"_Verdun! Verdun! Nach Verdun--Paris!_" chanted an unsteady voice across the room, finished in a suspicious resemblance to a hiccup. There was a moment of tense, awkward silence in the great apartment, and then a buzz of low voices earnestly discussing technicalities. * * * * * Day followed day, surcharged with fateful issues. Men who flung themselves down, utterly wearied, to snatch a brief sleep, woke from it with an oppression of the breast, a tremor of the nerves. Their fiercely excited brains begrudged an instant's unconsciousness where every minute was a vehicle of destiny, once ahead never to be overtaken. Strenuously, night and day, laboured the Staffs in the Army Headquarters, in the Corps, Divisions, Artillery Groups--desperately, for after the second day they were behind their time-table. On that second day the French defence they had fondly thought annihilated woke to sternly resisting life. There had been terrific fighting on the whole front from Brabant to Ornes. Once more a frightful bombardment had opened with the dawn. Once more the German infantry had advanced in masses. They found the trenches in front of them weakly held, had occupied them. But _en route_ a storm of shells had rained down on the swarming columns, had strewn the ground with dead and dying. Further advance was barred by sheets of rifle-fire, torrents of machine-gun bullets. There were ugly rumours as to losses. The day's objective had not been reached. Counter-attacks had flung the grey infantry out of positions already conquered. During the black night of the 22nd-23rd, while the gun-teams of the German batteries strained and stumbled forward over a shell-torn ground to new positions, the French left flank had fallen back from Brabant. The German guns hurled an avalanche of projectiles blindly upon the new lines of defence, more or less at hazard since no longer did they have them accurately marked upon the map. Once more the grey masses swept forward, once more the hail of shells beat them down. The end of that day saw the centre pushed in with wild confusion, but the French resistance still alive, determined to perish rather than break. Once more the objective had not been attained. Douaumont was not even menaced. The time-table was hopelessly out. That night the French fell back on both flanks, withdrew from Ornes.