year of the war that the Germans made some radical changes in their methods of defense, owing principally to the preponderance of British artillery, which reduced their front-line trenches to mere furrows of earth and made mantraps of the carefully constructed dugouts. The Germans now scattered their advanced forces over a greater depth. There was no longer an unbroken line of defenses for the British guns to shatter, but strongholds were constructed in isolated shell holes along the front, cunningly concealed from aviators. These stretched back from the first lines to a considerable depth. Along the front strong outposts were established at some distance apart, backed by fortified craters and connected by tunnels and often with dugouts. Back of these shell-hole nests were gun emplacements commanding the openings between the shell holes. Thus when enemy attackers had forced their way through the fortified shell craters they were met with torrents of machine-gun fire. Further back from these defenses there would be found a line of more or less connected trenches, or a series of connected fortified shell holes. The Germans also constructed strong concrete redoubts in every farm house for their machine guns. They built small forts of steel and concrete that were impervious to artillery fire. Many of these strongholds were constructed underground with a steel trapdoor as the only exit, by which the Germans came out to set up their machine guns.

CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH BREAK THE GERMAN LINES AT VERDUN—CANADIANS GAIN AT LENS

North of Verdun, in a region that had witnessed many of the most desperate struggles of the campaign in France during the previous year, the French won a great victory on August 20, 1917. After three days of almost continuous shelling of the German lines the French armies attacked simultaneously on both banks of the Meuse and carried their objectives at all points. On the west bank of the river they gained Avocourt Wood, the summit of the famous Dead Man Hill, and the Corbeaux and Cumières Woods. The French advance reached at some points a depth of a mile and a quarter. Over 4,000 unwounded Germans were made prisoner.

At 4.40 in the morning the French artillery preparations reached the final phase when vigorous attacks were made on Avocourt Wood and Bezonvaux. The first objective was won by 6 o'clock and German prisoners were on their way to the rear. The three days' artillery fire had so devastated Hill 304, Dead Man Hill, and Talou Ridge that the Germans were forced to abandon their first line. The French found less opposition from the enemy than they had expected, for the well-served French guns had taken much of the fighting spirit out of their opponents. At some points, however, where the French fire had been less felt there was hard fighting. The greatest advance made was on the right bank of the river to the north of Vacherauville. They occupied Talou Ridge, Mormont Farm, and Hills 240 and 344. To the east the Germans were driven out of parts of the Fosses and Chaume Woods.

During the advance the French army was greatly aided in its operations by the brilliant and daring work of its aviators. Hovering low they showered machine-gun bullets on the enemy lines, dispersing assemblies forming for counterattacks and bombing German gunners at close quarters. In a series of combats in the air the French flyers brought down eleven German machines on the Verdun front, while two others were destroyed by antiaircraft guns.

An interesting phase of the fighting on the French front at this time was the unusually large proportion of German officers captured, 201 being taken with about 6,700 men. This seemed to show that the German officer class had deteriorated, that the best trained had been killed or made prisoners, and that the new officers who replaced them were lacking in spirit or had not become steeled to war work.

In the fighting on this front certain German army formations had been badly smashed. Three regiments which formed the Sixth Reserve Division of Brandenburgers and the kaiser's favorite troops were literally annihilated as fighting units, losing sixty-nine officers and about 2,800 men as prisoners.

On the same day that the French were advancing in the Verdun sector the Canadians around Lens were winning fresh laurels. Northwest of the city they had by desperate fighting established strong posts among the trenches and railway cuttings that formed the last line of German defense in that quarter. This was the scene of much strenuous but indecisive fighting two days before.

From their new positions the Canadians had now command of the last bit of ground from which the defenders of the city could overlook the advance from the west. They were now in a hollow all around the front which swings about Lens in a semicircular form. As every eastern exit to the city was now subjected to a continuous and harassing fire from machine guns and artillery, the work of bringing up provisions and supplies of ammunition had become extremely hazardous.

The Canadians in their continued struggle around Lens had displayed such irresistible courage and resolution that their deeds will long be remembered in the pages of history. No soldiers during the war faced more difficulties or confronted more formidable defenses. They forced their way through streets entangled with hedges of steel and houses bristling with machine guns. They penetrated tunnels too strong to be touched by shell fire. They threw themselves against fortress positions amid a fiery hail of shells and explosives. They swept through the towns of St. Laurent, St. Théodore, and St. Emilie to the north and west of Lens where sunken roads and slag heaps were strongly fortified, and so on through the apparently endless and formidable defenses to the western streets of the inner city.

The Germans never let a day pass without at least one attack on the Canadian positions, and once within twenty-four hours they launched no less than seven strong assaults. Between the attacks the men of Canada were subjected to a heavy gunfire from a wide semicircle of strong batteries.

Between August 10 and August 20, 1917, they were attacked in turn by six German divisions, each being shattered by the Canadians' dogged courage and amazing fighting power. These were the Seventh, Eighth, the Eleventh Reserve, the 220th and the First Guards Reserve Division. Besides those five divisions it was known that portions at least of the 185th Division and of the Sixth Reserve Division had also been engaged.

It was conservatively estimated by military observers of the struggle here that the German strength used at Lens was upwards of 50,000 men, and their losses were estimated at between 12,000 and 15,000 men.

At an early hour in the morning of August 20, 1917, the Canadians made a trench raid on the German front northwest of Avlon, where heavy fighting ensued. This front was strongly fortified by the Germans as protection for an important mining suburb southeast of Lens, and it was here that they had set up the guns withdrawn after the Canadian advance two days before. Here the hand-to-hand fighting was fierce and deadly, the Germans fighting with desperate courage, but the Canadians got the upper hand by slow degrees, and after inflicting heavy casualties took some prisoners and retired to their positions.

Early in the morning of the following day the forces from Canada again struck hard, attacking German trenches west and northwest of Lens. The battle raged throughout the day and far into the night. The Canadians advanced against strong opposition, using bomb and bayonet freely, winning important enemy positions to the northwest and southwest of the center of the city. It appears that the Germans had massed