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Pulling their coats about them, turning up their collars so as to keep out the whirling flakes of snow, beating their arms about their bodies and stumbling up and down the trenches, the troops watching on the heights above Douaumont, dodging the German shells still flung at them, waited as the 25th February grew gradually older, and the light grew stronger.
All had told on the nerves, not of one man here and there, but on hundreds of the Kaiser's soldiers. Men went mad in those days of attack on Douaumont, just as they went mad in the onslaught at Ypres in October, 1914; just, indeed, as they had lost their reason during other terrible periods. Yes, your German war lord is no sympathetic commander.
There had been many a silent, yet grimly ferocious struggle with the bayonet; when men stood outside their trenches or struggled with the enemy in what remained of their battered positions. Such scenes we know had taken place inside the fort of Douaumont, for had not Jules and Henri participated in such an adventure on the stairway?
The position of the French front on May 5, 1916, was as follows: It was bounded by a line that ran through Pepper Hill, Hardaumont Wood, the ravine to the southwest of the village of Douaumont, Douaumont plateau to the south, and a few hundred yards from the fort, the northern edge of Caillette Wood, the ravine and village of Vaux, and the slopes of the fortress of Vaux.
General Nivelle, who had taken command at Verdun under Joffre, commenced a series of attacks and a persistent pressure against the German forces on both sides of the Meuse. These thrusts culminated in a sudden sweeping attack which on October 24th, resulted in the recapture by Nivelle's forces of Fort Douaumont and on November 2d, in the recapture of Fort Vaux.
They had advanced their line to Béthincourt and Cumières, but the objective they had been so eager to capture, Mort Homme, was in French possession, and so strongly held that it could only be captured at an exceedingly heavy price. On the right bank of the Meuse the Germans on March 8, 1916, resumed their offensive against the French lines to the east of Douaumont Fort.
The fort of Douaumont was captured that fort which they had been led to believe was heavily armed, was deemed impregnable indeed, and the capture of which was a feat almost impossible of achievement, had fallen to the valour of the Germans, to the valour indeed of the Brandenburgers. What then could prevent the fall of Verdun itself?
Back of these positions the line of forts was distinguished by the village of Bras, Douaumont, Hardaumont, the fort of Vaux, La Laurée, and Eix.
From day to day the public in this country watched the fluctuations of the struggle with an interest so absorbing that the names of Douaumont, Vaux, Mort Homme, Cumières, the Goose's Crest, came to ring in our ears almost as the names of Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, La Belle Alliance, rang in those of an earlier time. Verdun, from a distance, produces the same illusion as Rheims.
There was a general lull in operations after this, caused by heavy weather and fogs. In a dramatic blow at Verdun, after a period of comparative quiet at that point, the French on October 24 took the village and fort of Douaumont, also Thiaumont, the Haudromont quarries, La Caillette Wood, Damloup battery and trenches along a four-mile front to a depth of two miles.
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