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Updated: June 29, 2025
So on Monday, September 23rd, we gave Fritz a three-hour barrage and it was a hot one. By the time the barrage started, all our light artillery had been brought up and put in place, and we were able to rain shells from the famous 75's upon the enemy in torrents. This barrage was for the purpose of breaking up the morale of the Germans.
Those scattered parties sent to reconnoitre the battered ground had been killed or driven back; the preparations for a massed attack had been broken up and set at naught by the terrible 75's; and now, as the German infantry debouched again, and, marching swiftly forward, came into full range of the slopes which the guns would appear to have rendered absolutely untenable, such a storm of bullets swept the ranks that the mass quivered, rocked and reeled, and then halted.
A tall, lithe officer a colonel was in front of the men already, his sword waving overhead, his head turned towards the men as he led them. "Charge!" he shouted, though the sound was swept away and lost in the turmoil of cheers from the French soldiers who heard him, and in the shattering reports of those French 75's, which, blazing hard in the rear, registered still upon the enemy.
They were not at work for the moment, and the Commandant, a grim and forceful man, showed me some details of their construction. When we left them in their bower it looked like a Hill priest's wayside shrine we heard them singing through the steep-descending pines. They, too, like the 75's, seem to have no pet name in the service. It was a poisonously blind country.
One sees and studies the few appliances which make her do what she does, and one feels that any one could have invented her. FAMOUS FRENCH 75's "As a matter of fact," says a commandant, "anybody or, rather, everybody did.
They had just brought him the maps rectified to mark the French advance. The advance had been made whilst we were standing on the terrace at Verdun the night before. The '75's had replied at once and the French had been able to carry out the operation. Good news had also come in from the Somme, and General Nivelle did not hesitate to express his admiration for the British soldiers.
He sees no great gulf between officer and enlisted man which the British service persists to set up between officers and enlisted men. Hop to it, now Frenchie, you surely can sling 'em. We need a whole lot from your 75's. We are guarding your guns, do not fear for the flanks. Just send that barrage to the Yanks at the front. And how they do send it.
The fighting before Verdun illustrated and emphasized the revolution in methods of attack and defense which has taken place in the French army. At the beginning of the war the French believed in depending largely on their light artillery both to prepare and to support an attack, and for this purpose their 75's were admirably adapted.
A city of strange and cruel sounds the short, sharp bark of the '75's, the boom of the death-dealing enemy guns, the shrieks of the shells and the fall of masonry parting from houses to which it had been attached for centuries, whilst from the shattered window-frames the familiar sprite of the household looked ever for the children who came no longer across the thresholds of the homes.
Men who have fought four days and nights on end feel like that when the strain of actual battle ceases. The Boche guns sounded nearer, and the colonel had ordered a mounted officer to go back and seek definite information upon the situation. By 10 A.M. a retiring French battalion marched through, and reported that the line was again being withdrawn. By 11 A.M. two batteries of "75's" came back.
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