Finally, the belfries of Rouvres, Mangiennes, Grémilly, Foameix—how had they been spared till then?—were overthrown by the Germans: no doubt they might have served as guiding marks for our artillery!
Whence come these vague rumours and these definite reports? There is no chance of finding out for certain. The soldiers who come back from Verdun bring them back and retail them. Silence is not a French virtue. There is uneasiness in the air. Yet the weather is so appalling—squalls of wind and snowstorms—that the attack seems unlikely, or at any rate postponed.
“To-morrow,” thinks the fort, which has faith in the strength of its walls. “Or the day after.”
On February 20 the weather takes a turn for the better. On the 21st, at seven o’clock in the morning, the first shell falls on Verdun, near the cathedral. The greatest battle of the greatest war is beginning.
BOOK II
THE BATTLE
I
THE FLIGHT OF THE RAVENS
The observers on aeroplanes or balloons who saw the volcano burst into flame declared that they could not mark on their maps all the batteries that were in action. The woods of Consenvoye, Moirey, Hingry, and Grémilly, the forests of Spincourt and Mangiennes, the hillsides of Romagne and Mormont, breathed fire like myriads of monstrous dragons.
The commander of a company of light infantry, who was wounded in the foot in Caures Wood, stated: “The intensity of the firing was such that when we came out into the open we no longer recognised the country which we had known for four months. There was scarcely a tree left standing. It was very difficult to walk about, because the ground was so broken up with the holes made by the shells. The defences were very much damaged, but there was such an entangled mass of barbed wire and broken branches that the whole still formed a serious obstacle to the offensive. The communication trenches no longer existed. The main trenches, on the other hand, had been badly knocked about, but were still serviceable; they were instantly manned.”