side of the stream. There, with a range of five miles, he could sweep all the reserve, support, and firing lines of the enemy's forces engaged on the front of three and a half miles between Pepper Hill and Douaumont. Not only did motor transport have to bear all the burden of reinforcements for the Army of Verdun, but also all its supplies, food for men, guns, trench material and repair outfits, hospital and air-service requirements. In spite of the heavy strain put upon them the roads were kept in excellent repair by soldiers engaged unceasingly upon the task. Picture, Henry Ruschin the Goose Crest. The force that attempted to do so was shattered. But the next day a fresh German division reached part of the crest, and worked down the railway to Regnéville, lying over against Samogneux, with the river between. Again new forces were deployed on March 7, and by another day of hard and good fighting the German commander made a brilliant stroke. He captured Crows' Wood (Bois des Corbeaux) and Cumières Wood, from which a decisive advance could be made on Dead Man Hill. If Dead Man Hill fell, General Pétain's power over the enemy's ground across This abruptly changed the situation, as the Germans viewed it. They had to take the hills across the Meuse Dead Man Hill and Charny Ridge especially-in order to recover fully the power of making mass attacks on the Douaumont Plateau. So the tide of battle shifted-but at the masterly direction of General Pétain. The great batteries at Beaumont He at once threw reinforcements towards Dead Man Hill, and by an attack quite as fine as that of Balfourier's corps at Douaumont, the division recovered the greater part of the two woods. All the next day it withstood frontal and flank attacks, with the enemy's guns pounding it from the north, east, and south; the reverse fire coming from German batteries across the river, near Pepper Hill. On March 10, another fresh, large enemy force of some 20,000 infantry worked again through part of Crows' Wood and Cumières Wood, suffering frightful losses and achieving no great result; for all that General Pétain had fought for was time. He had gained more than forty-eight hours in which to organize the works on and round Dead Man Hill in the way he wanted. This important advanced position had now become safe for the crucial time at least. The enemy commander also needed time to bring up his orieux guns to cover the ground he had won in the woodlands and OF THE MEUSE by the river. So there was a Copyright DEFENSES OF VERDUN ON THE EASTERN BANK lull round Dead Man. But on the distant eastern side of the Verdun salient, the German offensive was resumed with extreme violence. The new objective was the Fort of Vaux, southeast of Douaumont Fort, and connecting with it in the old system of defense, before the structures of armored concrete were emptied of guns. The fort on the plateau was approached by a ravine in which lay the village of Vaux. Supported by their heavy artillery in the Woëvre Plain, the Germans attacked round the mouth of the ravine on March 9, and at night some 6,000 Poles got into the village, but were hordes fell upon the French first lines in the woods between HauFrom the forests of Spincourt and Gremilly in the north, German mont and Ornes. In five days they reached the plateau of Douaumont commanding Verdun. In June Vaux fell but between Fleury and Souville the advance was stayed. hamlet in the hollow but the fort on the plateau. Paris was perturbed, and General Pétain had to send one of his Staff officers to Vaux. He found the garrison in merry mood, with the soldiers off duty playing cards. They had neither won nor lost any battle; the enemy had not come near them. Meanwhile, the German Staff discovered it had made a ridiculous misstatement, and tried to palliate its blunder by ordering the fort to be taken. But General Pétain now knew VIEW OF FRENCH FIELD-KITCHENS AROUND VERDUN Situated in a sheltered spot in the rear of the lines, as the comparatively undamaged trees show, it was far easier to prepare the meals than it was to get the food up to the men, and there were many times during the fighting when hunger and thirst augmented the horrors of war. But it was not captured just then, though the struggle for it went on for weeks with increasing fury. Even by the middle of March the ground below the fort was heaped with greyish forms, where the dead and dying had rolled down the slopes. In the ravine below, the Germans, by the end of March, won the eastern houses of the villages, but could not for long advance farther. Vaux Fort still remained untaken, and the neighboring Caillette Wood was recovered early in April, thus strengthening both the Douaumont and Vaux positions. looked like failing, the German Staff claimed the capture of Dead Man Hill. They stormed the Dead Man by conveying the name to a lower ridge of no decisive importance which they had. occupied. Challenged on the matter by the French Staff, they tried to evade the charge of falsehood by stating that the words "Mort Homme" as lettered on the French map they used, extended to the lower ground. As though the best-informed War Staff in the world did not know every acre of ground near its own frontiers! Most likely it was an attempt to soothe the German people, whose anxiety in regard to Verdun was turning into angry despondency. Von Falkenhayn had increased the Crown Prince's army to twenty-five divisions. In April he added five more divisions to the forces around Verdun by weakening the effectives in other sectors and drawing more troops from the Russian front. It was rumored that von Hindenburg was growing restive, and complaining that the wastage at Verdun would tell against the success of the campaign on the Riga-Dvinsk front, which was to open when the Baltic ice melted. SHELL HELLS ARE USED FASTER THAN THEY Great as was the wastage of life, it was in no way immediately decisive. But when the expenditure of shells almost outran the highest speed of production of the German munition. factories, and the wear on the guns was more than Krupp and Skoda could make good, there was danger to the enemy in beginning another great offensive likely to overtax his shellmakers and gun-makers. Von Falkenhayn's great concentration against the British army, for example, remained perhaps, only a silent demonstration because of the shell and gun difficulty. There was, of course, ample munition for a most violent and sustained attack, but if after another operation like that at Verdun the British line was unbroken and its artillery power undiminished, it would be difficult for the enemy to turn against re-armed Russia. The attacks continued on the Heights of the Meuse and especially around Dead Man Hill, to the middle of April. Victorious Verdun was still being blown up in flaming ruin like Rheims and Ypres. Whenever an infantry assault failed, the Germans hurled incendiary shells into the unattainable town. The price at which the Crown Prince was to be allowed to ride by Vauban's citadel was much higher in April than it was in February. General Pétain was a hard bargainer. And he could not be left alone. He had forcibly to be kept in the position he occupied, for if the force against him weakened he might in turn employ his enormous artillery power to blast a path right through the German lines. His position, at the eastern corner of the long German line stretching to the sea, was very menacing. Far from the Battle of Verdun being ended, there were possibilities in it of a decisive development. NORTHCLIFFE. The Battle of Verdun II THE GERMANS NOW STRIVE TO REDUCE THE MAN POWER OF FRANCE "THE 9th of April," said General Pétain to his men, "is a day of glory for your arms. The fierce assaults of the Crown Prince's soldiers have everywhere been thrown back. Infantry, artillery, sappers and aviators of the Second Army have vied with one another in heroism. Courage, men. On les aura!" So in a key of quiet confidence for France, the first phase of the great battle of Verdun had come to an end, and with it all hope of sweeping German victory. After two months of fighting the attack had gained little more than on the first days in February. On the right bank of the Meuse it had reached the last line of the defenses of Verdun, on the left bank it had destroyed the whole of the first line on the Forges, but had failed to capture Hill 304 and le Mort Homme. passed out of the realms of strategy into politics, where the High Command was spending German reserves because its reputation was at stake, because having thrown so much upon the venture it could not retire without at least some return. So the press was gagged and deceived, and communiqués falsified, and the Fatherland continued to glory in the enterprise, while all the time the Great Headquarters knew that by May the campaign "bore the stamp of the first great battle of attrition, in which the struggle for victory meant feeding a stationary fighting line with a continuous mass of men and materials," in the words of General Ludendorff. HREE PHASES OF THE FIGHTING IN THIS As before the opening attacks in February, so in April the Germans. made feints to deceive French opinion. Hints of new activity in the North Sea, of fresh air-raids over Britain, and of enemy-fostered rebellion in Ireland, seemed to point to the fact that England and not France was about to receive the Teuton onslaught. But in the first week of May fighting broke out fiercely on the left bank of the Meuse and gradually spread east across the river, and the côtes to the level Wöevre once more. This later fighting may be divided into three |