The Guns of August (75 page)

At GQG a report from Castelnau was received which seemed to threaten disaster even before the offensive could begin. Pressure was so severe that he felt he might be forced to evacuate Nancy. Joffre ordered him to hold for another twenty-four hours before making a decision, but agreed that if it then seemed unavoidable, he approved the second line of defense suggested in Castelnau’s letter.

In transferring one corps from the Third Army and two corps from the Moselle front, Joffre had taken a grave risk in order to gain this time the numerical superiority which he had not had for the opening offensive. The reinforcements were not yet in the battle line. When it came to informing the government of the decision to fight, Joffre carefully included an alibi for himself in case of failure. His telegram to the President and Premier said, “Gallieni having attacked prematurely, I have given the order to suspend the retreat and, in my turn,
resume the offensive.” Afterward, at a time when Joffre was systematically trying to minimize Gallieni’s role at the Marne and even expunge certain things from the records, this telegram was unearthed by Briand and shown to Gallieni. “That ‘prematurely’ is worth gold,” he said.

On the morning of September 5 Joffre’s uncertainty about British intentions became “altogether agonizing.” He begged Millerand by telegram to exert the government’s influence. The imminent battle “can have decisive results but in case of a reverse can also have the gravest consequences for the country .… I count on you to call the Field Marshal’s attention to the decisive importance of an offensive without
arrière-pensée.
If I could give orders to the English Army as I could to the French Army in the same position, I would pass immediately to the attack.”

At three o’clock that morning Henry Wilson received Order No. 6 from Huguet who, however, did not permit Captain de Galbert, the officer who brought it, to see any of the British chiefs. At the center of every discord during this period, with a curiously malign consistency, the figure of Huguet appears. Deciding that the situation required someone of higher rank, Captain de Galbert started back at once for GQG. At 7:00
A.M.
Wilson took the Order to Sir John French and during the course of the morning persuaded him to cooperate. Meanwhile de Galbert arrived back at GQG at 9:30 with no definite news but with a report that British sentiment seemed “lukewarm” toward an offensive. The Mayor of Melun had told him Sir John French’s baggage was being moved back to Fontainebleau.

Joffre felt he must have the British Army in the battle line “at any price,” even at the price of motoring the 115 miles to Melun. Sending a telephone message ahead to expect him, he set out with his aide and two staff officers. Despite roadblocks and the ineluctable stop for lunch, his racing chauffeur brought him to the château where Sir John French was quartered by 2:00
P.M.

The Field Marshal was standing at a table waiting for him flanked by Murray, Wilson, Huguet, “looking as usual as if he
had lost his last friend,” and several other members of his staff. Joffre walked over and for once took the floor at the outset. Instead of his usual laconic sentences, a passionate flood of speech poured forth punctuated by a gesture of his forearms which “seemed to throw his heart on the table.” He said the “supreme moment” had arrived, his own orders were given and whatever happened the last company of the French Army would be thrown into the battle to save France. The “lives of all French people, the soil of France, the future of Europe” depended upon the offensive. “I cannot believe the British Army will refuse to do its share in this supreme crisis … history would severely judge your absence.”

Joffre’s fist crashed down on the table. “
Monsieur le Maréchal,
the honor of England is at stake!”

At these words Sir John French, who had been listening with “passionate attention,” suddenly reddened. Silence fell on the company. Slowly tears came into the eyes of the British Commander in Chief and rolled down his cheeks. He struggled to say something in French and gave up. “Damn it, I can’t explain. Tell him we will do all we possibly can.”

Joffre looked inquiringly at Wilson who translated, “The Field Marshal says ‘Yes.’” It was hardly needed, for the tears and the tone already carried conviction. Murray hurriedly put in that the British troops were now ten miles farther back than the positions called for in the Order and could start only at 9:00
A.M.
, not 6:00, as Joffre asked. It was a voice of caution that would continue to make itself felt. Joffre shrugged. “It cannot be helped. I have the Field Marshal’s word, that is enough.” Tea was then served.

The move of GQG to Chatillon-sur-Seine, planned before the offensive, had been accomplished during his absence. Joffre returned there by evening, about the time Colonel Hentsch was warning von Kluck. Entering the Operations Room to confirm a decision already taken, Joffre said to the assembled officers, “Gentlemen, we will fight on the Marne.”

He signed the order that would be read to the troops when the bugles blew next morning. Ordinarily the French language, especially in public pronouncements, requires an effort
if it is not to sound splendid, but this time the words were flat, almost tired; the message hard and uncompromising: “Now, as the battle is joined on which the safety of the country depends, everyone must be reminded that this is no longer the time for looking back. Every effort must be made to attack and throw back the enemy. A unit which finds it impossible to advance must, regardless of cost, hold its ground and be killed on the spot rather than fall back. In the present circumstances no failure will be tolerated.”

That was all; the time for splendor was past. It did not shout “Forward!” or summon men to glory. After the first thirty days of war in 1914, there was a premonition that little glory lay ahead.

T
HE BATTLE OF THE
M
ARNE,
as all the world knows, ended in a German retreat. Between the Ourcq and the Grand Morin, in the four days that were left of their schedule, the Germans lost their bid for “decisive victory” and thereby their opportunity to win the the war. For France, for the Allies, in the long run for the world, the tragedy of the Marne was that it fell short of the victory it might have been.

Maunoury’s attack on the German flank and von Kluck’s turnabout to meet it opened a gap between the German First and Second Armies. The issue of the battle depended on whether the Germans could succeed in crushing the two wings—Maunoury and Foch—before Franchet d’Esperey and the British succeeded in exploiting the gap and pushing through the German center. Maunoury, when almost defeated by Kluck, was reinforced by the IVth Corps, of whom 6,000 detraining in Paris were rushed to the front by Gallieni in taxis, and managed to hold his ground. Foch, pressed hard in the Marshes of St. Gond by Hausen’s Army and part of Bülow’s, at a critical moment when his right was driven back and his left ceding, gave his famous order, “Attack, whatever happens! The Germans are at the extreme limit of their efforts .… Victory will come to the side that outlasts the other!” Franchet d’Esperey pushed back Bülow’s right; the British entered the gap too slowly and hesitantly; Colonel Hentsch made his historic reappearance to counsel retreat,
and the German Armies withdrew in time to avoid a piercing of their line.

So close had the Germans come to victory, so near the French to disaster, so great, in the preceding days, had been the astonished dismay of the world as it watched the relentless advance of the Germans and the retreat of the Allies on Paris, that the battle that turned the tide came to be known as the Miracle of the Marne. Henri Bergson, who had once formulated for France the
mystique
of “will,” saw in it something of a miracle that had happened once before: “Joan of Arc won the Battle of the Marne,” was his verdict. The enemy, suddenly halted as if by a stone wall springing up overnight, felt it too. “French
élan,
just when it is on the point of being extinguished, flames up powerfully,” wrote Moltke sorrowfully to his wife during the battle. The basic reason for German failure at the Marne, “the reason that transcends all others,” said Kluck afterward, was “the extraordinary and peculiar aptitude of the French soldier to recover quickly. That men will let themselves be killed where they stand, that is a well-known thing and counted on in every plan of battle. But that men who have retreated for ten days, sleeping on the ground and half dead with fatigue, should be able to take up their rifles and attack when the bugle sounds, is a thing upon which we never counted. It was a possibility not studied in our war academy.”

Bergson notwithstanding, it was no miracle but the inherent ifs, errors, and commitments of the first month that determined the issue at the Marne. Kluck notwithstanding, faults of German command contributed as much as the verve of the French soldier to the outcome. If the Germans had not withdrawn two corps to send against the Russians, one of the two would have been on Bülow’s right and might have filled the gap between him and Kluck; the other would have been with Hausen and might have provided the extra strength to overwhelm Foch. Russia’s loyal launching of an unready offensive drew those troops away and was given tribute by Colonel Dupont, French Chief of Intelligence. “Let us render to our
Allies,” he said, “the homage that is their due, for one of the elements of our victory was their debacle.”

Other “ifs” accumulated. If the Germans had not committed too much strength to the attempt at double envelopment by the left wing, if the right wing had not outrun its supplies and exhausted its men, if Kluck had stayed level with Bülow, if, even on the last day, he had marched back across the Marne instead of forward to the Grand Morin, the decision of the Mame might have been different and the six-week schedule for victory over France achieved—might have been, that is, except for the first and decisive “if”: if the six-week schedule itself had not been based on a march through Belgium. Quite apart from the effect upon the war as a whole of bringing Britain in, and the ultimate effect on world opinion, the addition of Belgium as an enemy reduced the number of German divisions that came up to the Marne and added five British divisions to the Allied line.

At the Marne the Allies achieved the numerical superiority they had not been able to muster at any one point in the Battle of the Frontiers. The missing German divisions were partly responsible, and the balance was tipped by the added French divisions drawn from the Third Army and from the embattled and unflinching armies of Castelnau and Dubail. All during the retreat while the other armies were giving ground, these two held shut the eastern door of France. For eighteen days they fought an almost continuous battle until, finally acknowledging failure too late, Moltke called off the attack on the French fortress line on September 8. If the French First and Second Armies had given way at any point, if they had weakened under Rupprecht’s final onslaught of September 3, the Germans would have won their Cannae and there would have been no opportunity for a French counter-offensive on the Marne, the Seine, or anywhere else. If there was a miracle of the Marne, it was made possible on the Moselle.

Without Joffre no Allied line would have existed to bar the German path. It was his impregnable confidence during the tragic and terrible twelve days of retreat that prevented the French Armies from disintegrating into a shattered
and fragmentary mass. A more brilliant, more quick-thinking commander with ideas of his own might have avoided basic initial errors, but after the debacle the one thing France needed Joffre had. It is difficult to imagine any other man who could have brought the French Armies out of retreat, in condition and position to fight again. When the moment to turn came, alone he would have been insufficient. The stand he contemplated at the Seine might well have come too late. It was Gallieni who saw the opportunity and, with a powerful assist from Franchet d’Esperey, provoked the earlier counter-offensive. It was the broken figure of Lanrezac, allowed no share at the Marne, who in saving France from the original folly of Plan 17 made recovery possible. Ironically, both his decision at Charleroi and his replacement by Franchet d’Esperey were equally necessary to the counter-offensive. But it was Joffre, whom nothing could panic, who provided the army to fight it. “If we had not had him in 1914,” said Foch, his ultimate successor, “I don’t know what would have become of us.”

The world remembers the battle ever since by the taxis. A hundred of them were already in the service of the Military Government of Paris. With 500 more, each carrying five soldiers and making the sixty-kilometer trip to the Ourcq twice, General Clergerie figured he could transport 6,000 troops to the hard-pressed front. The order was issued at 1:00
P.M.
, the hour for departure fixed for 6:00
P.M.
Police passed the word to the taxis in the streets. Enthusiastically the chauffeurs emptied out their passengers, explaining proudly that they had to “go to the battle.” Returning to their garages for gas, they were ordered to the place of assembly where at the given time all 600 were lined up in perfect order. Gallieni, called to inspect them, though rarely demonstrative, was enchanted.
“Eh bien, voilà au moins qui n’est pas banal!”
(Well, here at least is something out of the ordinary!) he cried. Each with its burden of soldiers, with trucks, buses, and assorted vehicles added to the train, the taxis drove off, as evening fell—the last gallantry of 1914, the last crusade of the old world.

After the incomplete victory of the Marne there followed the German retreat to the Aisne, the race to the sea for possession
of the Channel ports, the fall of Antwerp, and the Battle of Ypres where officers and men of the BEF held their ground, fought literally until they died, and stopped the Germans in Flanders. Not Mons or the Marne but Ypres was the real monument to British valor, as well as the grave of four-fifths of the original BEF. After it, with the advent of winter, came the slow deadly sinking into the stalemate of trench warfare. Running from Switzerland to the Channel like a gangrenous wound across French and Belgian territory, the trenches determined the war of position and attrition, the brutal, mud-filled, murderous insanity known as the Western Front that was to last for four more years.