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The path to St. Barbe forced the Germans to attack into the thick the deeply wooded and hilly Forest of St. Barbe. The Germans needed to secure this area quickly in order to gain badly needed maneuver space to sustain the slowing 6th/7th Army Group offensive into the French heartland.

The direct route from Baccarat to St. Barbe was along a single road running south through a gap in the forest. Setting out on this approach, the 29th Division’s lead 57th Brigade came under heavy artillery fire. German guns responded and a sharp artillery duel followed that knocked out a French battery, leaving shattered guns and abandoned caissons at the edge of the forest southwest of Deneuvre. This small accomplishment aside, the German commanders realized that if they intended to get to St. Barbe by nightfall they would need to take a different route. This mission would go to the 84th Brigade, consisting of IRs 169 and 170. IR 170 was to push enemy forces from the forest, leaving IR 169 to assault the village.

Elite French Alpine troops, specially trained for mountainous combat such as this, were waiting. The chasseurs-alpins made cunning use of the forest, placing sharpshooters behind rocks, thick tree trunks, and high up in the branches. Many German soldiers were shot down before they even had any idea of where the enemy was hiding. After a period of initial confusion, the Germans regrouped and fired furiously into the woods.

Additional French forces, including the 56th Regiment of Infantry, were brought in to conduct a series of vicious counterattacks. The fighting was reminiscent of 19th Century warfare, with infantry going into battle with their colors at the front. From deep in the forest ahead of them, the Germans first heard the enemy’s distant bugle calls and drum rolls. Moments later, French troops, led by officers waving swords, came crashing through the woods and into the German ranks. Fighting was often hand-to-hand. At one point in the struggle, the flag of the 170th Regiment’s 2nd Battalion was in danger of being captured. Lieutenant Meyer, commander of the 2nd Battalion’s 7th Company, was able to maneuver his unit behind the French to break their attack and save the colors.

The German troops were eventually able to maneuver through the forest and chase out the remaining French troops at the point of bayonets. IR 169 came up for the attack into St. Barbe. Albert Rieth’s journal recorded the journey to the front.

Poised on the high ground to the east of the town, IR 169 cautiously began its approach towards St. Barbe. 3rd Battalion, along with the battery from the 76th Artillery Regiment, was posted on a large hill overlooking the plain and village. From there, they could provide covering fire to support the 2nd Battalion, the regiment’s primary maneuver element. Traversing through a wood-line, the 2nd Battalion crossed over the Belville Brook and made a final approach towards the town. 3rd Battalion, a half-mile behind the lead troops, moved forward as all units simultaneously descended on St. Barbe.

French troops were well hidden in buildings at the western end of the town, waiting for the Germans to wander deep into their trap. This tactic afforded the defenders the maximum shock effect in their first volleys as well as providing cover from the German artillery. Other French units were posted to the southwest of the town and were taking cover on the south bank of the Belville Brook. They also lay quiet as the lead elements of 2nd Battalion came into their fields of fire, awaiting just the right moment surprise the incoming Germans. The French held their fire until the Germans were almost in the town. Rieth described the moment of contact:

‘We got very close to the village without hearing a shot. Suddenly, we were received by a murderous fire, indicating a strong enemy presence in the place. We retreated and collected our resources, after which we stormed and took the village.’

The 3rd Battalion fell back and returned heavy fire. French troops deployed along the south of Belville Brook came alive and fired into the 2nd Battalion, who were on the verge of entering the town. The 76thArtillery Regiment’s guns fired away at French both along the brook and in the village. After regrouping, the 3rd Battalion again stormed into St. Barbe. Fighting house-to-house, the Germans were able to kill, capture, or chase out the last of the French troops. The gateway to the plains to Rambervillers was finally in German hands.

Albert Rieth’s next entry speaks to the battle’s tragic conclusion:

‘It was determined that the villagers had shot upon us, and therefore all houses were burned. When the village was totally in flames it was a sad picture, as all the inhabitants had to leave. Mostly they were old men and women who had to leave their homes in the middle of the night. It hurt to see them go with only the necessities; everything else was burned in the flames. Since the wind came in the direction of the village, the bivouac was comfortably warm, which we appreciated.’

As the fires raged in St. Barbe, Crown Prince Rupprecht’s staff took stock of the situation. Fierce enemy resistance was encountered everywhere on the southwest side of the Meurthe River. The French troops, already highly determined to defend their homeland, were suddenly much better organized. The 6th/7th Army Group spent the next several days desperately probing the French lines in an attempt to find some vulnerable point for exploitation. In the XIV Corps’ sector, the main attack would fall on seizing the town of Rambervillers, six miles to the southwest of St. Barbe and served as an important road network hub. Rieth described his experiences of IR 169’s advance out of St Barbe.

‘The next morning we had a rather long march ahead of us, as we had to relieve our left flank, which was very vulnerable and manned only by our artillery. The march was exhausting as we went through swampy areas and through woods without passages. We started at 5 o’clock in the morning and arrived at 6 o’clock in the evening, so we had come a pretty good distance. We immediately began to dig in, as we had to expect an attack by the enemy, who estimated us to be very weak here; and they were right. We were a rather dilapidated battalion. A field kitchen was still something that we had not seen for at least 15 days. There was no shortage of rain from early morning until the next noon. It poured so continuously that we had not a dry thread upon us. We were hungry and exhausted. The butcher slaughtered a calf, from which we cut pieces and roasted them over a single fire, which was hidden by four bed sheets so not to alert the enemy. The meat was unpalatable, sooty and burnt, but one had to have something in the stomach.’

The next three days were marked by intensive fighting as the Germans made numerous and extremely costly towards Rambervillers. Rieth’s journal described the events of August 27:

‘By morning a trench was completed, but only knee-deep, as the ground was so rocky that it was hard to dig. No sooner had we manned the trenches, the French artillery commenced firing. The first shells exploded very near, and later they hit the trenches, which we had to vacate in order not to sustain too many casualties. We had not seen any infantry, nor were we attacked. It developed into an artillery fight, and the shells went over our heads. Luckily everything ended and we lost not a man, at least in our company. It was clear that if that gang continued to shoot like that, we would not see our field kitchen again that day, and so it happened.

This abrupt conclusion marks the final posting in Albert’s journal, which he wrote in March 1915 from a military hospital in Schweinfurt. For years, the background behind this incomplete ending remained a mystery. In researching the second edition of my book, I found a listing was found in the official German casualty rolls that recorded Hornist Albert Rieth as being wounded this day. More recent Stamrolle records lists the location of his wounding in the ground between St. Barbe and Menil Albert later returned to the ranks some months later and was again wounded in January 1915 in the Battle of La Bassee.

The end of Rieth’s journal also marks the far limit of the German offensive across the Meurthe. The Germans were never able to push beyond the little village of Menil, let alone seriously threaten the primary objective of Rambervillers. On the evening of August 29, XIV Corps pulled seven miles back across the Meurthe, and established their headquarters at Baccarat.

Rieth’s description of 3rd Battalion being a rather dilapidated battalion on August 26, 1914 was an understatement. In the days between 24 – 29 August 29, IR 169 fought in four separate battles at Vacqueville, Baccarat, St. Barbe and Menil. Casualties recorded from this six-day period include 8 officers (4 being killed) and 810 enlisted men. Factoring in losses from the earlier fighting at Mulhouse and around Sarrebourg, IR 169 lost a total of 2211 men in the first month of the war. Assuming an initial strength of 3,000 troops, this represents a 74% attrition rate in the 20 days since the regiment first went into combat. According to the AEF’s post-war History of German Infantry Divisions, a typical infantry line company in IR 169 was down to only 30 men present for duty by the end of the Meurthe Campaign.

Citations, maps and additional information on this blog can be found in the second edition of Imperial Germany’s Iron Regiment of the First World War (Badgley Publishing, 2017). www.ironregiment169.com.

Map and Pictures: The modern photographs of St. Barbe were taken in my June 2019 visit to the battlefields. Additional pictures from Albert Rieth’s collection are also posted. The first three are pre-war photographs of his initial assignment with Baden’s 1st Leib Grenadier Regiment (IR 109) in 1912 and his subsequent 1913 battalion’s transfer to IR 169. Additional pictures show him in 1915, during his recovery from wounds in a German military hospital in Schweinfurt in March 1915. The final image is me with on my grandfather’s lap circa 1965. To escape Germany’s post-war depression, Albert moved his family to Providence RI in the mid 1920’s. He joined the large German expat jewelry community in Providence, where he had a lifelong career as the senior toolmaker with the Speidel watchband company. He died in Cranston, RI in 1970.