With Joffre at Verdun Part 18

Henri started. Unconsciously he had been carrying on the work just as he would have done had he and Stuart and Jules been alone together; that is to say, he had just done his best, and no one could do more.

Then what was it that he had forgotten, this essential point which a commander of experience would certainly not have omitted? He gaped at the veteran, who thereupon laughed and chuckled even more loudly.

"Listen, then, my Henri. You ask us to fight these Boches, to drive them back, to keep them out so that we may hold the fort for France and for Grand-pere Joffre, and, of a truth, we would gladly do that. But listen, then. Men must eat to fight, and drink also, to retain their strength; for if men are not strong, how then can they fight as soldiers, my Henri? The hour has come for food, and is there not food and drink here in abundance?"

There were smiles all round at that; and presently the little garrison were seated close behind their barricade, where two men kept watch upon the enemy so that the rest could not be surprised, while the others ate the rations which forethought had caused them to bring into the fort, and took cautious draughts from their store of water. Then, having finished their meal, they drew cigarettes and pipes from their pockets, and presently a thick cloud of smoke almost hid the faces of Henri's detachment, and quite a column of it blew out from the aperture through which the gun, long since removed, had been wont to project its muzzle.

"Begins to look as though they intended to leave us alone, or perhaps they have been driven out of the fortress," said Jules, tiptoeing along from one of the loopholes. "There's not a sound down below, and not a single Prussian has put in an appearance. Perhaps our fellows have come up again, eh? Why not? And may be already above us and all about us."

"No. It is not so," called one of the garrison whom Henri had posted at the gun-embrasure, "for I have been watching here since we came to this chamber. The French troops have been driven back on to the plateau--not far, my friends, you will understand, not very far, but still far enough to take them hopelessly beyond us. No. We are cut off here; and if those Boches have left us alone for a while, and allowed us to enjoy a meal, it is not because they have forgotten.

Maybe they are preparing a new attack; perhaps they have been engaged in consolidating their position; in any case, we shall hear from them again, and sooner rather than later."

The attack, when it did come, was indeed sudden and unexpected. A shout came from one of the men watching at the loopholes; and, darting forward, Henri discerned at once numbers of figures, which, das.h.i.+ng from the background, were rus.h.i.+ng across the hall towards them.

Indeed, half a dozen of the Brandenburgers were already at the exit from the hall, and as he looked through a loophole they leapt on the first step of the stairway.

"To your places!" he shouted. "Open fire! Supports get ready to come forward!"

Bang! There was the sharp report of a rifle from down below, a sudden piercing cry, and one of the defenders fell heavily against our hero.

An instant later the wall of bags shook while a German bayonet transfixed one of the upper tier, and tore it from its position. Then the machine-gun opened, deafening all within the chamber, lighting by its flash the scene of the conflict; while the men at the loopholes blazed into the lines of Germans who were now swarming on the stairway.

That flimsy wall of bags filled with corn shook and swayed as bodies of frantic Germans, slaughtered by the defenders, fell heavily against it; while one huge Brandenburger who had leapt in advance of his friends, and who had been caught by a bullet fired from one of the loopholes, fixed a dying clutch on the summit of the wall, and held on convulsively for a few moments. Then, with a piercing scream, he fell backwards, carrying with him some two feet of the top of the slender defence which Henri and his friends had erected.

"Man the gap," shouted Henri at once, flinging himself towards the opening, and disentangling himself from another of the defenders who had fallen against him. "Bring bags up from behind and fill in the gap while we defend it."

What a pandemonium there was in that comparatively narrow s.p.a.ce up which the stone steps ascended, and across the top of which the barricade of corn-sacks had been erected. Every step was crammed with Brandenburgers, while down below, in the gallery along which the miniature railway ran, which, with its truck, had proved of such service, the exit from the huge hall in the shattered interior of the fort, and that hall itself, were packed with shouting individuals, with men pressing forward to the attack, with fallen soldiers, and with wounded who called in shrill accents to their comrades. Those at the top of the stairs were bellowing with anger, and some with fear; for, forced on by the press from behind, and beaten by the opposition of the Frenchmen, they were, as it were, between two fires, and escape, and even the power of defence, were out of the question. They dropped, indeed, as Henri and his friends fired amongst them; while the bearded veteran, setting a splendid example to his comrades, leapt on to some of the fallen bags, and, leaning over the swaying wall, made havoc amongst the Germans with his bayonet. Then of a sudden the shouts died away, there was a rush of steps on the stairway, and silence--a silence which was almost painful, which seemed to smite the ear of those gallant men holding the gun embrasure and the chamber.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THAT BEARDED VETERAN, LEANING OVER THE SWAYING WALL, MADE HAVOC AMONG THE GERMANS WITH HIS BAYONET"]

"It was hot work, my Henri, while it lasted," chuckled the bearded _poilu_ as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, and stood up after having deposited a fresh bag in its place; "but, mon Dieu! those Brandenburgers fight like the devil! And how they hate us; and how we hate them! Yes, yes! This is a war to the death! This is fighting for France! And only over our bodies shall they advance towards Paris.

Comrades, we are holding them back. We here in the remains of this fortress, we are helping to keep the Kaiser's hordes away from the interior of France; helping, too, to rob him of victory and conquest."

Yes, indeed! The violent efforts of these men were helping not a little to check the advance of the enemy, just as the heroic fighting of the French all along the battered trenches round the salient of Verdun was a.s.sisting in defeating the enemy's object. We have said already that the conquest and capture of Verdun alone could be of no particular or material benefit to the Kaiser and his armies. Verdun was, as it were, merely an empty sh.e.l.l, a sleepy old town in the hollow by the River Meuse, overshadowed by heights which formed the major portion of that salient held by our ally. Forts there were in abundance--forts, as we have said, long since dismantled. Yet in Germany the tale spread by the German War Staff, that Verdun was heavily armed and considered impregnable, was thoroughly believed, just as it was confidently believed that the valour of the Kaiser's soldiers would s.n.a.t.c.h it from the enemy.

This terrible World War had come, at this stage, to a period when the spirits of Germans and Austrians were failing, when some stimulus was sadly needed, and when the courage of the people was hardly what it had been when the conflict opened. Who knows? Who can state with certainty what was the real object of the German War Staff in launching an attack upon such an impregnable position--impregnable not because of those dismantled forts and the guns which had once filled them, but because of the nature of the terrain, those hills with their steep escarpments, and those positions on the left or western bank of the Meuse which gave such splendid opportunity to the defenders to outflank with their guns those attacking the northern portion of the salient.

Perhaps a sensational capture of Verdun was the objective of the Germans, merely with the idea that it would act as a stimulus to the peoples of the Central Empires. More likely, finding themselves getting weaker as the months drew on, and terrible losses reduced their fighting effectives, the Kaiser and his war lords were determined to risk all in one mighty effort--an effort which should break through the French line at Verdun, thus bringing kudos to the armies of Prussia, and at the same time demoralizing the French soldiers. Who knows?

They may have hoped to dash through the gap thus formed, and once more advance on Paris. In any case, they were well aware of the phenomenal rise in power of the British forces. Five million men had volunteered to fight for king and country; and now, on the top of that, there was news that Great Britain had adopted conscription; every man up to the age of forty-one was to become a soldier, was to fight for that liberty dear to all Britons.

Then, seeing that Germany's forces were rapidly dwindling, a blow must be struck now--a sensational blow--which would, it was hoped, break the power of France before those British reinforcements could reach her.

Later, Germany might still have strength to tackle Britain alone; and in that case this risky, if determined, attack on Verdun would be worth the price paid for it.

To France then, and the French armies at Verdun, all eyes were turned, for at this moment she held the fate of the Allies in her hands. Let her hold on to Verdun, let her defeat the Germans there by successful resistance, and hold off the enemy till that hour arrived, now fast approaching, when fresh British forces would have sailed for France, and have taken their place beside the _poilus_. Every little helped; and the fierce encounter taking place beneath the shattered roof of the fortress of Douaumont was a.s.sisting not a little.

"They will come again, later on, perhaps, when it is dark," Henri told his friends, "and we must make ready to resist them. Pile up the bags and place them three deep now, for during the last attack they were nearly pulled over. After that there's little for us to do but to wait and smoke. Of fighting we shall have our full before this little business is ended."

Darkness came on after a while, and presently the gloom within the fortress was so deep that even the walls lining the stairway were invisible, nor had any of the party any means of illuminating them, or of lighting up the interior of the hall held by the Brandenburgers.

All they could do was to crouch behind their wall and listen for the attack which they knew must be coming. Then, of a sudden, there was a violent explosion just outside their wall, and one farther back in the chamber which they occupied. Hand-grenades had been thrown by the enemy, and hardly had the explosions taken place than there was the sound of another charge, and a horde of men dashed up the stairs and flung themselves upon the barricade which the _poilus_ were defending.

CHAPTER XVI

A Fight to a Finish

A growl came from the man seated at the breech end of the machine-gun:

"Bah! It is smashed! That grenade has burst the casing and shaken the whole apparatus. Give me a rifle, one of you."

He searched in the darkness for the weapon, and indeed there were enough and to spare now, for the bomb which had lit in the chamber, and had exploded in that confined s.p.a.ce, had damaged not a few of the defenders. It had stunned the majority of them, in fact, so that now, as they manned the barricade, they were half-stupid, more than half-deafened, and hardly knew what had happened. Henri and Jules, leaning against the bags and peering out into the darkness, could see the flash of men's rifles as they fired from below, and caught a glimpse of dusky figures. Then they felt the wall wobble, while something struck Henri a blow on the arm, and, stretching out his hand, he gripped first a pole and then an iron hook at the end of it. But it was only one of half a dozen such implements, which German cunning had suggested. They were at work then all about him. Those hooks caught in the upper layer of bags, and at once they were dragged outwards; Others followed, and even the storm of bullets from the rifles of the defenders could not stop them. Indeed, in quite a short s.p.a.ce of time the better part of the barricade on which the defenders had counted had been swept away, dragged down the stairs, and flung into the pa.s.sage.

"Bayonets ready!" shouted Henri grimly. "We have got to cut our way out of this place and through the Brandenburgers. Make ready!"

He could feel men swarming up beside him, and heard Jules at his left shouting encouragement to them. Then one of the poles armed with an iron hook, failing to catch a bag, became entangled in his clothing, and in a trice, before he knew where he was, Henri was dragged over the remnants of the wall, and found himself floundering down the stairway.

A minute later, with a loud shout, the _poilus_ charged over him, making play with their bayonets to right and to left, and driving the Germans backward. Then, in that narrow gallery at the foot of the stairway, and at the wide exit from the hall, there took place as desperate a combat as had ever been in the whole of this desperate warfare. Men used their bayonets till the weapons were beaten out of their hands, or clubbed their rifles and swung them overhead. Then, undefeated though outnumbered, they gripped their enemies about the waist and wrestled with them, while some, a few only, for the art does not come naturally to the _poilu_, dealt swinging blows with their fists, and, driving a way through the Germans, escaped into the pa.s.sage. It was a melee in which all was confusion, in which shouts deafened the combatants, a pack of struggling, bellowing men, which seemed as if it would fill the place for ever, and which, as so often happens, suddenly burst asunder and scattered.

An hour later, when Henri recovered consciousness--for he had been stunned by his fall--he found himself lying at the foot of the stairway, his legs still resting on the last steps and his head on the narrow railway. A man lay across his body--a huge, beefy individual of extraordinary weight, who pressed him hard against the concrete. There were other men lying all about him--dead men, no doubt, for they made no movement--while the stairs themselves, what was left of the parapet of bags which he and his comrades had erected, and the entrance to the gun chamber above, were littered with soldiers, French and German.

Strangely enough, though the place had been sunk in darkness during that last desperate attack, it was now illuminated, not brilliantly, it is true, but sufficiently for him to be able to make out his surroundings and to discern objects.

With a desperate effort, Henri contrived to throw off the dead weight which lay across him, and, raising his head slowly, peered in all directions, feeling dazed and shaken, and as yet hardly appreciating what had happened. Then, little by little, he realized the situation, realized that his band of n.o.ble _poilus_ had broken up, that many, indeed, lay dead about him, and that the rest had scattered, perhaps had been dragged off as prisoners, and perhaps--and how he hoped it--had gained the open and had made their way back to the French lines.

"Better be careful. Better be a little cautious," he told himself, beginning to peer over the broad back of a man who lay beside him.

"That's that hall in which the Brandenburgers had taken up their quarters. Why, they've a fire burning, and are eating a meal round it.

And--and--who's that? I've seen that chap before; who is he?"

In his semi-dazed condition he was horribly puzzled, and, shading his eyes with one trembling hand, peered round the corner of the entrance to that hall at the group occupying its centre. There were perhaps a hundred Brandenburgers seated in a wide straggling ring round a fire which blazed in their midst, and which lit up their surroundings and threw long shadows upon what was left of the concrete walls of the fortress. The beams from those flickering flames fell too upon another group--a group, it seemed, of officers--occupying a retired corner, and upon two solitary individuals who stood near by under the eye of a sentry squatting on a block of masonry not far from them. It gave, no doubt, some indication of the strenuous time through which Henri had pa.s.sed, and of his stunned condition, that it was quite two minutes before in one of those figures he recognized Jules--the jovial Jules, sadly dishevelled now, his helmet gone, his clothing torn, and a blood-stained handkerchief round his forehead. Yet it was the old Jules--that cheery, optimistic, unconquerable individual--looking about him with a careless air and watching the Brandenburgers as they laughed and smoked and chatted as if he would have gladly joined them. That, indeed, was one of the characteristics of the gallant Jules; he could fight like a tiger if need be, though always with a smile on his lips, and, when the time for fighting had gone, no more friendly individual could have been discovered. Yes, it was Jules, a prisoner, and with him another of the _poilus_ who had formed one of Henri's party.

"Wait a moment! Jules right enough!" said Henri, still inclined to be doubtful; for his limbs shook, his head wobbled badly, and his eyes were bloodshot and almost incapable of seeing. "But, who's that other fellow--the chap up in the corner, with his helmet tilted back, that swaggering beggar who's laying down the law to the officers with him?

Jingo! That man! Good Heavens!"

No wonder that he gave vent to such an exclamation, for now, as his shaken brain slowly cleared, and his eyes, becoming more accustomed to the flickering light, enabled him to see better, he realized that not only was his old friend a prisoner amongst the Brandenburgers, but that one of their officers--their commanding officer it seemed--was indeed none other than that individual whom he had accosted earlier. The man seemed to be d.o.g.g.i.ng Henri's footsteps. For, consider: it was he who had followed the two young Frenchmen and the bulky Stuart along that tunnel when they were escaping from Ruhleben; it was he again with that party of officers into whose midst Henri and Jules had stumbled the other evening when out on a reconnaissance; and, once more, it was he who had demanded the surrender of the garrison manning that gun-chamber.

"Bah! He again!" growled Henri. "When lots of other Brandenburgers--better Brandenburgers, I should say--have been killed by our fire, he is still living, and he's the man who wanted to shoot us out of hand down in the forest. Wonder whether he's recognized Jules already?"

He had no need to wonder for very long, for hardly had he made this last discovery when the officer in question--that arrogant, snappy little individual, who peered about him with an indefinite something which stamped him as a man of lower caste, one who had gained promotion from the ranks--rose to his feet, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and swaggered towards the prisoners, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his head pushed forward, and a truculent, domineering, brutal air about him. Halting in front of the two prisoners, he gave them the benefit of a stare which would have been rude at any time, and which even warfare hardly excused, and then, without the smallest warning, so swiftly in fact that Henri was staggered, he suddenly drew one hand out of his pocket and dealt Jules a blow across the jaw with his open hand which sent that young fellow staggering.

"Ha, ha! That moved you," the German laughed, turning his head over his shoulder to make sure that his brother officers had watched the movement. "That's stirred you up, my friend! Yes, my friend--for don't forget we have met before, haven't we? What, you don't remember?

Then let me tell you: at Ruhleben, my friend, my Frenchman--at Ruhleben, where I happen to remember very thoroughly the manner in which you treated me. Do you forget, then? Do you deny that it was you who crept through that tunnel, and, breaking a hole through the earth beyond the entanglements, reached the open; and later, when I followed--having dared the journey along the tunnel--you and that huge brute of an Englishman--that swine of an Englishman--who was with you, pulled me up as if I were a puppy and threw me back again, shaking the teeth out of my head almost? Burr!"

The little dried-up German officer's eyes flashed vengefully as he spoke of the matter, and he was all the more incensed an instant later when, rather antic.i.p.ating some fun--for to the German comrades of this officer the ill-treatment of a prisoner was certainly fun--these men drew nearer, and, hearing his words, one of them--a huge, fat, unwieldy person, with flabby cheeks and pendulous chin, to say nothing of the huge girth which he presented--giggled and chortled loudly, and suddenly placed a heavy hand on the lieutenant's shoulder--a hand the weight of which caused him to stagger.

"Drew you out like a puppy, ho?" he shouted. "Drew our dear Max up out of the earth as a bird draws a worm; and then had the daring, the effrontery, to dash our immaculate, if not extremely dignified friend backward till his teeth shook. Ho! That's fun! And how one would like to see the thing repeated!"

The steely-grey eyes of Lieutenant Max turned towards this hulking German, and shot at him a glance which was angry and threatening, a glance, however, which failed altogether to impress the man who had addressed him. For this hulking officer roared with laughter, and shook to such an extent that the wreaths of fat on his body wobbled.

"But this is fine!" he shouted, "We have roused the lion in our little Max, and he is angry--angry with me, mark you, my friends--because I would like to see repeated something which no doubt was most entertaining. But, surely, Max, you were not defeated by this fellow, this puny Frenchman?"

The big German ran a pair of critical eyes over the dishevelled figure of Jules, standing helpless before him, eyes which nevertheless did not fail to note the determined look of this young man, his unflinching att.i.tude, and the gleam of anger which came from behind his eyes, and which threatened retaliation. Yes, at that very moment the impetuous Jules, stung by the blow which Max had dealt him, and understanding every word that pa.s.sed, was on the eve of throwing himself upon the German; and then, as he glanced from one to the other, and helplessly round the hall at the backs of the Brandenburgers--indifferent to what befel their prisoners--to the exit from that hall and the stairway beyond it, at the summit of which he and Henri and those other comrades had put up such a fight, his wandering eyes lit upon the figures of Germans and Frenchmen--the fallen men who had grappled at the foot of the stairs--and, pa.s.sing from one to another, came upon a face, an eager face, wherein two eyes were set--eyes which were staring hard in his direction. The face moved, while the owner of it sat up a little and held up a warning finger.

"Henri!" exclaimed Jules, and at once took command of himself, and pulled his somewhat shaken frame up at attention.