“There was only one doctor, an unter officer,”—­he pointed to a man who lay asleep on the ground face downward—­“and he bandaged some of us till he had no more bandages; then last night we knew the end was coming.  Your guns began to fire altogether, the dreadful trommelfeuer, as we call it, and the shells burst and smashed up the earth about us.  “We stayed down in the hole, waiting for the end.  Then we heard your soldiers shouting.  Presently two of them came down into our hole.  They were two boys and had their pockets full of bombs; they had bombs in their hands also, and they seemed to wonder whether they should kill us, but we were all wounded—­nearly all—­and we cried ‘Kamerade!’ and now we are prisoners.”

Other prisoners said in effect that the fire was terrible in Contalmaison and at least half their men holding it were killed or wounded, so that when the British entered they walked over the bodies of the dead.  The men who escaped were in a pitiful condition.  “They lay on the ground utterly exhausted, most of them, and, what was strange, with their faces to the earth.  Perhaps it was to blot out the vision of the things they had seen.”

Meanwhile, despite the threatening character of the Allied offensive on the Somme, German assaults on the Verdun front continued unabated during July, and there was little evidence of the withdrawal of German troops from that point to reinforce the army opposed to the British.  But except at Verdun, Germany was at bay everywhere, and the situation was recognized in the Fatherland as serious.  Never before had the Allies been able to drive at Germany from all sides at once.  Only at Verdun the German Crown Prince, long halted at that point, was keeping up a slow but strong offensive pressure.

GERMAN SUBMARINE REACHES BALTIMORE

On July 9, the German merchant submarine Deutschland, in command of Capt.  Koenig, slipped into port at Baltimore, after eluding British warships in the North Sea, English Channel, and Atlantic.  The Deutschland carried as cargo nearly a million dollars’ worth of dyestuffs, as well as important mail.  The owners announced that she was the first of a regular fleet to be placed in service between German and American ports, to thwart the British blockade.  She made the 4,000-mile voyage in sixteen days, including nine hours during which, according to her captain, she lay at the bottom of the Channel to escape capture.  On July 25 she was preparing for her return voyage with a cargo said to consist largely of crude rubber and nickel, having been accepted by the United States Government as an innocent merchantman and granted clearance papers on that basis.  Outside the Virginia capes, beyond the three-mile limit, British and French cruisers awaited her possible appearance, with the hope of effecting her capture.  But it was announced in Germany that the Deutschland reached her home port safely Aug. 23.