rise,
steel shelters, and light mitrailleuses--in a word, all the material for
defensive fortifications passed from hand to hand, like buckets at a
country fire.

Despite the hurricane of French artillery fire, the German commander had
adopted the only possible means of rapid transport over the shell-torn
ground covered with debris, over which neither horse nor cart could
go. Every moment counted. Unless barriers rose swiftly, the French
counter-attacks, already massing, would sweep the assailants back into
the wood.

Cover was disdained. The workers stood at full height, and the chain
stretched openly across the hillocks, a fair target for the French
gunners. The latter missed no chance. Again and again great holes were
torn in the line by the bursting melinite, but as coolly as at maneuvers
the iron-disciplined soldiers of Germany sprang forward from shelters to
take the places of the fallen, and the work went on apace.

USE THE DEAD AS A SHELTER.

Gradually another line doubled the chain of the workers, as the upheaved
corpses formed a continuous embankment, each additional dead man giving
greater protection to his comrades, until the barrier began to form
shape along the diameter of the wood. There others were digging and
burying logs deep in the earth, installing shelters and mitrailleuses or
feverishly building fortifications.

At last the work was ended at fearful cost; but as the vanguard sullenly
withdrew behind it, from the whole length burst a havoc of flame upon
the advancing Frenchmen. Vainly the latter dashed forward. They couldn't
pass, and as the evening fell the barrier still held, covering the
German working parties, burrowed like moles in the mass of trenches and
boyeaux.

FRENCH PLAN TO BLAST BARRICADE.

[Illustration: VERDUN--THE WORLD'S GREATEST BATTLEFIELD. _--Chicago
American._

Approximate Positions of German Troops at Various Dates, and More
Important Actions of the Verdun Campaign in in Their Chronological
Order.--See Key to Letters and Numbers on Opposite Page.]

THE VERDUN BATTLEFIELD

Key to Map on Opposite Page

Battle lines showing the approximate positions of the German troops at
Verdun at various dates are designated in the map as follows:

A. Positions Feb. 21, 1916, when German offensive was begun.

B. Positions on Feb. 23.

C. Positions on Feb. 25.

D. Positions on Feb. 27.

E. Bethincourt salient, April 7, before French retire