esses as soon as had the Germans.

Therefore, while the Germans were able to destroy forts and fortresses at
will, almost, it availed them little. The defenders were secure behind
their breastworks of earth. True, German guns dropped huge shells in the
trenches, a veritable rain of death, but the gaps in the defending lines
were filled promptly.

There remained naught for the Germans but to try and carry the trenches,
under the support of their artillery.

Day after day the Crown Prince launched assault after assault. The French
met them bravely. But the Germans were not to be denied; and urged on by
the Crown Prince, and often by the presence upon the firing line of the
German emperor himself, they continued the herculean task without regard
to loss of life.

Gradually the French were forced back. Hand-to-hand fighting for
possession of the greatest strategical positions, fought daily, for a
time resulted in advantage to neither side. Among the chief objectives of
the German attack were two particularly important positions--Hill No 304
(so called to distinguish it from numerous other elevated positions) and
Le Mort Homme (Dead Man's Hill). This name, which was fated to become
historic, was gained only after days and days of constant hand-to-hand
fighting and is now recalled as one of the bloodiest battlefields of the
titanic struggle.

General Henri Phillip Petain, in direct command of the French operations
at Verdun, endeared himself to the hearts of all his countrymen by his
gallant conduct of the defense. While the decision of General Joffre, the
French commander-in-chief, to give ground before the German attacks
rather than to sacrifice his men in a useless defense of the fortresses,
was criticized at first by the people, the resulting value of this move
was soon apparent and censure turned to praise.

While the heaviest assaults of the Germans were launched in the
immediate vicinity of Verdun itself, the great battle line stretched far
to the north and to the south. When it appeared at one time that the
French must be hurled back, General Sir Douglas Haig, the British
commander-in-chief, weakened his own lines to the far north to take over
a portion of the ground just to his right and thus relieved the French
situation at Verdun somewhat.

General Petain thus was enabled to shorten his own lines, and from that
moment, with few exceptions, the French stood firm.

It seemed that the Germans, beaten off time