les. Apparently this
has not been found necessary, but what is worth noting is that if
these hills were evacuated it would not mean the withdrawal from
Verdun but only to the best line of defence (the last line, to be
sure), which includes the town itself.

Now, east of the river the situation is materially different. Between
the Meuse and the level plateau, which appears in the dispatches from
the front as the Woevre, is a long, narrow ridge, running from north
to south for perhaps thirty-five or forty miles. This is the Cote de
Meuse, or, translated, the Hills of the Meuse. The range is never more
than ten miles wide and at many points less than half as wide. On the
west it rises very sharply from the Meuse and on the east it breaks
down quite as abruptly into the Woevre Plain. It cannot be effectively
approached from the Woevre, because the Woevre is an exceedingly
marshy plain, with much sub-surface water and in spring a mass of
liquid clay.

Now the French, when the German drive began, stood on this ridge some
eight miles, rather less, perhaps, to the north of the town of Verdun;
their line ran from the Meuse straight east along this ridge and then
turned at right angles and came south along the eastern edge of the
Meuse Hills and the shore of the Woevre Plain until it touched the
river again at St. Mihiel, twenty miles to the south, where the
Germans had broken through the Meuse Hills and reached the river. The
German attack came south along the crest of this ridge because the
German heavy artillery could not be brought over the Woevre.

About halfway between the French front and Verdun, on a little crest
somewhat higher than the main ridge, the French had erected a line of
forts, just as they had on the Charny Ridge, Forts Douaumont and Vaux,
familiar names now, were the forts most distant from Verdun. But the
French here, as on the other side of the river, had come out of these
forts, abandoned and dismantled them, and taken to trenches much to
the north. It was upon these trenches that the main German attack
fell, and in the first days the French were pushed back until their
trench line followed the crests that bear the old forts, and at one
point, at Douaumont, the Germans had actually got possession of one of
the old forts; but the French trenches pass in front of this fort at a
distance of but a few hundred yards.

Now, in the first days of the battle the position of the French on
the east bank of the M