Philippe Petain, Victor of Verdun

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At 3 a.m. on Feb. 24, 1916, a lone French officer burst into the lobby of the Hôtel Terminus in Paris and loudly called for the night clerk. The elderly woman who owned the hotel appeared, none too pleased at being roused at that hour. She demanded to know his business. He explained that he was Lt. Col. Bernard Serrigny, aide-de-camp to General Philippe Pétain, commander of the French 2nd Army, and he had urgent business with the general. To preserve Pétain’s confidentiality, she denied he was a guest, but Serrigny interrupted, saying, “Madame, the life of France is at stake.” At that she led the officer up a flight of stairs and pointed to the general’s room.

Serrigny pounded on the door until a tall, powerfully built balding man with a large blonde moustache appeared. Behind him, a woman discreetly covered herself with a blanket. Serrigny apologized profusely to Pétain for intruding on his leave, then presented orders from General Joseph Joffre, commander in chief of the French army, directing Pétain to report to supreme headquarters at 8 that morning. Pétain knew that a German offensive had begun at Verdun a few days earlier, and he took the summons to mean that things were going badly and that he would soon enter the battle. Unflappable as always, Pétain thanked Serrigny for his efforts, then instructed his flustered aide to obtain a room and get some rest, as they would leave in a few hours. Pétain then returned to his lover and enjoyed the remainder of what he later fondly recalled as a “memorable evening.”

At the outbreak of World War I, the fortified town of Verdun had stood for two millennia as a bulwark against invasion from the east. Its heroic resistance to German invaders during the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War had become legendary. After that disastrous conflict, the French built concentric fortified rings around Verdun and made it the centerpiece of a defensive system intended to stop any future German invasion. The région fortifiée de Verdun (RFV), as the French army designated the Verdun sector, saw only limited fighting during the first two years of the war, but German advances elsewhere left the city in a vulnerable salient of the Western Front.

General Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German General Staff, knew the value of Verdun to France in terms of its defensive works, as well as its image as an impregnable fortress. Where better, then, to draw the French army into a battle of attrition? Falkenhayn dubbed his plan Operation Gericht (“Place of Judgment”) and intended it to be the decisive battle that would destroy France and lead to ultimate German victory.

That battle began on Feb. 21, 1916, when more than 3,500 German guns, the largest concentration of artillery yet seen in war, opened fire on the thinly held French lines in the Verdun salient. After a 36-hour deluge of steel and poison gas, the German Fifth Army, commanded by the Kaiser’s eldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, surged to the attack. General Frédéric Herr, commanding general of the RFV, knew his command was hopelessly overmatched and ordered a tactical withdrawal to concentrate his troops along the high ground east of the Meuse. Joffre was not pleased when he learned of the move and ordered Herr to hold his ground and make no further withdrawals. Joffre told him help was on the way and then ordered Pétain’s Second Army into the battle.

Henri-Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain was born in 1856. He decided on a military career at age 14 after witnessing the destruction of his nation by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1877 Pétain graduated from the prestigious French military academy at St. Cyr, and for the next 37 years he served with elite Chasseur Alpin (mountain infantry) regiments and taught at the French army’s infantry school, as well as the École Militaire (War College) in Paris.

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