em and also beat back any counter-attack in
force.

"But, ingenious as was this scheme for saving the man-power of Germany
by an unparalleled expenditure of shell, it required for full success
the co-operation of the French troops. But the French did not
co-operate. Their High Command had continually improved their system of
trench defense in accordance with the experiences of their own hurricane
bombardments in Champagne and the Carency sector. General Castelnau, the
acting Commander-in-Chief on the French front, was indeed the inventor
of hurricane fire tactics, which he had used for the first time in
February, 1915, in Champagne. When General Joffre took over the conduct
of all French operations, leaving to General Castelnau the immediate
control of the front in France, the victor of the battle of Nancy
weakened his advance lines and then his support lines, until his troops
actually engaged in fighting were very little more than a thin covering
body, such as is thrown out towards the frontier while the main forces
connect well behind.

"We shall see the strategical effect of this extraordinary measure in
the second phase of the Verdun battle, but its tactical effect was to
leave remarkably few French troops exposed to the appalling tempest of
German and Austrian shells. The fire-trench was almost empty, and in
many cases the real defenders of the French line were men with machine
guns, hidden in dug-outs at some distance from the photographed
positions at which the German gunners aimed. The batteries of light
guns, which the French handled with the flexibility and continuity of
fire of Maxims, were also concealed in widely scattered positions. The
main damage caused by the first intense bombardment was the destruction
of all the telephone wires along the French front. In one hour the
German guns plowed up every yard of ground behind the observing posts
and behind the fire trench. Communications could only be slowly
re-established by messengers, so that many parties of men had to fight
on their own initiative, with little or no combination of effort with
their comrades.

"Yet, desperate as were their circumstances, they broke down the German
plan for capturing trenches without an infantry attack. They caught the
patrols and annihilated them, and then swept back the disillusioned and
reluctant main bodies of German troops. First, the bombing parties were
felled, then the sappers as they came forward to repair the li