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In the Wavrille sector the French had succeeded during the night in connecting their new line with the Herbebois sector, though incessantly bombarded. Wavrille Wood and Hill 351 must be protected, for their capture would enable the Germans to sweep the Beaumont-Hill 344 line.
In each small sector of the six-mile northward bulge of the Verdun salient the work of destruction was done with surprising quickness. "After the line from Brabant to Haumont was smashed, the main fire power was directed against the other end of the bow at Herbebois, Ornes, and Maucourt.
After repeated attacks the Germans captured Wavrille Wood, where they were kept hemmed in by the French barrage and unable to proceed. Fighting in the Herbebois sector had raged throughout the day, and during the night the French were forced to withdraw. When February 24, 1916, dawned the French line ran by Beaumont, the northern edge of the Bois des Fosses, and covered La Chaume Wood.
To portray all that occurred on this eventful 23rd February would be almost impossible, and certainly beyond the scope of these pages; yet one must mention the case of those gallant Zouaves and African sharpshooters, who, to the north of Douaumont, recaptured a wood between Herbebois and Hill 351, which is just to the south-west of it, and lies in front of Beaumont.
A counter-attack checked their progress in the afternoon, and the flanks of the French centre held out at Brabant and Herbebois throughout that day and the next.
They turned slightly to their right, and crept through the mass of trees not yet levelled by the gun-fire of either of the combatants different, indeed, from the Bois des Caures and the Herbebois, where gigantic German shells had sent trees and earth hurtling skywards, had severed trunks in all directions, and had left but a tangled mass of fallen tree-tops and shattered stumps, smouldering here and there, and masking the trenches and dug-outs and redoubts obliterated during the earlier fighting, masking, too, the bodies of those gallant Frenchmen who had given their lives for the cause, and of the Germans, who had fought to achieve the ambitions of their Kaiser.
The Bois de Caures was evacuated, and then the southern end of it seized once more by some of our gallant fellows. Then there was fighting on the line to Ornes and at Herbebois, and there, too, the garrisons held their positions, having fought throughout the day and inflicted enormous losses on the Boches.
At Herbebois and Ornes and on to Bezonvaux there was hand-to-hand fighting of the most desperate nature, while at Maucourt an advance position held by the French terrific execution was done to the masses of troops hurled forward by the Germans. Here masked French quick-firing guns caught German columns of attack, twenty men abreast and hundreds deep, at close range, and blew them into eternity.
The retiring column, leaving the shelter of the wood, encountered heavy machine-gun fire, and, greatly depleted in numbers, finally gained the first line of the second position at Beaumont. No attempt was made by the Germans to advance on the Woevre front. In the territory of Soumazannes, La Ville Wood, and Herbebois the French firmly maintained the supporting line.
Like you, we have fought our way back from Brabant, from the lines stretching along past Herbebois and Ornes.
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