nearer to Verdun and not yet threatened.
The struggle was very lively on the Douaumont summit. The French line went beyond the fort to the E. and to the W. and hemmed it in ; it was round this point, now of first importance, that the battle raged. It was only on March 4 that the line became stabilized for some weeks at a distance of 200 metres from the fort. There is no doubt that the counter-attacks carried out rarely gained any appreciable ground, but they broke up the German offensive, which was disconcerted by this new feature of the defence. General Joffre reiterated the necessity of these counter-attacks; he wrote to Gen. Petain on Feb. 27: " At the present juncture of the battle, you feel as I do that the best method of checking the effort, which the enemy will make, is to attack in our turn." On March i he wrote: " You have now at your disposal forces outnumbering those opposed to you . . . above all it is necessary for you to take the initiative in offensive actions with definite objectives in view."
The German attack now progressed on the right bank exceed- ingly slowly. All along the Meuse it was harassed by the fire of the defence, which caught it obliquely and even in rear.
At last the Crown Prince decided to broaden his attack fronts on the left bank of the Meuse, attempting too late to rectify the original error of his offensive.
On March 4 he asked his army groups to make a supreme effort to take Verdun, " the heart of France." After a bombard- ment lasting two days he attacked on March 6 with two divisions. The French, however, had been expecting it for 15 days; after a fair resistance they gave up the crossing of the Forges stream, and that part of their line which was under the fire of enemy guns from the right bank and which could no longer be held except by very strong outposts. The following day the Germans continued their advance, paying for their progress more and more dearly, and they were stopped in front of Mort Homme.
From the 8th-nth the battle was extended simultaneously on both banks. Unimportant progress was made on the left bank, but Mort Homme held steadfastly, as did the Poivre ' height on the right bank. The Germans advanced to the out- skirts of Fort Vaux, whose capture they announced in a new j resounding communique : " Fort Vaux as well as the numerous i adjoining fortifications has been captured in a brilliant night attack by the Posen reserve regiments. ..." One can only imagine that the German prisoners led into the fort must have been taken for victorious attack troops. The next day the com- munique had to be contradicted; the turretted fort had be- come " a heap of ruins " and had been evacuated.
The first communique could very well have been the result of a mistake, but the second was a lie. Evidence from both sides, and notably from soldiers' letters, testifies to the desperate character of the struggle during these days, and to the bravery displayed by friend and foe alike. The French troops particularly
