by Major Eric Mankel

As the year 1915 drew to a close, the belligerents on both sides of the war were planning large-scale offensives for the following year. The Entente Powers (France, Great Britain, Russia, and Italy), in Aonference at the headquarters of General Joseph Jacques Joffre, the Chief of the French General Staff, agreed to take the offensive the following summer. They selected the Somme front in Picardy as the area for a French-British offensive because that was where the French and British sectors of the Western Front joined.

Their German opponents also decided to strike along the Western Front. The German offensive would take place in the Fortified Region of Verdun, a sector that had remained one of the quietest on the whole Western Front until that point.

General Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, devised the plan dubbed Operation Gericht (“place of execution”). The objective of Falkenhayn’s plan was not to seize any vital point, disrupt communications, or encircle any French armies. His objective was simply to inflict massive losses on the enemy, an objective commonly chosen for a defensive operation. The Germans therefore would attack a point that the French would be compelled to defend by using every man available. This goal of attrition in the offense was distinctly different from the classic German offensive objective of rapidly destroying the enemy force. Falkenhayn recommended Verdun, on the heights of the Meuse River, as the point for the attack. The terrain surrounding Verdun supported his requirements for a killing ground. By reputation, it was the strongest fortress in the world. Most importantly, however, the French, for reasons of national prestige, would defend their great fortress of Verdun regardless of the cost. If Falkenhayn’s plan was successful, it would draw the French into a battle of attrition that would, as Robert B. Bruce observed in a Summer 1998 Army History article, “slowly bleed the French Army to death, inflicting such punishment that neither the French Army nor the French nation would survive Verdun.”

Pétain to the Rescue

The German offensive began on 21 February 1916 with a 9-hour artillery attack, the greatest bombardment yet seen in warfare. In response to the unfolding German attack, General Henri-Philippe Pétain assumed command of the French forces in the Verdun sector at midnight on the night of 25 to 26 February. His hand soon was felt everywhere; Verdun became his battle. Pétain’s first challenge was to secure logistics support, particularly supply and transportation. The French were not prepared to provide logistics support to a force of the size they quickly were assembling at Verdun.

The transportation challenge had the most significant impact on logistics operations at Verdun. The established mode of transporting ammunition, supplies, and replacements to armies occupying the front line was the railroad. Narrow-gauge rail lines were built from existing or newly constructed main rail lines and from stations and railheads up to the trench lines. Trucks were employed in very limited quantities, usually in emergency cases. Horse- or mule-drawn wagons were still in widespread use. French transportation operations during the Battle of Verdun would change this, legitimizing the use of motor transport for large-scale sustainment operations.

German Rail and Horses and French Trucks

The system of using railroads and horse-drawn conveyances worked for the Germans. The German Fifth Army built 10 new rail lines into the Verdun sector, with 24 new stations. They had no less than seven narrow-gauge rail lines for transporting ammunition and supplies up to their trench lines in the sector. To supply their initial bombardment, the Germans stocked 6 days’ supply of ammunition near their 1,220 guns. This supply totaled more than 2.5 million shells, transported on 1,300 ammunition‘trains. All of the artillery pieces were in place by 1 February. This incredible move cost the Fifth Army Artillery 30 percent of its horses.

For the French, however, railroads were not an option. The two major French rail lines into Verdun could not be used. One passed through the German lines, and the other was shelled continuously. Pétain had only a narrow-gauge rail line and the second-class (dirt) road from Bar le Duc, 75 kilometers away, where the nearest usable railhead was located. Pétain had to use the narrow-gauge rail line to transport food for men and fodder for supply animals. Out of necessity, he had to rely on motor transport operations to sustain the French Second Army, which was deployed and engaged in the Verdun sector, with reinforcements, replacements, and munitions.

The Sacred Way

A general overview of logistics requirements shows that Pétain found himself having to support a force of 500,000 men and 170,000 animals. No army of this size had ever been sustained and supported logistically by road. Each horse alone required 40 pounds of fodder and 8 gallons of water a day.

Maurice Barrés, a French writer, named the road from Bar le Duc that Pétain used La Voie Sacrée, “the Sacred Way.” Employing the fledging Service Automobile dans l’Armée Francaise, Pétain initiated the largest use of motor transport for logistics sustainment yet seen in warfare. An Engineer officer was responsible for transportation to Verdun. He was delegated complete authority by Pétain for operations on the Sacred Way. The Sacred Way was divided into six cantonments. Each cantonment had its own workshops for servicing and repairing vehicles and its own crews of pioneers for servicing and repairing the road. The road was to be reserved for motor vehicles; all marching troops were to keep to the sides of the road. Any trucks that broke down were to be immediately pushed off the road into the ditch. By the time Pétain took over command of the Second Army, a fleet of 3,500 assorted vehicles had been assembled. In June, at the peak of operations, 12,000 vehicles of varying types and sizes were employed on the Sacred Way. One vehicle passed every 14 seconds. At its peak, the operation accrued approximately 650,000 miles weekly.

On 28 February, a drastic thaw set in. Within a few hours, the frozen dirt road thawed and turned to mud, 18 inches deep in some places. The Engineer officer summoned all available Territorials (a reserve force) to assist in repairs. He lined them up almost shoulder to shoulder along the road and had them begin shoveling gravel nonstop under the wheels of the trucks as they passed by. When Pétain was apprised of the situation, he telephoned the Engineer officer and asked him if the road would hold. The response: “The road will hold.” “Good” replied Pétain. The road held. During the week beginning 28 February, more than 25,000 tons of supplies and 190,000 men arrived in Verdun over the Sacred Way.

Gravel and Tires

To ensure that another crisis did not cripple the Sacred Way, Pétain employed the equivalent of over a division of men in repairing the road full time. Pétain was able to get several rock quarries along the route opened. He then set up relay teams to move the gravel from the quarries to sites along the road. The repair teams shoveled nearly 750,000 tons of gravel onto the road during the 10-month battle. The continuous traffic flattened the gravel and thus firmed up the road. Through this effort, Pétain was able to overcome the greatest threat to his logistics efforts at Verdun.

The continuous application of gravel solved the problem of the softening road. However, it brought on another problem. The gravel began to gouge holes in the hard rubber tires of the trucks, and the bumpier rides that resulted led to an increase in the number of mechanical breakdowns. The head of the Service Automobile came up with a solution. He set up hydraulic presses in each of the workshops along the route, which stamped out new tires for the vehicles.

By its successful execution of motor transport operations on the Sacred Way, the French Army validated the use of motor transport as a legitimate means of providing logistics support to a large army in the field. The French successfully supported the battle by transporting men, ammunition, and other classes of supplies. They also made sound use of trucks returning from the sector by evacuating casualties as retrograde cargo.

General Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s First Quartermaster General, was very impressed by the French Army’s use of motor vehicles. As Ludendorff commented in his autobiography years later—

Major Eric Mankel is a logistics instructor in the Department of Logistics and Resource Operations at the Army Command and General Staff College. He has a bachelor’s degree in geography from Middle Tennessee State University and is pursuing a master’s degree in American Revolution Studies from American Military University. He is a graduate of the Army Command and General Staff Officer Course and the Military History Instructor Course.