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On the 22d, finally, they reported that beginning with the 21st the Germans had been withdrawing their heavy batteries. They added that a 42-centimeter mortar had been damaged by the Russian fire, and that "not a single shot of these mortars has reached the fortress, not a redoubt has been penetrated. The superiority of the artillery fire evidently rests with us.
The result was that the 42-centimeter monsters were hastily withdrawn after a few trial shots and the bombardment was continued with a battery of 28-centimeter coast defense guns, an Austrian motor battery, a 30.5-centimeter mortar and some other heavy batteries. The fire rose to considerable intensity in the last days of February and the first days of March.
I make this assertion after viewing the visible results of the operations of the German 42-centimeter guns in Belgium and France, notably at Liege in the former country and at Maubeuge in the latter.
Since I came back out of the war zone I have met persons who questioned the existence of a 42-centimeter gun, they holding it to be a nightmare created out of the German imagination with intent to break the confidence of the enemies of Germany.
Germans take Champneuville Feb. 27, with 5,000 prisoners. Bloody encounters at village of Eix on Woevre plain, Feb. 27. Germans occupy Moranville and Haudiomont, Feb. 27. Champlon and Manheuilles fall Feb. 28; 1,300 French prisoners. Verdun battered and set on fire by 42-centimeter guns. French evacuate Fort Vaux, after heavy bombardment, March 1.
We spent the better part of a day in two of the forts which were fondly presumed to guard Maubeuge toward the north Fort Des Sarts and Fort Boussois; but Fort Des Sarts was the one where the 42-centimeter gun gave the first exhibition of its powers upon French soil in this war, so we went there first.
The fortress of Ossowetz on the Bobr River proved inconquerable by the 42-centimeter mortars which had worked such terrific effects on the forts of Belgium and France. It was continually under German artillery fire through the months of February and March, 1915, without suffering appreciable damage.
The capture of the fortress was the first personal triumph of the "old man of the Mazurian lakes" since the great Austro-German campaign in the East was inaugurated. The six great forts defending the city from the west and southwest were simply blown to pieces by the incessant pounding of Germany's great 42-centimeter guns and a host of minor pieces.
One gathered that a 42-centimeter shell possessed in some degree the freakishness which we associate with the behavior of cyclones. We were told that at the last, when the guns had been silenced and dismounted and the walls had been pierced and the embrasures blown bodily away, the garrison, or what was left of it, fled to these lowermost shelters.
To begin with, I didn't understand how a 42-centimeter gun could be fired one hundred and forty-seven times without its wearing out, for I have often heard that the larger the bore of your gun and the heavier the charge of explosives which it carries, the shorter is its period of efficiency.. In the second place, it didn't seem possible after being hit one hundred and forty-seven times with 42-centimeter bombs that enough of any fort of whatsoever size would be left to permit of a tallying-up of separate shots.
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