25.  Artillery duels east of Verdun, March 25.

  26.  French recapture part of Avocourt Wood, March 28.

  27.  Germans capture Malancourt, March 29-31.

  28.  Heavy fighting south of Douaumont, April 2-5; French successes in
  battle of Caillette woods, etc.

  29.  Germans recapture Haucourt, April 6.

  30.  Germans close in on Bethincourt salient, April 7.

  31.  French withdraw from Bethincourt April 9, but hold lines south.

  32.  French lines bombarded continuously, April 10-15, with violent
  assaults but no decisive results.

So sound was the barricade, padded with sandbags and earth-works, that the artillery fire fell practically unavailing, and the French general realized that the barrier must be breached by explosives, as in Napoleon’s battles.

It was 8 o’clock and already pitch dark in that blighted atmosphere when a special blasting corps, as devoted as the German chain workers, crept forward toward the German position.  The rest of the French waited, sheltered in the ravine east of Douaumont, until an explosion should signal the assault.

In Indian file, to give the least possible sign of their presence to the hostile sentinels, the French blasters advanced in a long line, at first with comparative rapidity, only stiffening into the grotesque rigidity of simulated death when the searchlights played upon them, and resuming progress when the beam shifted.  Then as they approached the barrier they moved slowly and more slowly.  When they arrived within forty yards the movement of the crawling men became imperceptible.

The blasting corps lay at full length, like hundreds of other motionless forms about them, but all were working busily.  With a short trowel, the file leader scuffled the earth from under his body, taking care not to raise his arms, and gradually making a shallow trench deep enough to hide him.  The others followed his example until the whole line had sunk beneath the surface.

Then the leader began scooping his way forward, while his followers deepened the furrow already made.  Thus literally inch by inch the files stole forward, sheltered in a narrow ditch from the gusts of German machine-gun fire that constantly swept the terrain.  Here and there the sentinels’ eyes caught a suspicious movement or an incautiously raised head sank down pierced by a bullet, but the stealthy, molelike advance continued.  Hours passed.  It was nearly dawn when the remnant of the blasting corps reached the barricade at last and hurriedly put their explosives in position.  Back they wriggled breathlessly.  An over-hasty movement meant death, yet they must hurry lest the imminent explosions overwhelm them.

Suddenly there was a roar that dwarfed the cannonade and all along the barrier fountains of fire rose skyward, hurling a rain of fragments upon what was left of the blasting party.