the attackers charged over them,
cheering. In the melee that followed there was no room to shoot or wield
the rifle. Some of the French fought with unfixed bayonets, like the
stabbing swords of the Roman legions. Others had knives or clubs. All
were battle-frenzied, as only Frenchmen can be.

The Germans broke, and as the first rays of dawn streaked the sky only
a small section of the wood was still in their hands. There a similar
barrier stopped progress, and it was evident that the night's work must
be repeated; but the hearts of the French soldiers were leaping with
victory as they dug furiously to consolidate the ground they had gained,
strewn with German bodies, thick as leaves. Over 6,000 Germans were
counted in a section a quarter of a mile square, and the conquerors saw
why their cannonade had been so ineffective. The Germans had piled a
second barrier of corpses close behind the first, so that the soft human
flesh would act as a buffer to neutralize the force of the shells.

FRENCH DEFENSE TRULY HEROIC.

While all the German attacks upon the French lines in front of Verdun
were marked with the utmost valor and intensity of devotion, the
continuous defense made by the French under General Petain was equally
vigorous and often truly heroic. Volunteers frequently remained in the
French trenches from which the rest of the French defenders had been
compelled to retire, to telephone information about the advancing enemy
to the French batteries, and some of the heaviest losses of the Germans
occurred when they believed themselves successful in an attack.

The consequences of such devotion on the part of French volunteers
were exemplified early in the morning of April 12, at a point called
Caurettes Woods, along the northeastern slopes of the hill known as Le
Mort Homme (Dead Man's Hill), where a French withdrawal had been carried
out. Volunteers remained behind to signal information to the French
batteries, and an eyewitness of the attack described what followed thus:

"The French seventy-fives immediately concentrated on the hostile trench
line. The Germans suffered heavily, but persevered, and soon dense
columns appeared amid the shell-torn brushwood on the southern fringe of
the Corbeaux Wood, pouring down into the valley separating them from the
former French position on the hillside.

"Thinking the French still held the latter, the Germans deployed
with their latest trench-storming device in the form of liqu