On Vauquois Hill
A mountain gun placed in position on Vauquois hill, after the attacks of March 1915. This photograph was taken ten minutes before the gun was destroyed by a 210 shell (See [opposite]).
At 2 p.m. the French infantry again attacked the village, carried the German trenches, entered the ruins at 2.35 p.m. and drove back the enemy at the point of the bayonet. At 3, 4, 5 and 5.30 p.m., the Germans counter-attacked, but although troops of fourteen different units were successively launched, they could not dislodge the French from the main street. Twice during the night they tried, in vain, to take the church. For four days and nights, under an incessant pounding by high-explosive shells and a rain of bullets, the French troops held on, without supplies, dependent for their food on the rations taken from the dead. The Colonial Infantry, who for a short time relieved the attacking troops, were decimated in a few days. The Germans were already making use of a powerful minenwerfer, to which the French could only reply with hastily-devised mortars roughly made out of 77 mm. shell-cases, and which carried only 100-150 yards. It was an unequal contest. The Germans attacked almost every night, but were repulsed with hand-grenades and rifle fire, sometimes with the bayonet. The position became untenable, and the French had either to retreat or advance. Once more they attacked.
On the afternoon of March 4th, the 76th Line Regiment took the German trenches west of the church, and reached the wall of the cemetery in spite of small mines being blown up under their feet, and the enemy's bombs. On the 5th a German counter-attack was repulsed.
The capture of Vauquois by the French was definite. During the night of the 15th-16th, a fresh German attack was easily repulsed. On the 16th, at the Cigalerie, which during the attacks of February and March had served as a dressing station, Standard-bearer Collignon, of the 46th Regiment of the line, Councillor of State, and former Secretary-General to the Presidency of the Republic, who had voluntarily enlisted at the age of fifty-eight, was killed by the explosion of a shell while trying to rescue a wounded man belonging to the 76th Regiment of the line. Ever since, at Regimental roll-calls, his name follows that of La Tour d'Auvergne, and the reply is made: "Died on the field of honour".
On Vauquois Ridge.