Time was getting on and the enemy felt themselves menaced on the Somme and the eastern front. This is the time for success the Kaiser announced. A German officer, taken prisoner before the attack, was reported to have said "The capture of Verdun was anticipated in four days". A curious map distributed to each one of the attackers and later found on the prisoners showed the various stages to Verdun and with false figures of distances the road from Verdun to Paris.
From Froideterre to Vaux fort the French line was held by the 11th and 6th Corps (Mangin and Paulinie).
From the 21st, an unprecedented bombardment was directed upon the zone Froideterre-Fleury-Souville-Tavannes. The ridges were set on fire, smoking like volcanoes and black and yellow smoke clouds rose from all the ravines. It was a continuous bombardment, marked every now and then by the terrific bursts of enormous shells of 380 and 420 calibre which deluged down upon Froideterre, Souville and Tavannes.
On the evening of the 22nd, the enemy, to complete his task of annihilation, poured down upon the plateau of Souville, the ravines, the battery emplacements, and the tracks nearly 200,000 gas shells. The atmosphere became unbearable to the point of suffocation. The enemy expected to meet with no further resistance, so certain were they of having annihilated artillery, food and supply convoys, and supports.
Nevertheless, reinforcements proceeded up to the "furnace", under the protection of gas masks, stooping under the weight of their packs, stumbling in shell-holes, while shells were falling about them on all sides.
"All night long, the troops climbed this Calvary. In the morning, tired out, they would withstand the shock of the attacking infantry."
At daybreak on the 23rd, the bombardment reached an intensive fury.
"Masked, blinded, half-suffocated and half-buried in the earth thrown up by the incessant shell-fire, the troops in the line of the Garbit, Toulorge Giraudun Divisions knew perfectly that, when the tornado lifts, that moment would be the signal for the attack. They waited (and what a waiting that was!) on ground churned up by fire, listening to the pitiful cries of the wounded, and with the dead to keep them company. They waited, controlling their nerves, all on edge but strung towards one object, one idea, never to give ground but to fight and hold on. The sentries wiped with their benumbed fingers the glasses of their periscopes, and peered into the smoking horizon. The barrage lifts, the enemy are leaving their trenches, Ah! here they come!" (H. Bordeaux: La Bataille devant Souville).
