On August 20th 1917, this tunnel was passed over but the enemy still held out in it.
Zouaves and tirailleurs kept careful watch at all the exits and ventilating shafts of this immense underground cavern, and it was not until the following day that the garrison of eleven hundred men including a colonel, three battalion commanders, and all their staff gave themselves up.
Continue as far as the northern edges of Corbeaux wood.
On the Summit of Mort-Homme, the Monument to the 40th Division.
(Photo Martin Collardelle.)
Corbeaux Wood.
The table-lands dominated by the two Mort-Homme hills are cut on the north by a ravine bounded at the bottom by Corbeaux wood. This was a favourable spot for the massing and launching of attacking troops to reach Hill 295. On March 6th, the French line was brought back to the northern edges of the wood. On the 7th, the enemy succeeded in getting a footing there, wild hand-to-hand fighting being accompanied with so much bloodshed that in many places the snow became red. On the 8th, the 92nd Infantry Regiment retook the wood in twenty minutes; on the 10th, at nightfall, the 92nd, deprived of its colonel and receiving no support from the French artillery who failed to see their rocket signals on account of the intervening wood, had to give ground inch by inch under the assault of an entire German division.