t by an assault; so their sappers went to work to tunnel
under it; but they had to bore through very hard rock and the work
was necessarily slow. The French, learning of the mining operations
of their foes, started a countereffort with the result that there
was a succession of fierce skirmishes under the surface of the
earth. Finally the German sappers were lured into a communicating
tunnel which had been mined for the purpose and they all perished.
The greatest activity of the sappers was between April 6 and April
13, 1915. On the night of the latter date the officers of the Germans
tried to rally their men for further operations, but their soldiers
had had enough and refused to renew their work.

The Germans, however, did not give up in their attempts to take
Hill 627, which they called Ban-de-Sapt, and in an assault they
made upon it on June 22 they took the hill. Thereupon the general
in command of the Thirtieth Bavarian Division made the following
announcement:

"I have confidence that the height of Ban-de-Sapt will be transformed
with the least possible delay into an impregnable fortification
and that the efforts of the French to retake it will be bloodily
repulsed."

On the night of July 8 the French began a bombardment which was
followed by an infantry charge which forced its way through five
lines of trenches and gained the redoubt on the top of the hill,
in spite of its corrugated iron and gun-shield defenses to which
had been added logs and tree trunks. At the same time the French
made an attack on the German trenches on the left and surrounded
the hill from the eastward. The Germans on the right flank of the
French were kept busy by another attack. In this battle two battalions
of the Fifth Bavarian Ersatz Brigade were taken from the German
ranks either by death or as prisoners. The French captured eight
hundred and eighty-one, of whom twenty-one were officers, who,
for the most part, were men of more than ordinary education.

The principal work of the French troops at this time was in the
valley of the Fecht and the neighboring mountains. They planned
to go down through the valley to Muenster and take the railroad
to which the mountain railroads were tributaries. In connection
with this campaign in the mountains the achievement of a company
of French Chasseurs serves to illustrate, the heroic and hardy
character of these men. They were surrounded by German troops on
June 14, 1915, but refused to surre