United States or Kyrgyzstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The French delivered a dashing counterattack, and were successful in freeing all but a small part of the place. On the 25th the Germans doubled the violence of their bombardment. Not since they assumed the offensive had they launched such a tornado of destructive fire. Another objective of the Germans besides Fleury was the fortress of Souville.
They saw to it that he was carried back to the little transit hospital just behind the Fort de Souville. It was a rude hut of logs, covered with sand-bags, on the slope of the hill. The ruined woods around it were still falling to the crash of far-thrown shells. In the close, dim shelter of the inner room Pierre came to himself. He looked up into the face of Father Courcy.
Verdun was German valor at its best and German gunnery at its mightiest, the effort of Colossus shut in a ring of steel to force a decision; and the high-water mark of German persistence was where you stood on the edge of the area of mounds that shells had heaped and craters that shells had scooped by the concentration of fire on Fort Souville.
They saw to it that he was carried back to the little transit hospital just behind the Fort de Souville. It was a rude hut of logs, covered with sand-bags, on the slope of the hill. The ruined woods around it were still falling to the crash of far-thrown shells. In the close, dim shelter of the inner room Pierre came to himself. He looked up into the face of Father Courcy.
Either in front or to the rear of Souville toward Verdun the surprising thing was how few soldiers you saw and how little transport within range of German guns; which impressed you with the elastic system of the French, who are there and are not there. Let an attack by the Germans develop and soldiers would spring out of the earth and the valleys echo with the thunder of guns.
The Germans failed to make any serious advance in the center of the French lines, being halted by vigorous counterattacks. On July 12, 1916, the Germans attacked with six regiments and pushed their way to the roads to Fleury and Vaux within 800 meters of the fortress of Souville. This advance during the next few days was halted by the French.
It was known that a Franco-British offensive was imminent. The Germans were in a situation that called for heroic action: the capture of Verdun with all possible speed. During the month of June, 1916, the Germans used up men and material on a lavish and unprecedented scale. On June 23, 1916, they started a general attack against the French positions of Froideterre, Fleury, and Souville.
During that time the Germans pushed out from Douaumont and captured Vaux; they crowded up and over Dead Man's Hill and up the slope of Hill 304; by July 1, 1916, they had pushed the French right back to the extreme edge of the hills, on the east bank of the Meuse, and the French were just holding the inside line of forts Belleville, Souville, and Tavannes with their backs to the river and with German trenches coming right up to the ditches of these three forts.
After leaving the citadel and the much-injured cathedral, beneath the crypt of which some of the labyrinthine passages of the old fortress are hewn, we drove through the eastern section of the battle-field, past what was once Fort Souville, along an upper road, with Vaux on our right, and Douaumont on the northern edge of the hill in front of us; descending again by Froide Terre, with the Côte de Poivre beyond it to the north; while we looked across the Meuse at the dim lines of Mort Homme, of the Bois des Corbeaux and the Crête de l'Oie, of all that "chess-board" of hills which became so familiar to Europe in those marvellous four months from February to June, 1916.
Three bees and a fly winging their way past, with the rise and fall of their varied hums, were sufficient to renew vividly for me the blackness of night over the sticky mud of Souville, and to cloud for a moment the scent of clover and dying grass, with that terrible sickly sweet odor of human flesh in an old shell-hole.
Word Of The Day