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It passed between my line of vision and a wood, into which it disappeared. Just as I was going down to find out where it landed, I saw it again skimming across a field, and heading straight for the brown band beneath me. It was outlined against the shell-racked earth like a tiny insect, until just northwest of Fort Douaumont it crashed down upon the battlefield.
Douaumont Fortress "They come! See them, in their thousands! They are breaking from the trees and the hollows!" "Thousands of them! Hordes of them! Swarms of the Boches!"
Such was the condition of affairs on this eventful morning, when, having driven in the northern portion of the salient at Beaumont, and shortened its baseline, the Germans once more threw their masses to the assault in the desperate effort to drive in the wedge they had already inserted, to stampede the French at that position, and, breaking through their lines, to get behind the apex of the salient and entrap the thousands of Frenchmen holding the trenches from Douaumont and Vaux down to the southern portion of the salient.
The fortress of Douaumont was penetrated, and during the entire night a fierce struggle was continued within its walls. In spite of the most violent efforts of the Germans to dislodge the French they maintained their positions within the fort. Throughout the morning of May 23, 1916, the Germans rained shells on French positions defended by the Hundred and Twenty-ninth Regiment.
In this advance the French troops captured the villages of Vacherauville and Louvemont, the fortified farm of Chambrettes, and the fortified fieldworks of Hardaumont and Bezonvaux. The results gained by the French in this advance compare favorably with General Mangin's sensational exploit on October 24, 1916, when Fort Douaumont was taken.
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.
They were driven back by a counter-attack on the 29th, but Malancourt fell on the 31st, and the French further withdrew from Haucourt. On 2 April the Germans also succeeded in driving an awkward wedge into the Bois de la Caillette between Vaux and Douaumont, but Mangin thrust it back on the following day. There was yet another struggle for Mort Homme.
Though they were in such position as to half encircle the fort, yet a body of Brandenburgers succeeded by surprise in forcing their way into its walls, from which subsequent French attacks failed to dislodge them. East and west of Douaumont the Germans made incessant efforts to break through the new French front, but only succeeded in gaining a foothold in Hardaumont work.
It was upon these trenches that the main German attack fell, and in the first days the French were pushed back until their trench line followed the crests that bear the old forts, and at one point, at Douaumont, the Germans had actually got possession of one of the old forts; but the French trenches pass in front of this fort at a distance of but a few hundred yards.
Get up," Henri whispered in Jules's ear. "We've got to take our chance to join them'." A Sinister German What a sight that 20th French Corps those noble Bretons would have presented had it been daylight when they leapt from their trenches and advanced in one stupendous rush upon the captured fort of Douaumont!
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