First Hand Accounts of the 151e R.I.
2nd Lieutenant Raymond Jubert
(Private Jubert, 91st R.I., before being transferred to the 151st.)
Raymond Armand Alexis Jubert had never served in the military. He had been exempt from universal service as was studying to become an attorney. Yet when the call went out for mobilization, he voluntarily enlisted in September 1914 at the age of 25. First serving with the 91st RI, he received a promotion to aspirant ("junior officer") and a transfer to the 151st RI in April 1915. His baptism of fire with the "15-1" was in the forests of the Argonne, where he received his first wound and lost his younger brother, whoes body would never be recovered. In November 1915, he received another promotion to Second-Lieutenant. Jubert served with the regiment through the Chemin-des-Dames offensive and four tours at Verdun until his death there on 26 August 1917 in Chaume Wood. The tone of his writings changes dramatically while at Verdun in 1916. Before being sent into "the furnace," idealism and nationalistic themes can be clearly seen in his letters. After only a few days at Le Mort-Homme, dissolutionment, shock and terror have ravaged Jubert.
The following account is taken from Jubert's memoirs, which were written during and immediately after he fought at Verdun in 1916. He is assigned to the 11th Company (3rd Batt.).
I. Feb. 26 to March 29, 1916:
Côte de Froide-Terre, Bois Nawé/Carrières d'Haudraumont
II. April _ to _, 1916:
Le Mort-Homme
Detail of the 151sts sector on the Right bank at Verdun. To the left [west] of Douaumont village is Bois Nawé; above it, Bois d'Haudraumont and Bois des Caurettes blanket the slopes of the Haudraumont Heights. Côte Froid-Terre is at the bottom center.
The regiment is on rest in Vitry-le-François (about 40 km due west of Bar-le-Duc) when it is ordered to Verdun, roughly 65 km away.
After a long forced march through under snow squalls and rain showers, through freezing temperatures and muddy roads, the regiment arrived at Verdun around 3:00 am on February 26. It is to relieve the severely battered 39th D.I. General Deville (commader of the 42nd D.I.) holds a meeting with all the officers of the 151st at the town hall. In a broken, ill-tempered voice, Deville addressed the exhausted yet composed crowd in grim terms:
"Messieurs, Verdun is threatened. You are at Verdun and you are the Verdun Brigade. I won't hide the truth from you; we've been surprised...I won't hide the mistakes from you; we must fix them...The situation was desperate; it still isn't resolved. The sector that we're taking up? Chaos...This life which awaits us? Battle...The trenches? They don't exist...Don't ask me for material: I don't have any...Reinforcements: there aren't any...Bon courage, messieurs!"
With that, General Deville departed, leaving his audience in a chilled silence. A short while later, with the regiment assembled, the men departed Verdun with the thundering of canons all around. As the column passes through the ruins, the glow of fires light the way in the consuming darkness. In his almsot peotic style, Jubert records the scene:
"We've crossed the Meuse -- broad, noisy, sinister -- its moving, bloody mirror running by the last blazes...This procession of shadows departing from the ruins of the dead town, this silent army of spectres marching toward the canons, had a Dantesque grandeur."
The regiment sees their first shell burst when they reach Fort Belleville. At the same time, snow began to fall again. 3 km further on, From the Belleville Heights, Jubert can see the neighboring villages of Bras and Charny in front, and to the east, Fleury. A blanket of snow covered the ground and shone pink in the night, reflecting the flickering glow of the bombardments, the blazing fires and the descending flares. Jubert's company (11th) is held in reserve on the Côte Froid-Terre ("Froid-Terre Hill") as other elements of the regiment are sent forward to the first lines in Bois Nawé ("Nawé Wood") and the lower slopes of the Haudraumont Heights [Carrières d'Haudraumont or "Haudraumont Quarries"], behind the Bras-Douaumont Road (about 2 km due north). The Germans occupied the crest of Haudraumont Heights.
Appearing on the top edge of the map is Bois d'Haudraumont and the Carrières d'Haudraumont. The Ravin de la Couleuvre and de la Dame are located on the right [eastern] border of Bois Nawé. The Ouvrage ["fort"] de Froid-Terre is at the bottom left.
Jubert takes up a shelter made of sticks with some shovelfuls of earth thrown on top and a tent-canvas for a door. Falling asleep for several hours, he was rudely awoken by three 150s which landed only 15 meters away. Jubert reasoned that since both daylight and rain pass through with ease, shrapnel shouldn't have any trouble either. For several days, their positions remain under fire.
"These daily bombardments had served as a lesson. We were under the eyes of the airplanes. The hawk, after spotting us, throws down a thunderbolt. We learned to ide ourselves out of view...security became the law of the land. The blood of the victims, that continued to spread further each day, wrote this lesson out on the soil. Hurry! Carelessness and laziness had taken the form of suffering and death all too frequently..."
On one day, Jubert and his men watched, fascinated, as a French observation balloon (referred to as a "sausage") snapped its tether and drifted helplessly toward the German lines. Two German planes appeared on an intercept course, followed by two French ones going out to engage them. The men observe breathlessly as the balloon pilot, appearing as a black dot, leaps from the pilot box and falls. A few moments later, they see a parachute open and the unfortunate man slowly descends through a hail of bullets. The balloonist then dispersed his papers into the air and tossed his camera away. Just then, the wind shifts directions and begins blowing the man back toward French lines. Jubert and his men erupt in applause as the balloonist had seemingly beaten fate. Reflecting on the jesting some of his men made at the expense of the balloonist in his moment of peril, Jubert remarked:
"The soldier is without pity. Himself a victim of misfortune, he keeps on laughing, and the misfortune of others distracts him momentarily from his own."
The days on the Froid-Terre Hill were difficult. During the daylight hours, the men were forced to keep out of sight for their own safety and toiled in the saps. At night, they carried out munitions and resupply fatigues to and from the first lines. In such a life, sleep came infrequently and fragmented. The fatigues at night took place along supply routes that were often shelled. In the confusing darkness, over the devastated ground, the parties often became lost and overshot the French advance posts.
"For 3 km all around, a distinct zone rose up, where flares, spotlights, canon flashes, the flickering flames of fires, put on their show in the distant setting of a glowing fog. 'The vestibule of Hell,' says La Ferrière. It truly was that, a luminosity from beyond, a working of Dante, a vision of fantasy on a field of death."
Jubert lead several fatigues himself between the first and reserve lines. At one spot, an Austrian 88 fired at regular intervals: 3 shells in three minutes. The space needed to covered in a single rush. The task was more difficult than might be imagined.
"Yes, but to descend down 300 meters of a hillside with a steep grade, striding over the thousand obstacles of a felled forest, in the night, up to your head in branches, the heavy, unstable burden on your back, the restricted legs exposed to the unknown, threatened by death which operates like clockwork."
The same routes became well circulated and were normally under bombardment. From the Froid-Terre Hill, the fatigue parties normally had to pass through the Ravin de la Dame ("Lady's Ravine") [the "Death Ravine, as it was known] and often followed the Bras-Douaumont Road. Jubert mentions one fatigue where they followed the Couleuvre Ravine (the "Colonel's Ravine," as they rechristened it). A brook ran along the bottom of the ravine, which was filled with the bloated carcasses of horses. Passing through this blighted land of smashed carriages and destroyed trucks, they reached the Bras-Douaumont Road, behind which two battalions of the 151st (the 1st and 3rd) were in-line defending the Haudraumont Quarries.
On another occasion, Jubert lead a resupply party along the same road, passing la Folie, the town of Bras (which was under bombardment) and its ravaged cemetery, where the graves had been torn open and the human remains inside exposed. Passing Côte du Poivre ["Pepper Hill"] on their left, they followed the progress of the German bombardment on the hill. Suddenly, they came upon of dead bodies and one of the men shouted out: "Boches!"
"There they are, a dozen lined up by our feet, motionless, stiffened into an eternal position of attention. I have to work hard to keep my men from snatching off button.'We'd like to make you a nice ring out of them, lieutenant.'
"
Suddenly spotting their party, the Germans began to fire shrapnel shells down on them, so the group hurries on and moves out of the German's view. Making their way along the road, a group of dark forms begins to take shape. As they approach closer, their straining eyes make out a sad scene:
"On the road, two vehicles with their slaughtered horses. All around them, with ration sacks lying next to them, eight bodies: the fatigue men from a different company struck down in the course of their chore. Among those inert masses, two things are moving. One is crawling off the road toward the ditch, crying. It's a wounded man with his legs broken, the only one of the group spared from death. And in the other direction, a small keg of wine rolls slowly down the road, coming to rest against a body."
On March 15, Jubert's company leaves Froid-Terre Hill and is sent up to the regiment's first line positions. While at Froid-Terre they had suffered daily casualties from the shelling. The men were eager to go up to the first lines. In their opinion, being in the reserve lines was worse since they were generally under bombardment from heavier caliber shells. Because the enemy's own first lines were close to the French ones, their artillery generally used lighter caliber shells against these positions. While the threat of being attacked by the enemy infantry was greater in the first line, the men were more concerned about the shelling, and rightly so. At any rate, Jubert reasoned that: "A man's health was no longer a question of shells. It depended on his vigilance: a little in his heart and a lot in his eyes." Fortunately for the 151st, the main thrust of the German attacks had shifted to the left bank at this time.
Jubert's company moved halfway up the slope of the Haudraumont Heights, the flank of which was exposed to the enemy's view.
"Here, no one passes during the day; death stops all movement. At night, it strikes at whim, any time it wishes. The slightest snapping of a twig under our feet freezes us for a long moment in anguish. A flare in the sky! The entire length of this serpent of men freezes motionless."
The position given to the 151st to hold was a bad one. The trenches were dug hastily, in spite of all tactical thought, on the exposed flank of a hill open to enfilading fire from above. It was isolated from the rest of surrounding trench system by 150 meters of open ground. No liaison was possible during the day and at night, it was difficult at best. There was the threat of enemy attack whose own positions were very close by. The trenches were very shallow (no more than a meter in depth) and to pass through safely, the men had to bend over. In certain sections, it was necessary to crawl.
The only shelters that existed were small niches scraped into the walls of the trench, which also served to undermine the walls and make them more prone to collapse under a shell blast. During the day, the men kept themselves hidden to avoid drawing enemy fire. All work and movement had to be done at night. The officers reminded their men of the lesson they had learned while at Froid-Terre: "Only work will save you from death." So the men set about trying to deepen and strengthen their positions when they could. The officers had to make the best of the only command post in the area, which was woefully inadequate as is evident from Jubert's description:
"I lift up the four tent-canvases that hide the light inside from enemy view. A warm odor, a yellow light, filled with dust...I get a glimpse of bare, rigid, strained necks, torsos, ankles and thighs, and raised toward me as though in the grips of an agonizing hatred, white faces with bloody bandages, whose motuhs twist and convulse in a monochord moan...Everything is kept here. The communication post, the officers' quarters, the quarters of the men of this section, the liaison's shelter, the telephone post, the material depot, the supplies room, the munitions shelter...and this is also the morgue and the first-aid post, since we can only carry out the wounded at night."
Colonel Moisson's address to Jubert and his men refelcted the grim situation.
" 'You have a mission of sacrifice. The post of honor is here, where they wish to attack. You'll have losses every day, for they'll harass our positions. On the day that they wish, they will slaughter you down to the last man, and it is your duty to fall.' "
Shells passed over them without respite. Most did not land on their positions directly but on neighboring ones. Nevertheless, casualties started to mount throughout the night. Just as Jubert's men began toiling away on their shallow trench, a shell exploded level with the parapet, injuring several of them.
"This evening, as we've seen the evening before and all the evenings since we got here, a procession of bloody faces will pass in front of us."
The following day, the heavy, violent bombardments continued to rage on. Oddly enough, these were not the major source of losses that Jubert's company suffered. Rather, it was the isolated shell striking unexpectedly at night.
"Every evening, while assigning work to our men, we were full of foreboding and had to keep our voices from trembling. We felt though that we'd made the first choice randomly, the preliminary drawing for this death lottery. It mustn't take an hour to count out his victims on his second hand. A certain number of losses then followed as determined by fate, and were added to those suffered at Froid-Terre, giving the company a tragic reputation in the regiment . . .We truly were those condemned to death. No one wants to hang around us for fear of being caught by surprise. The fatigue men who come at night care less about our needs than for their own safety and the verification of their charge seeming to them unnecessary, they run off as quickly as possible. Anxious for our departure, only Captain Tison is obstinate on visiting this corner each night, when we tell him our losses . . .
Nowhere else had I felt such a sensation of isolation and stupefaction as I did at Haudraumont. Reduced to just Ganot and me, comradery no longer sufficed. At one time we made small talk with each other, [but] the monotony of the days, even the permanence of danger, had ended this. We kept quiet. We had lost our light-heartedness. Our faces were grave and tense. We had lost our appetite. The only way to take away the boredom is to go to sleep.
"
On one night, Jubert is sent out with three men to ascertain exactly what types of artillery pieces were abandoned between the lines. Taking a ditch past some old bombed-out shelters, they passed beyond the French advanced posts. Gun-shots rang out as they skirted along Haudraumont Heights and then arrived at the Lady's Ravine. Here, they could hear the sound of the enemy all around them; their foot-steps and gutural calls. Jubert's patrol was spotted and came under fire. Five 88s also opened up above them. "Do we keep going?" one of Jubert's men asks. "Yes, crawl, but be sure to not go astray," Jubert responds. But none of them budge from their spot. They had spotted the dark form of a German sentinel, only six feet away. The sentinel, seated with his rifle in his hands, remained still.
" 'You'd think he was sleeping. Should I fire, lieutenant?' --- 'Hit him in the throat.' [But] it was only a corpse, which had tumbled over clutchingits rifle. In this strange pose, it was the frozen sentinel of the dead who now has taken up post at the valley."
A little further on, the group approached the outer positions of the 88s, marked by their carts, which were still firing away. More entries coming...
