THREE OUT OF FOUR DIE.

The barricade was breached, but 75 per cent of the devoted corps had given their lives to do it.

As the survivors lay exhausted the attackers charged over them, cheering.  In the melee that followed there was no room to shoot or wield the rifle.  Some of the French fought with unfixed bayonets, like the stabbing swords of the Roman legions.  Others had knives or clubs.  All were battle-frenzied, as only Frenchmen can be.

The Germans broke, and as the first rays of dawn streaked the sky only a small section of the wood was still in their hands.  There a similar barrier stopped progress, and it was evident that the night’s work must be repeated; but the hearts of the French soldiers were leaping with victory as they dug furiously to consolidate the ground they had gained, strewn with German bodies, thick as leaves.  Over 6,000 Germans were counted in a section a quarter of a mile square, and the conquerors saw why their cannonade had been so ineffective.  The Germans had piled a second barrier of corpses close behind the first, so that the soft human flesh would act as a buffer to neutralize the force of the shells.

FRENCH DEFENSE TRULY HEROIC.

While all the German attacks upon the French lines in front of Verdun were marked with the utmost valor and intensity of devotion, the continuous defense made by the French under General Petain was equally vigorous and often truly heroic.  Volunteers frequently remained in the French trenches from which the rest of the French defenders had been compelled to retire, to telephone information about the advancing enemy to the French batteries, and some of the heaviest losses of the Germans occurred when they believed themselves successful in an attack.

The consequences of such devotion on the part of French volunteers were exemplified early in the morning of April 12, at a point called Caurettes Woods, along the northeastern slopes of the hill known as Le Mort Homme (Dead Man’s Hill), where a French withdrawal had been carried out.  Volunteers remained behind to signal information to the French batteries, and an eyewitness of the attack described what followed thus: 

“The French seventy-fives immediately concentrated on the hostile trench line.  The Germans suffered heavily, but persevered, and soon dense columns appeared amid the shell-torn brushwood on the southern fringe of the Corbeaux Wood, pouring down into the valley separating them from the former French position on the hillside.

“Thinking the French still held the latter, the Germans deployed with their latest trench-storming device in the form of liquid fire containers, with special groups of four installed, two men working the pump and two directing the fire jet.

“The grayness of the dawn was illuminated by sheets of green and red flame and black oily clouds rolled along the valley toward the river like smoke from a burning ‘gusher.’