Verdun : Reputations

[phil andrade]

If you want an ego - and I don't mean that in a critical way - read Mangin's Lettres de Guerre. He had the highest opinion of himself and his abilities. His letters really gallop along. He comes over as an extraordinarily powerful personality.

I have come to appreciate Pétain's very precise history of the Battle of Verdun more as I have got to know more about the battle itself. Like the authors of the French Official History, he says a lot in few words.

Christina

How gratifying it is, Christina, to have my opinion of Petain, formed on a very brief browse through some passages of his history, endorsed by you . Haig made much of the fact that Petain was a man of few words - unusual for a Frenchman, he remarked !

How interesting it would be to compare Mangin with some other martial fire eaters : Patton comes to mind straight away, and there must be plenty of other examples, ancient and modern. Verdun - perhaps more than any other battle in history - has the notoriety of eliminating the individual, and reducing the soldier to canon fodder. Against this backdrop the individual reputations of a few are thrown into high relief - Mangin stands out. Who else would you select to stand alongside him, and Driant, as pre-eminent individuals in a struggle of epic anonymity ?

Phil

Edit : for the next six days I'll be fishing in Scotland, so please don't take any silence on my part amiss.

[Christina Holstein]

What a question. I can't begin to answer that on what I know about senior commanders at the moment. Perhaps we could come back to it in a year or two!

Christina

[Chris Boonzaier]

As regards the Avocourt battle in March 1916, Petain considered the troops in Avocourt wood to be of doubtful value and was not surprised at what happened there. I have a quotation somewhere from him about undesirable elements that were likely to fall at the first push but I can't find it at the moment.

Indeed,

Helping the flamethrowers in this case were a few other factors.

1) Just as the Saxons were supposedly the weak link in the German chain, the divisions from the South of France were considered by the French to be the weak link of the French army... these were from pretty far South...

2) Before the battle started there were reports that men of one of the regiments were planning to desert, the moral was very low.

3) It was like being between a rock and a hard place, the French knew of the weakness and it worried them very much... but it worried them even more to think what would happen if they rotated a unit out of the line because of Mauvais Esprit... and word got out that "it worked!"

They decided to leave the units in place...

[bob lembke]

Helping the flamethrowers in this case were a few other factors.

FW are probably the topic of WW I that I am most interested in, as my father fought with the devices at Verdun, being wounded there twice in the process (and twice at Reims). But I do understand that it was a "minor" weapon, and that one factor in its effectiveness (as used by the Germans) was its use only occasionally, enhancing its surprise and shock value, and rarely enough so that more effective counter-measures were not developed or made a lot of sense. It was not the be-all and end-all, but when used intelligently often was very effective.

In this engagement, as we are talking about tired, probably third-rate troops, one can imagine the effect of, after a violent seven-hour artillery and mortar barrage, a fierce infantry attack led by 63 flame-throwers, including eight very large Grof models, on a limited front. As used by the Germans, FW led from the front, and in this engagement they had (for them) extremely severe losses, indicating extensive use. The collapse and wholesale capture of an entire brigade or regulars and additionally a battalion of Territorials (III./Terr. 106) in one hour clearly was very unusual.

1) Just as the Saxons were supposedly the weak link in the German chain, the divisions from the South of France were considered by the French to be the weak link of the French army... these were from pretty far South...

2) Before the battle started there were reports that men of one of the regiments were planning to desert, the moral was very low.

The French book Verdun, by Blond, indicates that the French command, not really having a lot of information, even suspected treachery, and I had heard that the brigade commander might have been an ethnic German, or at least seemed to be. One of the unit diaries Chris has kindly led me to identifies him as colonel Brumm, verifying that, and that certainly must have enhanced that suspicion.

3) It was like being between a rock and a hard place, the French knew of the weakness and it worried them very much... but it worried them even more to think what would happen if they rotated a unit out of the line because of Mauvais Esprit... and word got out that "it worked!"

They decided to leave the units in place...

I very much appreciate Chris's help in leading me to more sources; I just counted, not including the new ones he has led me to, my timeline lists 30 seperate sources on this battle that I have identified and noted there. I have partially printed off some of the war diaries that I have been led to, but will only study them after I finish a major source that I am working on for the topic that I am presently writing up, which now is days away. This thread has led me to several new sources and lines of investigation. But I will only conclusively study this interesting engagement and write it up when I finish my book on my father and grand-father, the one of most interest to me, and the one that only I can write. I hop about much too much over the topics that I am fascinated in, and have planned nine books, and have actively worked on about four of them, and I will surely drop dead before I finish my program. It will be a couple of years before I work extensively on engagements at Verdun that my father did not participate in, and on March 20 he had not yet arrived there, or in France at all.

Bob