916, but this general battering was done
with a thousand pieces of field artillery. The grand masses of heavy
howitzers were used in a different way. At a quarter past seven in the
morning they concentrated on the small sector of advanced intrenchments
near Brabant and the Meuse; twelve-inch shells fell with terrible
precision every few yards, according to the statements made by the
French troops. I afterwards saw a big German shell, from at least six
miles distant from my place of observation, hit quite a small target. So
I can well believe that, in the first bombardment of French positions,
which had been photographed from the air and minutely measured and
registered by the enemy gunners in the trial firing, the great,
destructive shots went home with extraordinary effect. The trenches were
not bombarded--they were obliterated. In each small sector of the
six-mile northward bulge of the Verdun salient the work of destruction
was done with surprising quickness.

"After the line from Brabant to Haumont was smashed, the main fire power
was directed against the other end of the bow at Herbebois, Ornes, and
Maucourt. Then when both ends of the bow were severely hammered, the
central point of the Verdun salient, Caures Woods, was smothered in
shells of all sizes, poured in from east, north and west. In this manner
almost the whole enormous force of heavy artillery was centered upon
mile after mile of the French front. When the great guns lifted over the
lines of craters, the lighter field artillery placed row after row in
front of the wreckage, maintained an unending fire curtain over the
communicating saps and support intrenchments.

"Then came the second surprising feature in the new German system of
attack. No waves of storming infantry swept into the battered works.
Only strong patrols at first came cautiously forward, to discover if it
were safe for the main body of troops to advance and reorganize the
French line so as to allow the artillery to move onward. There was thus
a large element of truth in the marvelous tales afterwards told by
German prisoners. Their commanders thought it would be possible to do
all the fighting with long-range artillery, leaving the infantry to act
as squatters to the great guns and occupy and rebuild line after line of
the French defenses without any serious hand-to-hand struggles. All they
had to do was to protect the gunners from surprise attack, while the
guns made an easy path for th