The commander of a company of light infantry, who was wounded in the foot in Caures Wood, stated: “The intensity of the firing was such that when we came out into the open we no longer recognised the country which we had known for four months. There was scarcely a tree left standing. It was very difficult to walk about, because the ground was so broken up with the holes made by the shells. The defences were very much damaged, but there was such an entangled mass of barbed wire and broken branches that the whole still formed a serious obstacle to the offensive. The communication trenches no longer existed. The main trenches, on the other hand, had been badly knocked about, but were still serviceable; they were instantly manned.” “They were instantly manned”--this remark proves the superiority of the human will to all the mechanical forces that science can let loose. The supreme command drew from it this deduction: “What the artillery achieves is the weakening of the material resources of the defence and the wearing down of its morale, not its complete overthrow.” Of this hurricane of fire the fort received its full share. “Those are 150 mm. shells. Here come some 210 mm. Ah, these are surely 380 mm. My vaults are ringing. My vaults are still sound. How are my transverse galleries? They’re resisting. And my turret? It is still standing. The observing stations? One has been touched. I can see quite well with one eye. Besides, the damage can perhaps still be made good. A breach in the counterscarp? They’ll make it firmer when they stop it up. My big neighbour, Douaumont, has come off even worse than I. He attracts the lightning like some stately oak on a hilltop. I should like to know what is going on. My telephones are no longer working. I am cut off from the rest of the world. Such a storm cannot last. Let us wait for the end.” The end does not come, the storm continues to roar and rumble, but bad news comes up the hillsides, no one knows how. On both banks of the Meuse villages are burning, forests crackling, stones crumbling. The nearer one is to things that are happening, the less information one can glean about them. The ration fatigue parties are still the best source of news. But these cooks certainly draw the long bow; they tell some alarming tales. “Caures Wood was lost the second day.” “Caures Wood? Impossible! Driant is there!--unless Driant is dead.” “They don’t know what has become of him. And if it were only Caures Wood that was lost!”