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Updated: May 31, 2025
Northeast of Cerny the Germans succeeded in occupying French trenches on a 216-yard front, but at all other points where they advanced the French counterattacks and barrage fire rolled them back and wrought disaster among their ranks. During the last week of May, 1917, the French forces along the Chemin-des-Dames only fought on the defensive.
As he never wasted a moment he occupied the time of waiting, in ringing up his broker and firing a barrage of instructions. This done he returned to the fireplace, consulted his own watch, corrected the mantelpiece clock which was a minute and a half slow, sniffed critically and proceeded to warm his hands again.
The artilleryman fires his gun under the direction of some observer, often far away, who telephones to him to lower or elevate his piece, or deflect it to the tight or left. The infantryman advances as the barrage lifts, and rushes forward according to orders, firing or using his bayonet as the case may be, digging in when halted, and waiting for another rush forward.
"Well, they're alive yet!" grimly mused Jimmy, as he fired and crouched down. A look to the right showed him Roger and Bob doing the same thing. So far the five Brothers had suffered no harm. But the battle was only beginning. The German big guns had not yet opened in force to reply to the challenge of the American heavy artillery. So far the barrage had, in a great measure, protected our lads.
Meantime up above, and from a higher altitude than before, Bangs continued his mysterious signaling; not to Blaine or to the Allies, but wonder of all wonders to the Boches themselves. Blaine now understood this, for he had noticed that the barrage itself had fallen back.
They stopped and stood waiting. Others were on the second of the five minutes' allowance as suddenly all the flashes ceased and nothing remained over the trench but the mantle of smoke. The barrage had been lifted from the first to the second-line German trench as you lift the spray of a hose from one flower bed to another.
"We have something to hand Fritzie," young Pickles was heard to remark when he had learned of the quality of the Somme fighting, "and I hope he'll like it, for he's got to take it." The battalion ranks, both officers and men, had once more been filled up. They had a brief fortnight's training in the new open fighting under barrage and then set off cheerfully for the "Big Game."
When his hand was almost upon the object for which he had toiled and striven whether pacifying a tribe, meeting a loan by honest means, building a barrage, irrigating the land, financing a new industry, or experimenting in cotton it suddenly eluded him. Nahoum had snatched it away by subterranean wires.
The unfortunate 58th, forced back from the river-side, had heroically fought their way up the side of the hill, only to encounter our barrage, which, owing to the mist, we thought was well above and ahead of where they would be. Under this fresh blow the 58th had retired to their trenches at the bottom of the small valley.
The fiercely-burning huts now formed an effectual defence, the survivors of the garrison having concentrated in a space in the form of a segment of a circle, a portion of the palisade comprising the arc and the line of flaming huts the chord. For the present the barrage of fire was impassable, but what would happen when the conflagration burnt itself out remained a matter for anxious speculation.
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