Verdun: The Left Bank

By Christina Holstein

A Battle of Verdun specialist explores the lesser-known events of the left bank in this illustrated WWI history and battlefield guide.

This fascinating study explores the background of the battle and casts light on the first three critical months of fighting there. It also explains fateful decision to change the original German offensive plan, extending the action to the Left Bank of the River Meuse.

Using only original French and German sources, historian Christina Holstein describes the fighting on the Left Bank and follows the German offensive as it slowly pushed forward, taking three terrible months to reach its objectives: the two hills known as Cote 304 and the Mort-Homme, or Dead Man. The French defense of the Left Bank hills, described by Germans themselves as outstanding, is also covered in great detail.

With intimate knowledge of the Verdun battlefield, Holstein describes the events in vivid detail and provides three walking tours through areas of the Left Bank rarely seen by visitors. This volume also contains more than 150 photographs, most of which have never been published before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473880375

Christina Holstein

Christina Holstein is a leading authority on the Battle of Verdun. For many years she lived close to the battlefield and has explored it in great detail. She regularly conducts tours of the battlefield for individuals or groups and, with her specialized knowledge of the terrain, has acted as consultant to a number of other historians, TV producers and TV and radio journalists. Over the years she has written four books in the Battleground Europe series on the Battle of Verdun 1916. She was the founding chairman of the Luxembourg branch of the Western Front Association.

Book preview

Chapter One

A LIMITED OPERATION

On 8 March 1916 Lieutenant Colonel Camille Macker decided to shave. His regiment, the 92nd Infantry, raised in the mountainous Auvergne district of central France and now far from home in the northeastern part of the country, had just been ordered to retake a position recently lost to the Germans. His orders contained the ominous words ‘to the 92nd falls the honour of retaking the position’ and Colonel Macker, a handsome man with fine curling moustaches, resolved to be smartly turned out. Having no water, he shaved in the wine left in his canteen and then, taking his cane and a cigar, Colonel Macker stepped out.

The position that Colonel Macker’s regiment had been ordered to retake stood on Goose Ridge, a prominent ridge some twelve kilometres northwest of the city of Verdun. An important city, already a fortified settlement in pre-Romans days, Verdun stands at a crossing point on the River Meuse, where in earlier times it blocked the ancient road that ran from Germany into the heart of France. Over the centuries its strategic position had made it a prize for many competing powers. Between the invasion of the Huns in 450AD and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Verdun had been besieged eleven times. For most of that time it was only a second line fortress but the situation changed radically in 1871 when, under the peace treaty which ended the Franco-Prussian War, a large part of eastern France passed into German hands. That brought the frontier to within forty kilometres of Verdun, which suddenly found itself a front line fortress with only its seventeenth century walls and citadel to defend itself against a powerful modern enemy.

Ruined houses along the River Meuse, Verdun. Author’s collection.

Forts and fieldworks around Verdun in 1914

In fact, Verdun was not just defended by walls; it also had formidable natural defences. The city is surrounded by flat topped limestone hills that rise to 390 metres above sea level and offer grandstand views in all directions. Streams have cut the hillsides into deep ravines which provide concealment for both troops and observers, while the valley bottoms, marshy and overgrown in both summer and winter, hinder easy movement and force communication lines to concentrate in the few gateways that remain naturally dry. The winding valley of the River Meuse is dominated by interlocking spurs, which block passage along the valley from any direction and control the river crossings, while frequent floods, which even today fill the valley from side to side, form another natural obstacle to the movement of armies.

The opportunities offered by such naturally defensive terrain did not escape French military engineers and in 1871, faced with the need to protect the eastern border of France from any further German incursions, Verdun, the French city closest to the frontier, became the centre of an extremely ambitious programme of fortification. This involved the construction of modern forts on both sides of the River Meuse, using commanding heights at least 150 metres above the plain and sufficiently far from the city to protect it from bombardment. The work, which began in 1875 and continued for thirty years, resulted in a double ring of twenty eight modern, mutually supporting, armoured forts and fieldworks, whose interlocking fields of fire protected the approach to the city from every direction. They were supported by a huge garrison and an enormous array of secondary installations, which included everything from food and ammunition depots, command posts and infantry shelters to batteries, observation posts, underground accommodation for reserves, pumping stations, searchlights, a telephone and telegraph network and an extensive road and rail system. In 1914 this made Verdun the strongest fortress city in France and in the early weeks of the First World War the Germans attempted to pinch it out rather than face its guns. The attempt was unsuccessful and at the end of the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914 the Germans withdrew to the north of the city, where they settled in lines forming a wide salient and keeping out of range of the guns in the forts and batteries.

Fort Troyon, which stands on the River Meuse south of Verdun, was one of the new forts built to protect the eastern border of France after 1871. Author’s collection

A view of the Verdun citadel. Author’s collection

The courtyard of the Ouvrage de la Falouse, a reinforced concrete fieldwork guarding the southern approach to Verdun, with the underground barracks on the left and main entrance on the right. Author’s collection

A light locomotive is portrayed on the memorial commemorating the work of the logistics corps in supplying the Verdun front during 1916. Author’s collection

Although the German withdrawal had left Verdun’s vast resources intact, the situation after September 1914 was not entirely positive. The fighting had damaged or cut the two main railway lines into the city and throughout 1915 Verdun was supplied by a minor road and a narrow gauge railway. While this was acceptable as long as the front remained quiet, such fragile lines could not be relied on to support a major battle.

Accordingly, in 1915 certain steps were taken to improve the road and a logistical plan was drawn up which could be swiftly implemented if necessary.

The Verdun sector remained quiet through 1915 but as casualties mounted and more heavy guns were required on other fronts, the unused resources of Verdun and the other fortress cities of France became increasingly attractive to the French High Command. The problem was that fortresses such as Verdun – known as places fortes – were under the control of military governors who were independent of the French High Command and even in wartime the French Commander-in-Chief, General Joffre, could not make direct use of their resources. That was clearly an untenable situation and in August 1915 General Joffre used his powers to issue a military decree downgrading Verdun from a place forte to a mere fortified region. This allowed him to take direct control of its resources, which were soon stripped out and sent to more active fronts. French intelligence services were beginning to warn of a coming German offensive but the reports were contradictory and as General Joffre believed that any offensive was more likely to come in Champagne or further north, it was some time before the warnings were heard.

The Verdun Fortified Region on 20 February 1916

While all this was happening, General Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, was starting to plan for the first phase of an offensive that would bring the war to an end within a year. In 1914 Germany had gone to war on the basis of the strategy of annihilation, which involved bringing France to the table in six weeks before turning on Russia. The plan had failed and the alternative – the strategy of attrition, or wearing the enemy down slowly to the point where he had nothing to gain by continuing to fight – could not be relied on for success, as Germany was facing numerically superior foes. A diplomatic solution to the problem also appeared to be out of the question, as German politicians and diplomats had so far shown no interest in opening negotiations with any of Germany’s enemies, even the weakest of them, so the solution had to be military. While German operations against Russia in 1915 had been successful in relieving pressure on the Eastern Front, they had not brought Russia to the negotiating table; and although Falkenhayn believed that Russia would not be capable of taking offensive action in the foreseeable future, she had not been knocked out of the war. As a result, Germany still needed to retain significant forces there to protect against any further action. That limited the number of reserve divisions available for the Western Front, where Germany faced two belligerents, Britain and France. Both of these possessed powerful reserves and Falkenhayn knew that he did not have sufficient resources to defeat both at the same time. However, if he could knock one of them out of the war, he could then gather all his resources to deal with the other. Falkenhayn did not believe that Britain, which he considered to be the main enemy, would ever come to terms until defeated in the field, but France was a different matter.

General Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief. Author’s collection

General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff. Author’s collection

Experience in the war to date had shown that the defensive systems developed on the Western Front since the end of 1914 were too strong to allow for a strategic breakthrough against an enemy backed by strong reserves, so Falkenhayn could not hope for a war-winning breakthrough against the French. However, German intelligence sources were reporting that fifteen months of war had destroyed French morale and brought the country to the point of military and economic exhaustion. If that was true, he could hope to wear the French down and drain their reserves by attacking at a place so sensitive that they would have no alternative but to pour men in to defend it. In doing so the French army would bleed itself white and France would be forced to come to terms. Falkenhayn would then be free to implement the second phase of his strategy – a mopping up operation against what remained of his enemies on the Western Front. As the second phase had to be completed before the Kitchener Armies reached the British front in substantial numbers, the first phase had to begin without