Verdun 1916: Colonel Driant

At 7am on the 21st February 1916 the Bois des Caures erupted in a deluge of high-explosive which pulverised the earth, tore the trees to shreds and vaporised the waiting French Chasseurs in their bunkers and foxholes. By mid-day over 80,000 shells had fallen in a rectangle 500 by 1,000 metres. The noise could be heard 70 kilometres away. The edges of the craters overlapped, giving the landscape a lunar effect which still marks the ground to this day.

The inferno in the Bois des Caures started the Battle of Verdun, a ten-month ordeal which cost the French and the Germans 300,000 dead and twice that number of injured, most of them mangled beyond belief by huge lumps of whirling iron. Others died or were disabled for life by gas, flamethrower, bayonet, bludgeon, trench-knife, exposure to temperatures of minus 20, drowning in shell-holes and waterlogged ravines... and thirst during the scorching summer days when there was no water to be had and no way of getting any to the men in the semi-mountainous battlefield.

Verdun was described by its architect, Von Falkenhayn, as a ‘mincing machine’ and by the French army – three-quarters of whose men served there – as ‘the mill on the Meuse’. Von Falkenhayn’s idea was to threaten a key bastion which the French simply would not surrender and to use his overwhelming superiority in heavy artillery to ‘bleed them white’. This was the first and last time that a general planned a campaign with the sole objective of killing soldiers rather than capturing territory. It didn’t work. The French fought better than the Germans expected; by Christmas the Kaiser’s men were back where they started.

Verdun has been compared to Stalingrad – a well-equipped and meticulously-organised German onslaught meeting head-on with an enemy who would not give in, no matter what. The 100 square kilometres of the Verdun battlefield have the distinction of witnessing more fatalities per square metre than any other battlefield in history; 100,000 of these dead soldiers are still there, lost and undiscovered, somewhere underneath the earth churned up by 60 million shells.

The Chasseurs surprised the Germans on the 21st February by emerging from their subterranean hide-outs and laying into the masses of approaching field-grey with machine guns and well-aimed rifle-fire. They formed counter-attack parties under their Colonel’s cheerful leadership and re-captured pockets of the front line which had been obliterated by the storm of shellfire. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It delayed the German advance by nearly two days, which gave the French high command enough time to bring up reserves. It took another ten months for the French to win the Battle of Verdun, but it could easily have been lost on the first day, had it not been for Colonel Driant and his 1,500 troops.

Driant was a singular man. A native of Lorraine and a career soldier, he was passed over for promotion and resigned his commission to pursue a career in politics as a local deputy. On the outbreak of war in 1914 he re-joined the army and was given command of the Chasseurs (light infantry) in the Bois des Caures. He and his men played their part in the ‘Miracle of the Marne’, when Von Falkenhayn lost his nerve and ordered the his army to turn south before it reached Paris. Verdun was the ‘hinge’ of the French counter-attack which swung north and fought the Germans to a standstill.

From then on, for three-and-a-half years, the Germans stood on the defensive: digging deeper and deeper, pouring millions of tonnes of concrete, installing thousands of machine-gun posts, erecting hectares of barbed wire, constructing two, three and four consecutive lines of support trenches – while the French and British, with their colonial allies, squandered hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ lives in futile attacks on these impermeable defences.

Driant knew the Verdun area and knew what was coming. He designed a novel defensive system for his Chasseurs on their thickly-wooded hillside: blockhouses, bunkers and short, interlocking trenches, with carefully-planned fields of fire to provide mutual support. He told the French high command again and again that a massive attack was imminent: they instructed him to be silent. He used his political contacts to try to make the high command see sense: this provoked one of Joffre’s rare displays of emotion – he flew into a rage. Joffre also ordered the removal of the guns in the forts protecting the city. By the time the Germans attacked, Verdun’s concentric rings of 30 fortifications and ‘ouvrages’ could not shoot back.

There can be no excuse for the stupidity of the French high command. There is probably no excuse for the arrogance of the German high command: they believed they had thought of everything – eight railways supplying their jumping-off point (the French had only three, of which two were cut by gunfire); a mammoth artillery and logistics enterprise, with guns capable of throwing one-tonne projectiles 20 kilometres; overwhelming superiority in manpower; innovations like flamethrowers – used for the first time at Verdun – and soldiers who believed they would be able to walk into the French positions with their rifles slung. It all came to nothing: the French didn’t lose the territorial battle and the Germans didn’t win the battle of attrition.

Verdun nevertheless marked a turning-point in the First World War. The German high command’s self-confidence was shaken. The drain on the German economy was severe. The German army knew it had failed. Conversely, Verdun proved to the French high command that its doctrine of blind aggression was right. The mutinies in 1917 showed that the French army did not agree with its leaders; villages throughout France, still de-populated 100 years later, spell out the price paid by the French for their generals’ fixed ideas.

Colonel Driant died as he may have wished – indeed, as many of us may wish. He got up early on the morning of the 21st February knowing exactly what lay in store for him and his beloved Chasseurs. He gave his wedding ring to an aide with instructions to deliver it to Madame Driant. As the torrent of German missiles exploded around him, he made a point of walking calmly from bunker to bunker, foxhole to foxhole, cheering up his men with jokes and encouraging words. He stood on top of his command post, smiling, and congratulated his men on their marksmanship. He was shot in the head as he bandaged a wounded Chasseur and died at once.

Only 100 of the Chasseurs survived the Battle of the Bois des Caures. Colonel Driant’s body was found later by a German officer who collected his personal belongings and sent them back to his wife in Germany; she sent them to Madame Driant with a letter of sympathy.

You can visit Colonel Driant’s command post today: it still stands there, battered but intact, surrounded by bushes and trees which have taken root in the craters. At this time of year it is covered with wreaths, bouquets and small French flags.