- from ‘the War Illustrated Deluxe’ volume IV page 1194
- 'How the French
- Broke the Germans in Champagne'
The Great Episodes of the War
an illustration by J. Simont - fighting during the Champagne offensive
The French talk of the miracle of the Marne, but their miracle of Champagne is a greater thing. It is probably the greatest thing in French history after the marvel of Joan of Arc. All the superb qualities of the French genius are exhibited with astonishing force in the action by which the first two iron walls, built by the scientific Germans for military defence, were abruptly broken. France was weak—terribly weak—in comparison with her great foe. After being robbed in 1870 of her sources of fine steel in the Lorraine mines, she had been cut off in 1914 from her principal coal sources. The Germans, who had added to their large mineral resources in Central Europe the Belgian, French, and Russo-Polish mines, had become the supreme industrial magnates of the world, and were devoting all their old and new gains to increasing their warlike strength.
The Teutonic Empires had begun the war because they were aware that their thousands of heavy pieces of ordnance, ranging in calibre from 6 in. to I6.J in., gave them a magnificent advantage over the French armies that used only 3 in. guns with a few 4 in. howitzers. It was the Germans' overwhelming superiority in heavy artillery which had enabled them to recover from their defeat on the Marne, race up to the sea, and capture the French mines round Lens. The loss of these mines, with all the valuable machinery employed in the Black Country of France, was a grievous disaster, and in the opinion of the German Staff it left France practically impotent.
Wonderful Improvisation
But, helped by the sea-power of Britain, the French people, with their marvellous power of improvisation, worked for a year in a silence of deadly intensity. Thousands of shiploads of steel poured through French ports into the French munition factories, and heavy artillery of a superb new type was rapidly produced, with millions of huge shells filled with a high-explosive of a new kind. By sheer power of far-reaching inventiveness, the amazing Frenchmen, in less than twelve months, overtook and surpassed in heavy gun manufacture all that the Germans had accomplished by years of plodding organisation.
While his new artillery was accumulating, General Joffre watched with ironic interest the devices by which the Boches strengthened their iron walls. The new French explosive was not used in the preliminary actions, as it was thought well not to disturb the faith of the German in his armoured concrete and armour-plated defence works. But when the new guns and howitzers began to test their powers all along the German lines in the second week in September, 1915, the German Staff became alarmed. The number, size, and shattering effect of the new shells showed that the French had solved the problem of the modern parallel battle by means of thousands of new siege-guns of wonderful new qualities.
The German commander could foretell, from the regions of intense fire and the information of his intelligence agents concerning the places at which shells were being accumulated and troops massed, where the two principal blows would fall on his line. Reinforcements were sent into Belgium to strengthen the Lille front against the armies of Sir John French and General Foch, and the Champagne front was also strongly reinforced against the army of General de Castelnau. So confident were the Germans of holding their Champagne line that, on the eve of battle, their war correspondents were invited to headquarters at Vouziers in order to witness the victory. This victory, however, was not to be achieved merely by withstanding the French blow. Immediately on the left of the Champagne line was the army of the Crown Prince, still battling in the Argonne Forest. This army was also greatly strengthened, with the intention that it should break the French front, after the French attacking forces in the neighbouring Champagne region had been thoroughly beaten.
A Big Gun Duel
Altogether the struggle was as fair and open a test of strength as had been seen in the course of the Great War; for there was no important element of surprise in the scheme of operations. The thing was, in its decisive features, the clash of Krupp of Essen and Schneider of Creusot, with Krupp possessing the advantages of years of preparation and enormous and handy resources, while Schneider and other assisting French gun-making firms had to rely on the inventiveness of their designers, the skill and energy of their workmen, and materials imported oversea. The French gunmaker won because his new-howitzer was as extraordinary a weapon as his little semi-automatic 3 in. field-gun. When, after more than a week of artillery demonstrations, the French gunners massed their fire on the eighteen miles of German works, stretching from the Argonne Forest to the hamlet of Auberive, east of Rheims, the Battle of Champagne was won.
Kettledrums of Death
The German army, holding the trenches, machine-gun redoubts, and gun emplacements were imprisoned. They could get no food, water, or ammunition. For three days and three nights—from Thursday, September 23rd, to Saturday, September 25th, 1915—the kettledrums of death rolled over the German lines. By day, it was a crazing, unending tornado of sound that ripped the air and sent it in wounding blasts into the ears of distant spectators. By night, sky and earth were like the Last Judgment—all flame, thunder, shriekings, and earthquake-like effects. The shells from the new howitzers did not come over in a great curve, but dropped almost vertically from a tremendous altitude. No work of human hands, though covered with concrete and steel cupolas, could withstand the piercing, blasting force of the new French projectiles. And to all this overwhelming material of attack the French gunner added an incomparable skill in handling artillery.
It is important to make clear that the French won the Battle of Champagne less by courage than by inventive science. For quite a year they had shown more courage in attack than their enemy. Personal prowess, however, could not throw back the invader. The French therefore changed completely their methods of warfare in almost every particular. All their troops, old and new, had been redrilled, and every battalion had been reorganised and taught to fight in a novel manner. The result was seen on Saturday morning, when the French artillerymen extended their range, and the French infantry leapt up in the pouring rain and charged over the bare, slippery knolls and hollows of the chalky plateau of Northern Champagne. The troops did not advance in a succession of waves, eighteen miles long, and rush all the trenches in front of them. The chief attack was made by two widely-separated columns, near either end of the long, battered tract of hostile lines.
On reaching the German sector, each French battalion split in half. One half—the grenadiers, armed with daggers, revolvers, and hand-grenades—leaped into the enemy's trenches and redoubts and bombed their way towards the centre. The other half—the flying column, using bayonet and bullet—climbed over the first German line, and charged towards the enemy's support trenches. In this way the German supports were attacked at the same time as the
German first line. The result was that in all cases the unsupported, enveloped German first line broke completely. At several points there were round hills, standing one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet above the muddy brooks. These heights had been transformed by German engineers into fortresses of terrible strength. The French infantrymen did not waste their lives in storming these gunned and caverned mounds of chalk, but swept by on either side, while the defending troops were being still smitten by French shell fire. It was only when the German trenches, well behind the fortressed hills, were captured, that some of the flying columns and grenadier companies attacked the German garrisons through their own rear communication trenches.
In the hand-to-hand fighting in the deep ditches and huge subterranean chambers the French troops, under General de Castelnau, had full opportunity of showing their driving power and fierce vehemence. And in the attacks across open ground on the second German line, covering the railway which united the Crown Prince's army in the Argonne with Field-Marshal von Heeringen's army on the heights of the Aisne, there were many noble examples of the steady manoeuvring skill of French troops under fire. The Colonial Corps and the Marine Fusiliers specially distinguished themselves by the speed and strength of their assaults. The mere fact that unwounded German prisoners were taken to a number representing almost the infantry force of an army corps, together with the artillery of an army corps, is sufficient indication of the remarkable pace with which the French flying columns closed round the enemy's rear.
Germany's Fatal Error
But on the whole the Battle of Champagne was won by mind rather than by muscle. The French Staff afterwards stated that they lost less men in Champagne in September, 1915, than they had done in their very partial success in the same region in February, 1915. In the intervening seven months they had rearmed their corps and retrained their troops by the most brilliant, profound, and rapid revolution in tactics known to history. As an example of constructive resiliency of mind, the Champagne victory is likely to become one of the great classics in military history; for at the time it was won, France's power of producing munitions was still only half that of her enemy. This was one of the reasons for the delay in the attack upon the last German line, with its fortified rear-posts, which barred the advance on Vouziers. Another immense stock of millions of shells had to be accumulated for the final overwhelming bombardment. Meanwhile Germany, by an apparently gross error of judgment, diverted part of her stock of munitions into a fresh theatre of war in Serbia, and tried to meet the menace on the western front by relinquishing in the eastern field of battle her lines of advance upon Petrograd, Moscow, and Kieff.
