breaking
through their lines, to get behind the apex of the salient and entrap
the thousands of Frenchmen holding the trenches from Douaumont and Vaux
down to the southern portion of the salient.

"A brilliant stroke!" you will say. "The outcome of most able
generalship on the part of the Germans." But wait! Clever though the
enemy was, thoughtful though the German High Command had proved itself
to be, and tremendous though the preparations for this battle were,
there was yet something vital lacking in strategy. The Germans had
counted on their guns to smash a way through any sort of defence, and
though it is true that their plans had miscarried in one respect, and
they had discovered already, to their considerable cost, that guns
alone were not sufficient, yet guns and men together, they had learnt
during the initial stages of this battle, were enough first to pound
the enemy trenches, and then to drive out the defenders. Reckoning now
upon a similar course of events, and, having already pounded the French
position, they launched on this morning hosts of grey-coated infantry
at the Hills of Talou and Poivre, above which Henri and Jules were
fighting.

Posted on an eminence in the neighbourhood of Samogneux, the German
High Command, safe from the rifle-fire of the French, watched through
their glasses as those sinister lines of grey swept from the wood in
which they had been taking cover, and, marching steadily over the
ground, advanced upon their objective. And then they too heard that
sudden salvo of guns from across the river, and, turning their glasses,
surveyed the Mort Homme and Hill 304, positions to which they had given
but little consideration.

And see the result! 75's, machine-guns, howitzers, and rifles, all
concealed, all dug in or sheltered, and all amply provided with
ammunition, poured a storm of shot and shell and bullets upon those
advancing grey masses, sweeping them away, shattering the ranks,
treating them to a hail of steel beside which the fire of the defenders
of the higher slopes of the hill the Germans were attacking was but as
a shower compared with a tornado. German infantry melted away under
that terrible storm, masses of grey were levelled like corn at the feet
of the reaper, while even the forest, through which Henri and Jules had
penetrated on the previous day, was flattened or torn to shreds, was
converted into a species of smoking volcano. It was terrific! It was
a master-