ere
February 21, 1916. In the Flanders sector, on the Belgian front,
concentrated artillery fire silenced German bomb throwers in a futile
attempt to capture a trench. In the Woevre district the German troops,
after a fierce assault, stormed the village of Fresnes and captured
it, the French retaining a few positions on the outskirts. The German
infantry advanced in close formation and literally swarmed into the
village, while the French 75's and machine guns tore great gaps in
their ranks. Northeast of Vermelles small detachments of British
troops penetrated the German trenches on March 6, 1916, but were
compelled to retire. Active engagements and furious hand-to-hand
fighting centered around Maisons de Champagne. The positions the
French had taken on February 11, 1916, were recaptured by surprise
bayonet attacks, the Germans taking two officers and 150 men
prisoners. In the Argonne region attempts on the part of the Germans
to occupy some mine craters were repulsed.

CHAPTER XLVIII

BATTLE OF THE SOMME--ALLIED PREPARATIONS--POSITIONS OF THE OPPOSING
FORCES

Picardy, where the great battle of the Somme was staged in the summer
of 1916, is a typical French farming region of peasant cultivators, a
rolling table-land, seldom rising more than a few hundred feet, and
intersected by myriad shallow, lazy-flowing streams. Detached farms
are few, the farmers congregating in and around the little villages
that stand in the midst of hedgeless corn and beet fields stretching
far and wide. Here the Somme flows with many crooked turns, now
broadening into a lake, now flowing between bluffs and through swamps.
There is, or rather was, an inviting, peaceful look about this
country. Untouched, remote from the scene of battle it seemed, yet
here in the spring of 1916 preparations were already going forward for
what was to prove one of the fiercest struggles of the Great War.

In July, 1915, the British had taken over most of the line from Arras
to the Somme, and had passed a quiet winter in the trenches. The long
pause had been occupied by the active Germans in transforming the
chalk hills they occupied into fortified positions which they believed
would prove impregnable. The motives for the Allies' projected
offensive on the Somme were to weaken the German pressure on Verdun,
which had become severe in June, and to prevent the transference of
large bodies of troops from the west to the eastern front where they
might endan