There remained naught for the Germans but to try and carry the trenches, under the support of their artillery.

Day after day the Crown Prince launched assault after assault.  The French met them bravely.  But the Germans were not to be denied; and urged on by the Crown Prince, and often by the presence upon the firing line of the German emperor himself, they continued the herculean task without regard to loss of life.

Gradually the French were forced back.  Hand-to-hand fighting for possession of the greatest strategical positions, fought daily, for a time resulted in advantage to neither side.  Among the chief objectives of the German attack were two particularly important positions—­Hill No 304 (so called to distinguish it from numerous other elevated positions) and Le Mort Homme (Dead Man’s Hill).  This name, which was fated to become historic, was gained only after days and days of constant hand-to-hand fighting and is now recalled as one of the bloodiest battlefields of the titanic struggle.

General Henri Phillip Petain, in direct command of the French operations at Verdun, endeared himself to the hearts of all his countrymen by his gallant conduct of the defense.  While the decision of General Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, to give ground before the German attacks rather than to sacrifice his men in a useless defense of the fortresses, was criticized at first by the people, the resulting value of this move was soon apparent and censure turned to praise.

While the heaviest assaults of the Germans were launched in the immediate vicinity of Verdun itself, the great battle line stretched far to the north and to the south.  When it appeared at one time that the French must be hurled back, General Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief, weakened his own lines to the far north to take over a portion of the ground just to his right and thus relieved the French situation at Verdun somewhat.

General Petain thus was enabled to shorten his own lines, and from that moment, with few exceptions, the French stood firm.

It seemed that the Germans, beaten off time after time as they were, must soon abandon the attempt to break the French lines at Verdun; but each repulse brought a new assault mightier than before.  The Germans raced across the open ground under a veritable hail of lead.  They fell by hundreds and thousands, but what few survived hurled themselves against the barbed wire entanglements of the French or into the trenches, there to die upon the points of the foes’ bayonets, or to be shot down as they tumbled over the breastworks.

The German general staff drew heavily from its forces on the east front and added these new legions to the already large army occupied before Verdun; but the result was always the same.  So far they could progress and no farther.

After almost five months of defensive tactics, General Petain began to launch assaults of his own.  At first the Germans put these down with regularity, but at last the effort began to tell.  The French made headway.  Much of the lost ground was recovered.  The French moved forward a bit day by day, occupied new positions and consolidated them.  It was terrible work, but the French persevered.