To break the agonizing stalemate that World War 1 had become, the German Empire infiltrated the most
protected fortification on Earth, Fort Douaumont, capturing it without firing a single shot.
This gave them the confidence to go after the rest of the French forts in
the highly protected region of Verdun. When the German 12th Grenadier Regiment
prepared to storm the nearby Fort Vaux, merely a fraction of the size of Douaumont,
they expected little resistance. They also believed that seizing the fort would
lure the French troops out of their trenches, shifting the fate of the war in Germany’s favor.
As the relentless shelling had rendered Fort Vaux’s field guns useless, all the
French forces had to defend themselves were machine guns, grenades, and rifles.
Moreover, the garrison inside the fort was led by Commandant Sylvain Eugène Raynal,
a 49-year-old veteran bound to a walking cane who had bravely volunteered to oversee the stronghold.
Even so, the disabled commander would soon lead 600 fearless men into battle against thousands
of Germans, in what became one of the most brutal and heroic defensive efforts of the war…
Stalemate
The War to End All Wars had been devastating Europe for two years, and after significant
territorial gains in the beginning, the Germans were eventually stopped by the Allies.
The conflict devolved into a ruthless war of attrition in which each side
hunkered down in their trenches with little hope of breaking the deadlock.
The situation was alarming for the German Empire;
the Allies were only getting stronger, and the United States could join the war any moment now.
The Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, understood that the French
could no longer be defeated by a single decisive battle; still, he was confident
that they could be forced to surrender if they suffered enough casualties on the battlefield.
To break the stalemate, the Germans devised an ambitious plan: launch a major offensive
on the region of Verdun, a territory they knew the French would never relinquish,
and force them to deploy all their remaining reserves.
Germany had a significant artillery presence near Verdun, so once the reserves were deployed,
they could easily be baited into a counterattack that would expose them to massive German
artillery fire, resulting in countless French casualties at little cost to the German infantry.
The German Empire unleashed its attack on February 21,
1916, by storming the fortified region of Verdun with over 50 whole divisions.
The offensive initially took the French by surprise, and the Germans were able
to capture the previously unassailable Fort Douaumont in less than three days.
What was considered the most fortified stronghold in the
world was no match for the incredibly powerful German 420-millimeter “Big
Bertha” howitzers and the determination of the German troops who infiltrated the
weakened fort and forced the garrison to surrender without firing a single shot.
With such decisive momentum, the Germans moved to capture the other forts in the region,
assuming the French would not offer significant resistance.
Battle-Hardened Commander
After the victory in Douaumont, the German 12th Grenadier Regiment was tasked with capturing
the nearby Fort Vaux, a fortification one-quarter the size of the previous one.
Unbeknownst to the Germans, the men inside Vaux had a completely different attitude than those
in Douaumont; they were well-supplied, highly motivated, and led by a man with an iron resolve.
Sylvain Eugène Raynal had no business fighting in a war;
he was an almost 50-year-old veteran who had suffered severe injuries that left him partially
disabled and condemned to using a cane as he painfully walked from one place to the next.
Still, Raynal was a gutsy military man, eager to serve his nation, so he volunteered to
command the garrison at Vaux even when it was obvious that the fort would be assaulted soon.
After the debacle at Douaumont, a large garrison of 600 men was put under the
command of Raynal, and they lived in a space designed for no more than 250.
On June 2, the German 50th Division began its assault on Fort Vaux,
whose main guns had already been disabled by the continuous rain of German artillery fire.
Raynal was forced to defend the fort with merely machine gun posts and conventional rifles.
Soon, the French garrison was surrounded by thousands of German troops spreading
over the Verdun fields as far as the eye could see.
Outnumbered almost 2,000 to one, it all pointed to a swift German victory.
However, Raynal was determined to make the Germans pay dearly for laying siege to his fort…
Breaching the Walls
As fighting erupted, German combat engineers thundered into Vaux’s outer defensive ditch,
enduring fierce machine-gun fire coming from the fort.
They then attempted to break through the gallery’s walls using clusters
of hand grenades, but the French fire prevented any successful breakthrough.
At dawn, the only French machine gun in the northeast gallery suddenly jammed.
A group of 30 German troopers led by Lieutenant Kurt Rackow managed to rush
across the ditch and climb on the fort’s roof, but as the machine-gun fire resumed,
the Germans were pinned down on the roof and had to fight relentlessly for several hours.
Eventually, Rackow’s men found a weakened roof section that had been recently repaired,
and they were able to work their way into the underpass below. The Germans moved
quickly and seized Vaux’s northwest gallery, establishing a solid foothold within the fort.
The breakthrough was alarming for the French, and everything suggested that
the Fort’s defensive efforts would not last. But Raynal did not waver, and he ordered his
men to set up sandbag barricades in the tunnels to constrain the Germans’ advance.
In utter darkness, only lit by muzzle fire and grenade blasts, the fighting became close
and personal as both sides struggled to move forward amid wet corridors and soldiers’ bodies.
The brutal close-quarters skirmishes continued for the next 24 hours as casualties grew and bullets
ricocheted off the walls, inducing horrendous wounds to soldiers on both sides of the struggle.
The air also grew dense with smoke, dust,
and fumes, making it almost impossible to breathe inside the war-torn fort.
A stench of decomposing bodies and gunpowder engulfed the ancient stone halls of Fort Vaux
as the fighting continued, with no side seeming to gain any significant advantage.
German Push
After a deadlock that lasted for over a day, German engineers introduced six flamethrowers into
the fort. The devastating weapons were especially lethal inside the narrow hallways of Fort Vaux,
and the Germans finally pushed the French back into the center gallery, their last strongpoint.
At the same time, outside the fortification, the French 124th Infantry Division unleashed
six successive attack waves in a desperate attempt to relieve the fort.
With the outer complex captured and more Germans troops pouring inside, the defeat of the already
weakened French garrison seemed imminent. Still, during their last push, the French nearly reached
the west side of the fort before German artillery fire and reinforcements broke off their advance.
As the French dug into the center gallery and the Germans slowly surrounded the last fortification,
one of Raynal’s officers, Lieutenant Girard,
sneaked into one of the outer halls, where he could reclaim an abandoned machine gun.
With the weapon secured, Girard and his men launched an abrupt assault on
the unsuspecting Germans, forcing them back again.
Unfortunately, the fighting inside the suffocating tunnels of Fort Vaux became so intense with
gunfire and grenade explosions that Girard fainted after inhaling too much smoke and fumes.
His men took the Lieutenant back to the center gallery, and as soon as he woke up,
he returned to his post and continued to hold it at all costs. Incredibly,
the French had repelled yet another German attack.
Still, if the French didn’t manage to break the siege of Fort Vaux,
Raynal and his men would eventually succumb to the endless waves of German soldiers pouring inside.
With a heavy heart, Raynal released yet another pigeon reminding the French high
Command that Fort Vaux was in dire need of relief.
That message reportedly read: (QUOTE) “This is my last pigeon.”
Depleted
As the days went by, the safety of the French garrison became threatened not
only from the outside but also from within the fort’s walls.
Raynal was informed that the cistern was almost empty, and he immediately suspected sabotage;
after all, the cisterns had been full a few days before. But unbeknownst to the
Commandant, workers had incorrectly installed the cistern’s depth gauge,
which meant that the water supply had already been low when they believed it was full.
The situation inside the central garrison was dire. Raynal feared
his men would soon lose the will to fight or revolt against his leadership. Consequently,
he implemented a strict water rationing system and began to command with an iron fist.
By now, the Commandant had over 100 injured soldiers inside the gallery, many of them with
severe wounds. Raynal knew that keeping the injured inside would only lead to problems,
so he sent 19-year-old Aspirant Leon Buffet to find a way to evacuate the wounded.
Despite being completely surrounded, Leon Buffet scoured even the darkest corners of the fort until
he found a spot where he could smuggle wounded soldiers out, a couple at a time. In a painfully
excruciating operation, he managed to evacuate most of the injured servicemen, but several
didn’t make it alive or were captured. Still, most of them made it back to the French lines.
Buffet was received as a hero in the French encampment,
and was awarded a medal for his service and another for sneaking
back into Fort Vaux to inform Raynal of an incoming French counterattack.
But inside the fort, the French garrison was gravely drained.
Raynal was down to eight officers, four of which were severely injured,
while he experienced a terrible case of malaria. The men had now been 24 hours without water and
resorted to drinking their urine to survive; their morale and energy were shattered.
Outside, a French battalion attempted to relieve the fort attacked at 3:00am on June 6,
but the force was quickly crushed by the Germans,
with only a few injured soldiers making it back to the French front lines.
The Last Fight
The Germans took advantage of the French garrison’s derelict conditions to launch
another attack led by flamethrowers; once again, officer Girard rose to the occasion
leading a fierce counterattack and holding the Germans back. He returned but gravely wounded.
Raynal and his officers had done everything in their power to hold the fort, but when they
witnessed their wounded men licking the slime off the fort’s walls, they knew the fight was over.
The Commandant then sent three officers to the Germans waving a white flag.
When a German force entered the fort to accept the surrender, they found a most peculiar scene:
a group of weak and wounded garrison soldiers in perfect formation, at rigorous attention.
In a courteous ceremony that seemed to belong to past centuries, Raynal signed a document of
surrender he had written himself, then turned over his sword and the key to the fort’s main entrance.
The Germans took Raynal to the Fifth Army headquarters,
where he presumed he would be executed. Instead, he was received as a hero by
Crown Prince Wilhelm, who, in another ceremony, gave Raynal his sword back.
The Germans also informed Raynal that, according to their intelligence,
he had been awarded the French Legion d’Honneur, the highest French order of merit.
Despite being forced to surrender, Raynal’s epic stand at Fort Vaux earned him the
recognition of friend and foe for fighting with courage against all odds and leading a
charge that would take the lives of almost 3,000 German soldiers attacking the fort.
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