“The French Staff reckoned that Verdun would be attacked when the ground had dried somewhat in the March winds.  It was thought that the enemy movement would take place against the British front in some of the sectors of which there were chalk undulations, through which the rains of winter quickly drained.  The Germans skilfully encouraged this idea by making an apparent preliminary attack at Lions, on a five-mile front with rolling gas-clouds and successive waves of infantry.  During this feint the veritable offensive movement softly began on Saturday, February 19, 1916, when the enormous masses of hostile artillery west, east, and north of the Verdun salient started registering on the French positions.  Only in small numbers did the German guns fire, in order not to alarm their opponents.  But even this trial bombardment by shifts was a terrible display of power, calling forth all the energies of the outnumbered French gunners to maintain the artillery duels that continued day and night until Monday morning, February 21st.

“The enemy seems to have maintained a bombardment all round General Herr’s lines on February 21, 1916, but this general battering was done with a thousand pieces of field artillery.  The grand masses of heavy howitzers were used in a different way.  At a quarter past seven in the morning they concentrated on the small sector of advanced intrenchments near Brabant and the Meuse; twelve-inch shells fell with terrible precision every few yards, according to the statements made by the French troops.  I afterwards saw a big German shell, from at least six miles distant from my place of observation, hit quite a small target.  So I can well believe that, in the first bombardment of French positions, which had been photographed from the air and minutely measured and registered by the enemy gunners in the trial firing, the great, destructive shots went home with extraordinary effect.  The trenches were not bombarded—­they were obliterated.  In each small sector of the six-mile northward bulge of the Verdun salient the work of destruction was done with surprising quickness.

“After the line from Brabant to Haumont was smashed, the main fire power was directed against the other end of the bow at Herbebois, Ornes, and Maucourt.  Then when both ends of the bow were severely hammered, the central point of the Verdun salient, Caures Woods, was smothered in shells of all sizes, poured in from east, north and west.  In this manner almost the whole enormous force of heavy artillery was centered upon mile after mile of the French front.  When the great guns lifted over the lines of craters, the lighter field artillery placed row after row in front of the wreckage, maintained an unending fire curtain over the communicating saps and support intrenchments.