Verdun to the Vosges: Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France

Verdun to the Vosges: Impressions of the War on the Fortress Frontier of France

At the beginning of September, 1914, I was commissioned by The Times to go to France as its representative on the eastern frontier, and it so happens that, during the war, no other English newspaper correspondent has been stationed for any length of time on the long section of the front between Verdun and Belfort. One or two paid flying visits to Lorraine after I was settled there, but they were birds of passage, and were off again almost as soon as they arrived. In collecting the material for my despatches and letters I was helped more than I can say by my colleague, Monsieur Fleury Lamure, a French journalist who had already worked for The Times in Belgium, where he spent some exciting days in August dodging about in front of the armies of von Kluck, von Bulow, and von Hausen as they advanced on Charleroi and Namur. Before the war he had served two years as an engineer officer in the French and Russian navies, and had also worked in Manchuria and the Near East, first as interpreter to General Silvestre, the French military attach at Kuropatkins headquarters, and then as correspondent of the Novoe Vremya, with the Servians, in the second Balkan war. In the course of our wanderings together we found that the French military and civil authorities highly appreciated the fact that the newspaper which vimost of them consider the greatest of English journals had associated a Frenchman with me in the work of writing about the operations of their frontier force. From the first our path was smoothed by what they looked upon as a graceful and sensible act on the part of the Editor. At a later stage in the war my French colleague, who has been twice rform as unfit for the active exercise of his profession, offered himself at the Admiralty in Paris for one of the auxiliary forces, but was told that the best thing he could do for his country was to go on working for The Times. From September, 1914, to January, 1915, after which no correspondents were allowed in the zone of the armies, we made our headquarters at Nancy. Between us, at various times, we visited a large part of the front from Verdun to Ferette, close to the Swiss frontier, and only fifteen or twenty miles from the Rhine. Sometimes we were in the trenches, bout portant of the enemys rifles, and for four months hardly a day or a night passed when we did not hear the sound of the guns. From what we saw and from what we heard from those who took an active part in it, we were able to get what is, I believe, a fairly correct idea of the general run of the fighting on both sides of the frontier. We were well placed, not only for judging the temper of the civil population of the invaded provinces, but also the spirit and fighting qualities of their defenders. Before we came to Lorraine we had both seen a little of the early fighting in Belgiumat Namur and Mons, and Charleroi and Dinant. But it was at Nancy that I really got to know something of French soldiers and learnt to admire the wonderful cheerfulness and courage of the XXth Army Corps and the other splendid viitroops who talked with the enemy in the gate of France, and blocked the passage with their dead bodies. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57606
Author: Campbell, Gerald
Release Date: Jul 30, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English