rth of the salient and to the east of
the River Meuse were driven in till they rested near Vacherauville, on
the Meuse, and ran from thence to Thiaumont and Douaumont Fort and
Vaux, and so back to the Meuse again, French efforts had not been
confined alone to local fighting.

On the very first day, indeed, what had been strongly suspected before
became abundantly apparent, and it was clear that a German attack of
unprecedented force and violence on the salient of Verdun was to be
expected. The weight of artillery alone which for all those hours had
been pouring a torrent of shells on the heights of the Meuse was
sufficient to indicate the nature of the German preparations. A
thousand guns, directing their missiles on one sector of the long line
of trenches wriggling across the north-eastern provinces of France, was
no unusual feature of this extraordinary and gigantic warfare, but here
there were not one thousand guns alone but many more, many hundreds
more, probably even in excess of two thousand; while, moreover, the
troops of the Kaiser, debouching from the woods, marching up those
ravines giving access to the plateau of Douaumont, and massing behind
evergreen firs farther away, as discerned by the air-pilots of our
ally, disclosed the fact that those massed guns were to be supported by
an equally enormous concentration of troops--a concentration which
could have been effected only for one purpose. In short, and in fact,
it was clear that this was to be no ordinary attack on the salient of
Verdun, but a gigantic offensive--one which would demand a numerous
defending force and guns in proportion.

But the movement of troops from one area of the field to another is a
comparatively slow process at the best of times, for it must be
remembered that, behind the fighting-lines of such an army as opposed
the Germans, rails are always more or less congested, while an enormous
mass of vehicles ply the roads, bringing up ammunition and food, and
hundreds of other articles necessary for the fighters. Time, then, was
required in which to gather French forces, and time in which to rush
them over the rails, and by motor-transport along the roads, to the
neighbourhood of Verdun, and then to push them up to the fighting-line.

Those gallant fellows who had faced the first rush of the Germans, who
had stood under a tornado of shells, and who had held on to their
positions so desperately, were fighting all the while, not so much