In the evening the French occupied some of the trenches, but the use of aerial torpedoes, which pulverized whole rows of men, and a massed counter-attack launched at 4.30 on the morning of the 6th, forced them to give up part of the ground gained in the first advance. On the evening of the 6th, and throughout that night, in spite of the incessant rain, the trenches were retaken and the enemy driven back foot by foot, with a loss of 100 prisoners, including several officers. The French replied to the German counter-attacks with bayonet charges or barrage fire. The communicating trenches were bombarded, levelled, or blocked up. On the 8th, two regiments of infantry and a battalion of Chasseurs made a fresh bayonet charge. At 10 o’clock the summit and the western crest were strongly held, and by midnight, after fifteen hours of strenuous, uninterrupted fighting, almost the whole of the crest was in the hands of the French.
During the night of the 8th, the relief of the troops was carried out, but the ground was so muddy that men sank into it, stumbling and slipping at every step. Fourteen hours passed in blinding rainstorms before the fresh troops were established in position. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon of the 9th the attack was resumed. The ground was full of deep holes in which men sometimes disappeared. At the moment when the eastern edge of the plateau was reached a cloud of fog descended over the crest. Firing was out of the question. The Germans counter-attacked and forced the French to retreat momentarily, but half an hour later the French retook the lost ground in a furious charge, and by 10 o’clock at night held the whole of the Eparges Heights. Only Combres Hill, threatened by the machine-guns of Eparges and St. Remy, remained in the hands of the Germans.
The enemy had left nothing undone to put the position in a state of defence. Their cave-shelters contained a narrow-gauge railway, sleeping quarters, and even an officers’ club. Their relief reinforcements were concealed from the French, while their cannon and machine-guns were unceasingly turned on the muddy slopes up which the French laboriously climbed. Unwounded men were drowned in the mud, while many of the wounded could not be rescued in time from the quagmires into which they had fallen.
EPARGES IN 1915. POST OF COMMANDMENT IN THE SIDE OF THE CREST
The victory of Eparges has been described as “a work of giants.” But it was a costly victory. Most of the officers and thousands of men fell. The German losses were at least as heavy as those of the French.
Return to the Trésauvaux road. The village of Trésauvaux, the ruins of which were organised militarily by the French (photo, p. [34]), is reached shortly afterwards.