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Updated: June 7, 2025
Far from showing the effects of their defeat, the Germans on April 10, 1916, attacked Caillette Wood, but were repulsed. Further attempts made in the course of the night to eject the French from the trenches to the south of Douaumont also failed.
The French infantry now advanced along the valley behind Pepper Hill, and with the aid of a French force that had fought its way through the fortified fieldworks of Caurières Wood took Louvemont by a brilliant assault. In front of Douaumont the French troops made a rapid advance, but in Hardaumont Wood their forward movement on the right flank encountered stubborn opposition.
In consequence, whenever you hear that the Germans have made some slight gain, taken a trench about Douaumont or Vaux, you are certain to hear at once that the French have counter attacked and retaken the lost ground. The essential thing to remember is that the defence of Verdun is not the defence of a position that has a great military value.
Our two officers pointed out in the misty autumn landscape spots where some of the fiercest and most famous fights had been. How the names they rattled off brought back anxious nights and mornings when our first and only thoughts had been the communiqués! "Desperate battle on the Meuse." "Splendid stand at Douaumont." "New attack on Morthomme." But nothing we saw helped out our imaginings.
It seemed like the sweet voice of that old-time peace in Arras before the days of its agony, and I thought of that solitary bell sounding above the ruins in a ghostly way. While we hung on the news from Verdun it seemed as though the fate of the world were in Fort Douaumont our own lists of death grew longer.
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.
The communiqué of this imaginary battle read: "A bitter struggle is taking place around Fort de Douaumont which is an advanced post of the old defensive organization of Verdun. What had actually happened differed from both the French and German accounts. While changing troops in the line, the position had somehow been forgotten in a confusion of orders.
Only a battery commander and a few men remained in the fort. Some German soldiers, seeing the door open, had crawled into the fort, and taken everyone inside prisoner. A little later the French who were on the slopes of the hill were horrified at being shot at from the fort. There had been no battle at Douaumont and no losses.
To portray all that occurred on this eventful 23rd February would be almost impossible, and certainly beyond the scope of these pages; yet one must mention the case of those gallant Zouaves and African sharpshooters, who, to the north of Douaumont, recaptured a wood between Herbebois and Hill 351, which is just to the south-west of it, and lies in front of Beaumont.
Then, because the city and its citadel lie in the middle of a valley dominated by hills like a lump of sugar in the middle of a platter upon those hills was built a chain of barrier forts: La Chaume, Tavannes, Thiaumont, Vaux, Douaumont, and others.
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