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Updated: May 9, 2025
The solution of the riddle is to be found in Bazaine's despatch of August 17 to the Minister of War: "We are going to put forth every effort to make good our supplies of all kinds in order to resume our march in two days if that is possible ." That the army was badly hampered by lack of stores is certain; but to postpone even for a single day the march to Verdun by the northern road that by way of Briey was fatal.
From this metalliferous field of Lorraine came the ore that supplied eighty per cent of the steel required for German and Austrian guns and munitions. These fields of Briey were only twenty miles from the great guns of Verdun.
Germany is ready to evacuate the occupied French territory, but must reserve to herself the right, by means of the peace negotiations, to the economic exploitation of the territory of Longwy and Briey, if not through direct incorporation, by a legal grant to exploit. We are not in a position to cede to France any noteworthy districts in Alsace-Lorraine.
At Briey, the station was damaged and the railway line cut, two of the birdmen descending to within a few hundred yards of the track. Enemy batteries at Brimont suffered damage. The next day a German machine was shot down near Colmar, in Alsace, and its two occupants captured. With the return of spring, 1915, came renewed activity among airmen on all fronts.
At the little old-world Croix-Blanche at Briey a stout, middle-aged, ruddy-faced English tourist had had his headquarters; while, again, at the unpretending Cloche d'Or in the Place St. Paul at Verdun another Englishman, a young, active, clean-shaven man, had been moving about the country in constant communication with "Mr. Maltwood."
The whole of that night the wires between the sous-prefecture at Briey and Paris had been at work, and many curious official messages had been exchanged. Truly, the pair had had a providential escape. Sir Hugh was, of course, in entire ignorance of the dastardly action taken by the Pimlico doctor.
The main objectives were the centre of the chemical industry at Mannheim and Frankfort; the iron and steel works at Briey and Longwy and the Saar Basin; the machine shops in the Westphalian district and the magneto works at Stuttgart; the submarine bases at Wilhelmshaven, Bremerhaven, Cuxhaven, and Hamburg, and the accumulator factories at Hagen and Berlin.
On the same night, March 21, 1915, three bombs were thrown upon Villers-Cotterets, fifteen miles southwest of Soissons. There was small damage and no casualties. But the two raids emphasized that a few weeks more would see intensive resumption of war in the air. French aviators shelled Bazincourt, Briey, Brimont, and Vailly on March 22, 1915.
The answer is to be found in a demand made by the great Junker associations of Germany in May, 1915, nine months before the attack was undertaken. That demand was to the effect that Verdun should be attacked and captured. They declared that the Verdun fortifications made a menacing salient thrust into the rich iron fields of the Briey basin.
Why not tell the world that we will have failed in the one thing for which we set out if we evacuate Belgium? We need Belgium's coast line for our shipping." He adds that Germany has used twenty-three million tons of Belgian coal and has taken as much more iron ore out of France's basin in Briey.
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