lts.

So sound was the barricade, padded with sandbags and earth-works, that
the artillery fire fell practically unavailing, and the French general
realized that the barrier must be breached by explosives, as in
Napoleon's battles.

It was 8 o'clock and already pitch dark in that blighted atmosphere when
a special blasting corps, as devoted as the German chain workers, crept
forward toward the German position. The rest of the French waited,
sheltered in the ravine east of Douaumont, until an explosion should
signal the assault.

In Indian file, to give the least possible sign of their presence to the
hostile sentinels, the French blasters advanced in a long line, at first
with comparative rapidity, only stiffening into the grotesque rigidity
of simulated death when the searchlights played upon them, and resuming
progress when the beam shifted. Then as they approached the barrier they
moved slowly and more slowly. When they arrived within forty yards the
movement of the crawling men became imperceptible.

The blasting corps lay at full length, like hundreds of other motionless
forms about them, but all were working busily. With a short trowel, the
file leader scuffled the earth from under his body, taking care not to
raise his arms, and gradually making a shallow trench deep enough to
hide him. The others followed his example until the whole line had sunk
beneath the surface.

Then the leader began scooping his way forward, while his followers
deepened the furrow already made. Thus literally inch by inch the files
stole forward, sheltered in a narrow ditch from the gusts of German
machine-gun fire that constantly swept the terrain. Here and there the
sentinels' eyes caught a suspicious movement or an incautiously raised
head sank down pierced by a bullet, but the stealthy, molelike advance
continued. Hours passed. It was nearly dawn when the remnant of the
blasting corps reached the barricade at last and hurriedly put their
explosives in position. Back they wriggled breathlessly. An over-hasty
movement meant death, yet they must hurry lest the imminent explosions
overwhelm them.

Suddenly there was a roar that dwarfed the cannonade and all along the
barrier fountains of fire rose skyward, hurling a rain of fragments upon
what was left of the blasting party.

THREE OUT OF FOUR DIE.

The barricade was breached, but 75 per cent of the devoted corps had
given their lives to do it.

As the survivors lay exhausted