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Updated: June 7, 2025
"Stop! Wait a moment! I heard something move! Come on!" said Jules suddenly. And together, creeping on hands and knees, the two went forward along that gallery in search of the German. Heroic "Poilus" Who can describe the condition of affairs in the shattered fort of Douaumont on that night when the gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps hurled themselves against the captors of the position?
The British airmen in a series of engagements brought down seven German machines, damaging others and forcing them to descend. At the close of the day eight British machines were missing. On October 24, 1916, on the Verdun front a great victory was won by the French in the capture of Fort Douaumont.
Germans begin violent bombardment of Dead Man's Hill, March 1. Germans capture village of Douaumont, March 2; 1,000 prisoners. Fresnes captured by Germans, March 5. Germans capture Forges, March 5; drive against French left wing. Germans take Regneville, west of Meuse, March 6. Germans capture heights of Cumieres, etc., March 7. Village of Vaux taken and retaken by Germans, March 8-10.
It was their accuracy and their coördination with the infantry and the infantry's coördination with the barrage that had expressed better than volumes of reports the possibilities of the offensive with waves of men advancing behind waves of shell fire, which was applied in the taking of Douaumont later and must be the solution of the problem of a decision on the Western front.
For listen: as the night grew older, as darkness became denser above the shattered fort of Douaumont, and the fire died down so that the Brandenburgers holding that central hall were no longer visible, figures began to collect behind the French trenches the active, eager figures of gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps, a crack corps, to whom the task had been assigned of recapturing the fortress.
On the 25th the Germans launched what they thought was their final attack in the battle for Verdun, and before nightfall the news was telegraphed to Berlin that Fort Douaumont, the key of the last line of defence, had fallen. It was a natural but unrealized anticipation.
Only a desperate rally enabled the French to keep their front intact while their left was withdrawn from Champneuville and Talou hill to Vacherauville and the Poivre hill, and their right from Bezonvaux and the Bois des Caurières to the Douaumont plateau.
He had an honest, pleasant face; there was a certain simple, wholesome quality about the man. In the piping times of peace, he was a cultivateur in the Valois, working his own little farm; he was married and had two little boys. At Douaumont, a fragment of a shell had torn open his left hand. "The Boches are not going to get through up there?" "Not now.
There's Gremilly lying near the railway, and farther along still, beyond Ormes, is Cincery, and south of it Etain, while immediately beyond are the heights of Douaumont, with Vaux closely adjacent." Peering through their loopholes, Jules and Henri spent a useful and interesting half-hour in watching the scene before them.
That is Douaumont, whose taking cost the Germans such prolonged and bloody effort and aroused the Kaiser to a florid outburst of laudation of his Brandenburgers who, by its capture, had, as Germany then thought, brought France to her death-gasp.
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