To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [74]
He was a stocky bull of a man, with short-cropped hair that emphasized his thick round face, and a massive neck that filled the collar of his starched uniform. At fifty-one, Ludendorff was younger than the most senior officers of the High Command, but Verdun had proven that experience could be a curse, that the nature of war had changed faster than the men who fought it. On both sides the old veteran commanders were falling away, victims of their own inefficiency or incompetence. But Ludendorff had not sat idly by hoping for recognition, did not have the patience to wait for Falkenhayn to collapse on his own. Ludendorff had begun his own campaign with the High Command, chopping away at Falkenhayn’s support at every opportunity, a carefully engineered campaign to elevate himself and von Hindenburg in the eyes of the kaiser, and to everyone who mattered in Berlin. Though many in the army had been surprised by Ludendorff’s rapid rise, to Ludendorff himself it was simply part of the plan.
NEAR FORT DOUAUMONT, FRANCE—NOVEMBER 23, 1916
They led him through the captured earthworks, over freshly laid duckboards, while above him, on the firing line, nervous riflemen scanned the ground to the west. It was Ludendorff’s second inspection trip to the lines of the Western Front, as close to the enemy positions as any commanding general should ever go.
He had arrived from the East at the end of August, had made his first inspection up north, to the lines that faced the British. But that fight was over now, and no one expected the exhausted British to do anything at all for the rest of the winter. But here, the French had made headway, had counterattacked with surprising success, pushing the Germans back from their gains earlier in the year. Ludendorff was not a man to lounge in the comforts of his headquarters and study maps, did not know his subordinates well enough yet to trust the accuracy of every report. There were hard decisions to be made about the ongoing turmoil of Verdun. Before he would make his recommendations to von Hindenburg, he would see the situation for himself.
Ludendorff followed his guides through a snaking ditch, the dirt walls rising high on both sides of him. The trenches had been built by the French, had been captured and lost and captured again. He stepped through soft mud now, the duckboards blasted away, one side of the trench caved in, the officer in front of him stopping, offering a hand. Ludendorff ignored him, stepped up on the mound of earth, peered out to the side, could see the open ground in front of the trench, shattered barbed wire, a desolate landscape of churned and burned earth. He stepped back down, ignored the concern on the faces of the other men, followed them through more of the filth and smells. He saw troops moving toward him in line, and he stopped, moved to the side, let them pass, caught the glances in his direction, but there was no recognition, and he saw their eyes darting forward again, men trained not to stare at a high-ranking officer. He looked at them all, measured and inspected, saw clean uniforms and bright faces. Some of them were very young, replacements called up from the dwindling manpower of home, boys ordered to become men. In front of him, an officer turned, whispered, “Reinforcements, sir. They will be relieving the men who captured this ground.”
There was a patronizing tone to the man’s voice, and Ludendorff said, “I am familiar with reinforcements, Major Baum. Shall we move on?”
The smells were filling him now, unavoidable, Baum glancing back nervously. The major stopped, whispered again, “Sir, perhaps