posts. On all sides were the very slopes, banks and flank protection which engineers could desire." (L. Gillet: La Bataille de Verdun).

German plans for a decisive attack.

Following the lesson of the offensives in Artois (May 1915) and Champagne (September 1915), the German commander intended to put into practice the French offensive methods but to add, by means of artillery fire, an unparalleled ferocity. To concentrate masses of artillery, to cut by shell fire the only broad-gauge railway that connected Verdun with France (see plan p. 18), to flatten out the French defences, to isolate the occupants by barrages of heavy shells, then to rush headlong on the town and crush the last resistance, at the same time sending forward overwhelming masses of troops, without regard to losses: such was the plan which the Germans carried out on February 21st, 1916.

Troops in position on February 21st, 1916.

The enemy concentration round the fortress of Verdun.

The battered fort of Douaumont (August 1916).

Character of the battle of Verdun

The battle of Verdun was a battle of annihilation, mutual annihilation. The method was to concentrate the fire of all the guns, not over a line but on a zone, and not only on the position to be captured but also as far as possible in rear on everything that could support the position. The simile that best expresses it is no longer that of a battering ram striking against a wall, but that of a rammer falling perpendicularly and hammering an encircled zone. The encircled zone was the part where the old territorials who were screening from observation a road behind the lines, ran almost as great a danger as men in other battles did in an attacking wave. Here, while the shells continued to fall, no fatigue party of men or munitions could go three hundred metres without being wiped out entirely. Here the wounded in deep-dug aid-posts went mad from lack of air. Here often a mug of water meant life or death to a man. This encircled zone was bounded by a narrow stretch of ground which the opposing artilleries tried to spare because the infantry were fighting there hand to hand, with bombs, machine guns, and flame-throwers; every square yard of ground being hotly disputed.

"In front of Verdun, one day, the O. C. of a new force asks the officer of the chasseurs whom he has just relieved: "Where does our line run here?—I'll show you. There where you will find on the ground my dead chasseurs, lying side by side, that is where our line runs".

"In front of Verdun, one day, a battalion commander being completely cut off sends twenty runners one after another, to the Colonel's headquarters. These runners are bound to follow a certain track to go and another to return. Not one comes back and on the next day he finds the bodies of all twenty, ten lying on the path there and ten on the path back.

"In front of Verdun, one day, at nightfall, a battalion commander goes up towards the front line to see his men and cheer them on. The front line is a string of shell holes and in these holes, one by one, the men are crouched. He leans over one of these pits of darkness, for the night was pitch black, and in a low voice so that the enemy may not hear asks: "How goes it?". There is no movement but a