urbe.

As to the German defenses, the French were intimately acquainted with
every detail. They had maps showing every defensive work, trench,
alley of communication, and clump of trees in the landscape. Each of
these features had been given a special name or number preceded by a
certain letter, according to the sector of attack wherein it was
situated. These details had been laboriously collected by aviators and
spies, and applied with minute precision.

On the morning of September 22, 1915, the French accelerated their
long-sustained bombardment of the German positions with intense fury,
continuing day and night without a break until the 25th. The direct
object of this preparatory cannonade was to destroy the wire
entanglements, bury the defenders in their dugouts, raze the trenches,
smash the embrasures, and stop up the alleys of communication. The
range included not only the first trench line, but also the supporting
trench and the second position, though the last was so far distant as
to make accurate observation difficult. The heavy long-range guns
shelled the headquarters, the cantonments and the railroad stations.
They speedily demolished the permanent way, thereby stopping all
traffic in reenforcements, munitions and commissariat. From letters
and notes afterwards found upon German prisoners who came out alive
from that inferno, one may gather an approximate idea of what the
bombardment was like:

"September 23.

"The French artillery fired without intermission from the morning of
the 21st to the evening of the 23rd, and we all took refuge in our
dugouts. On the evening of the 22d we were to have gone to get some
food, but the French continued to fire on our trenches. In the evening
we had heavy losses, and we had nothing to eat."

"September 24.

"For the last two days the French have been firing like mad. To-day,
for instance, a dugout has been destroyed. There were sixteen men in
it. Not one of them managed to save his skin. They are all dead.
Besides that, a number of individual men have been killed and there
are a great mass of wounded. The artillery fires almost as rapidly as
the infantry. A mist of smoke hangs over the whole battle front, so
that it is impossible to see anything. Men are dropping like flies.
The trenches are no longer anything but a mound of ruins."