Our 303rd Brigade (408th and 409th Regiments) occupies, during the night of March 1 and 2, the section from La Caillette to Damloup; a battalion of the 408th holds the slopes of the fort, and two battalions of the 409th hold the cemetery and the village. The fort itself has for a garrison two companies of the 71st Territorial Regiment, composed of worthy natives of Anjou, level-headed and hard-working. But let not the reader imagine a line of continuous, fully-equipped trenches, with communication passages, dug-outs, store depots, and so forth! The violence of the German attack launched on February 21 against Verdun has for the time being substituted field fighting for siege warfare. The lines of defence have been carried back to the rear, and the artillery has swept the terrain to such an extent that it has destroyed all the existing defences. Nothing is left but shell-holes and rubbish heaps. It was imperative to hold fast to this devastated soil, to hang on it, to break it up with the pickaxe and, failing pickaxes, with the bayonet, with finger-nails, to live on top when one could not get below ground, to keep awake and watchful, to shoot, to kill, to die without accepting defeat. During the early days of its occupation of the sector the brigade makes a little progress in Hardaumont Wood. A company seizes the southern earthwork and entrenches itself there. But on March 5, 6, and 7, the bombardment is so violent that it is impossible to consolidate the position. Replenishing is done with difficulty. An attack is imminent. It takes place on the 8th about eleven o’clock in the morning, towards the village. It is led by the famous Guretsky-Cornitz Brigade (6th and 19th Regiments), which was destined next day to be immortalized in the German wireless. It debouches partly from Hardaumont Wood, where our earthwork is lost, partly from the railway embankment which skirts it and has served as a screen. The waves of enemy infantry succeed in outflanking our first line and swamping an entire battalion. Our machine-guns bring them to a halt at the entrance to the village, which they have succeeded in reaching; they even occupy a few houses. Before our fire the breakers recoil, but with the prisoners taken from our outflanked first line.