Corbeaux Wood.—The plateaux dominated by the two Mort-Homme Hills are cut into on the north of the high road by a ravine bordered by Corbeaux Wood. This wood offers favourable cover for the massing of attacking troops. It was by this fiercely disputed route that the enemy tried to reach Hill 295. On March 6th the French line was brought back in front of the wood. On the 7th the enemy, after bombarding it, succeeded in getting a footing there, but on the following day the 92nd Infantry Regiment, in a magnificent counter-attack, retook the wood in twenty minutes. On the morning of the 10th, reinforced by another infantry battalion, the same regiment further captured the N.E. outskirts of Cumières Wood (to the E. of Corbeaux Wood), but in the evening, deprived of its commanding officer (Colonel Macker, who had fallen that morning), and lacking the support of the French artillery, which the trees prevented from seeing the rocket-signals, the regiment was compelled to fall back before an impetuous attack by a whole enemy division. However, it was only at frightful cost that the Germans were able to score these two successes, as the French gave ground only inch by inch.
The wood was retaken by the Foreign Legion Regiment on August 20th, 1917 (see [p. 23]).
MORT-HOMME
Trenches captured in August, 1917
THE ROAD FROM CHATTANCOURT TO ESNES, AT THE FOOT OF HILL 275.
In the background the road forks, that on the left going to Montzéville, the one on the light to Esnes. The tourist should take the latter.
[Labels, from left to right: Road to Montzéville, Hill 304, Road to Esnes.]