They Shall Not Pass:
Lessons of Verdun, Part Two
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
November 2022

Just as French reinforcements arrived on 12 February, German assault troops filtered into their attack positions to begin the offensive. And there they waited, as a fierce snow storm moved in that morning and blinded artillery observers while grounding aircraft and observation balloons. Freezing water backed up in the unheated underground bunkers holding the German assault troops – temporary shelters from artillery fire never intended as living quarters. Soldiers suffered from dysentery, hunger and chills as they awaited the call to move out.

On the French side, new troops moved into position through the snow. The 51st Infantry Division in the center of the French line had only taken its positions on the 11th, and would not have been prepared to repel an attack the next day. While the blizzard hindered French movements, several reinforcing divisions were able to de-train and move closer to the front. “Every hour lost,” the Crown Prince wrote, “diminished our prospects of speedy success.”

Shells of all caliber kept raining in our sector. The trenches had disappeared, filled with earth. The air was unbreathable. Our blinded, wounded, crawling and shouting soldiers kept falling on top of us and died splashing us with their blood. It was living hell.

Weather forecasting was even more primitive in 1916 than it would be a century later; Fifth Army headquarters had no idea when the snow might end. Day after day, the staff hoped the next might clear enough to allow the operation to begin only to have to issue fresh postponements. And so the assault troops remained in their wet, freezing bunkers night after night.

Finally on the 20th, the gale-force winds subsided and conditions seemed to indicate that the next day would be clear. The shelling began at 0400 and built over the next several hours, with an intense hurricane bombardment hitting from 0715 to 0800. Steady shelling then filled the rest of the day into the late afternoon, when the specially-selected assault teams went forward with new weapons and tactics: the storm troops had their rifles slung and carried grenades as their primary weapon, while the pioneers for the first time employed flame-throwers.

Storm troops themselves represented an innovation. Instead of going forward in well-formed lines or mass waves, the German attackers formed small groups that hugged what cover was available and moved in short individual rushes or even by crawling. They probed for resistance and when it proved too tough to overcome, tried to find its flanks and turn them.

As the first day’s objectives, the assault troops of three German corps hoped to clear the forests through which the French first trench line ran. The bombardment pulverized the trees, turning the leafless forests into shattered moonscapes of shell holes and smoldering bits of wood. Most of the French defenders died in the shelling, with most survivors wounded, struck insensible or driven stark raving mad. But a few emerged from their shelters with their wits and bodies intact, and began to exact a toll on the German attackers.

The fiercest fighting erupted in the Bois des Caures, where Lt. Col. Emile Driant’s two chasseur battalions fought off the German attackers through the 21st and for most of the 22nd before Driant fell with a machine-gun bullet in his head. On the first day the Germans managed to take only one of the three forests, the Bois d’Haumont. There, the French 165th Infantry Regiment began the battle with over 2,000 men and ended it with 60.

Once the Germans finally cleared the forests, they pushed forward through the breach torn in the French 72nd Infantry Division. The French front lines began to crumble, just as French reinforcements of XX Corps slogged their way up the icy roads to take over the defense. By the morning of the 25th the German attack had run out of energy, as no fresh reserves existed to come up and take over the assault. But then they scored what might have been their greatest success in the entire battle.

Fort Douaumont

German artillery had shelled Fort Douaumont at various times since 1914, and shells pounded the fortress before and during the actual assault. Though it looked decrepit from the outside, with even its nameplate shot away, the fort’s actual facilities had held up very well. All of its weapons remained serviceable; the problem was finding crews to serve them. An infantry company that helped garrison Douaumont had been withdrawn to fight in the front lines, and by the 25th only about 50 older reservists and an elderly sergeant-major remained within the structure. Most of these men had retreated into the fort’s deepest bombproof bunkers.

An assault group from the German 24th Infantry Regiment noticed that the fort’s big guns fired rarely, and seemed to be picking out their targets more or less randomly, and always within line of sight. They approached the fort without drawing any defensive fire, and climbed inside through an unguarded window. Heading to the fort’s 155mm battery, took the gun crew prisoner, and marched them off while about 90 Germans filtered into Douaumont through various unguarded openings. Meanwhile, a French relief gun crew headed upwards from the basement, somehow missing the Germans, to take over the 155mm position and resume its random firing – apparently never wondering what had become of the previous crew.

It's an unending Hell. I live in a casement at the bottom of the fort with the light on day and night. You can't go out for fear of shell fragments which fall daily into the trenches and onto the fort. In a word, it is solitude in all its horror; when will this veritable martyrdom end?

By afternoon the fort had been secured and suddenly the Germans had possession of the battlefield’s key position: from Douaumont they could look down on all the nearby French positions and track their movements. The fort’s deep bunkers also provided secure spaces for a front-line hospital, supply depots and barracks in the middle of the combat zone.

Church bells rang out across Germany, while both sides rushed to embellish the tale. The company commander on the spot grabbed the glory from the sergeant who first penetrated the fort with a lurid tale of close combat. On the French side, the story spread that the dastardly Germans had dressed up as Zouaves, French colonial soldiers from Algeria, and snuck into the fort under false colors. This last legend apparently grew out of an attempt by French officers to explain away a horrific friendly-fire incident in which their unit machine-gunned a column of marching Zouaves.

Douaumont’s fall changed the battle: for the Germans, they now held exactly the sort of position against which the French Army could break itself. They could not back down now, with Falkenhayn’s deepest desire fulfilled. The attack on Verdun would go on. For the French, Douaumont had become a symbol – it had to be taken back or all the sacrifices made on the battlefield, perhaps in the whole war, meant nothing. Withdrawal to the opposite bank of the Meuse – a valid tactical option for the French, yielding no strategic advantage to the Germans – became impossible. The French would fight for every square foot of ground.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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