“At this point some thirty pioneers, taking advantage of the breaches in the masonry, contrived to get down into the ditch and, on the other side, to reach the top of the main parapet, where they lay down and improvised a sort of shelter in the rubbish-heap. This little band was at once cut off, the French having reopened fire with the machine-guns; these made a retreat impossible for them, while in the transverse gallery the smoke had dispersed. In the tremendous din of the German curtain fire, about 200 yards behind the fort, cries could not be heard at 20 yards. The officer in command had to signal with his cap, which he waved in the Morse code. “At 7 A.M. we succeeded in capturing the second transverse gallery, the eastern one, after which the garrison, through a breach made by the shells, was nearly overwhelmed by a bomb attack; thirty men were captured, and the machine-guns, with an abundance of munitions, fell into our hands and were made use of. “But in the case of the other transverse gallery, the smoke had only counteracted the effects of its fire for a brief spell; it was therefore essential to take it, no matter how. Bags were filled with hand-grenades and passed along the wall until in front of the embrasures, where they were made to explode. This, however, could not be done without considerable risk to the brave pioneers, for the French had placed another machine-gun in a doorway not far from the embrasures, and could thus shoot from below at any head overlapping the upper edge of the wall. For all that, about 5 P.M., the explosions were successful, and we were at last able to penetrate into the transverse gallery which we had first attacked. The garrison, by a deep corridor passing underneath the bottom of the ditch, had taken refuge in the interior of the fort. It had been a lengthy operation, for the explosives, in view of the French curtain fire, could only be placed on the slope in small quantities, and even then the danger was terrible. During the interval of waiting, the pioneers and the infantrymen, who were not working directly at the explosives, dug trenches above, on the glacis, and farther west, by the side of the fort; they occupied these positions with the machine-guns taken from the enemy to meet a possible attack from the south-west.