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Those masses down below, the village of Vacherauville and the road to it, the slopes of the Côte de Poivre and of the Côte de Talou, are enfiladed by our guns across the river. Wait then! The gunners have not opened yet, but when the word comes, such a storm of shell will be poured upon the Germans that they too will learn what shell-fire really means."
In the center the Germans were repulsed everywhere, except south of Béthincourt, where they succeeded in penetrating an advanced work. On the right bank, at the side of Pepper Hill, the Germans only gained a foothold in one trench east of Vacherauville. The main summit of Mort Homme, Hill 295, as well as Hill 304, the principal positions, remained firmly in the hands of the French.
And during those few days, when the French lines to the north of the salient and to the east of the River Meuse were driven in till they rested near Vacherauville, on the Meuse, and ran from thence to Thiaumont and Douaumont Fort and Vaux, and so back to the Meuse again, French efforts had not been confined alone to local fighting.
They were back upon that main defensive line now, where it swept from Vacherauville, on the River Meuse, opposite the Mort Homme and Hill 304, across the hill of Talou and Pepper Hill ominous names already to the enemy past Louvemont, and so to Douaumont and Damloup, where the trenches had now descended to the plain of the Woevre, and they held to it till they clambered once more up the slopes, and so to the other end of the base of the salient.
"There's not a doubt about it," said Henri in a whisper, as he and Jules shrank into a hole behind a bush and waited for a column of troops to pass along the road, "the enemy is preparing for an attack in force to-morrow, via Vacherauville; and, with what we have already seen in the wood, and what we hear now, we have information of the utmost importance.
At Vacherauville lying close to the eastern bank of the river the next outcrop on the banks of the Meuse is the Côte de Talou, and, still east of it, the Côte du Poivre, while a little farther east, in the neighbourhood of Louvemont, the heights sweep round abruptly to the south to Douaumont, and then to Vaux, towards which those outlying parties of French who had held on so stubbornly to Herbebois, Ornes, and Maucourt, and had retired towards Bezonvaux, were now being driven by the enemy.
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.
There was the loud tramp of feet on the road which led from Beaumont to Vacherauville, and, as the two drew nearer to that village, they could hear columns of men approaching along the road from Samogneux.
"There's the edge of the wood yonder, the northern edge," said Henri in a little while, stopping and looking upward. "It's lighter in that direction, and without doubt we are now getting down to the road which runs from Beaumont to Vacherauville a road likely enough to be used by the enemy in his advance on our positions.
The battle began at 10 o'clock in the morning as the church clock near by sounded the hour. Immediately every French gun started a storm of steel, showering shells immediately behind the German front line. While this intense bombardment was at its height, the French infantry made a dashing advance and gained the village of Vacherauville, where they encountered stubborn resistance.
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