In order to gain possession of the town, the enemy, after taking Douaumont--the resounding syllables of whose name boom like a great bell through his communiqués--tries to approach the main line of defence: Froideterre, Fleury, Souville. Vaux fort and village is one of the mainstays of that line. From March 9 he pounds the slopes of the fort and the approaches to the village. He continues to make frontal attacks on them and at the same time attempts his usual manœuvre of envelopment, on the one side debouching in La Caillette Wood, and on the other side outflanking us in the village of Damloup. Damloup, to the south-east of the fort, runs out like a pier-head between two ravines, the gap of La Horgne which separates it from the fort, and the gap of La Gayette which sweeps down from La Laufée Wood. To the north-east, Vaux village, the eastern portion of which has been lost, lies at the side of the Dieppe road, in the ravine of Le Bazil, the entrance to which it commands. As you go up the ravine, you find, after traversing a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards, a dyke, then a little lake: the Pool of Vaux. At this point is the end of the ravine of Fontaines, called by our men “the Ravine of Death,” which cuts across Vaux-Chapître Wood. The enemy lays siege to the village, but at the same time he also tries to get down into the ravine of Le Bazil by advancing through La Caillette Wood. In this wild country, broken up by clumps of trees, brushwood, narrow glens and gorges, a dim, dogged struggle will be waged, dragging on for weeks and even months. The enemy, at the end of March, has brought back the 121st Division from the Woevre front. On March 21, after having made an important reconnaissance on the previous evening, he overwhelms the fort, the village, and the ravine of Le Bazil with shells. These are the harbingers of an assault. The telephone communications are cut and the connection service is kept up by means of scouts, since the broken ground makes signalling impossible, except on the plateau of the fort. A liquid fire attack precedes the three waves of the onset, each a battalion strong, which dash in succession against the village. The first is battered down; the two others, at a terrible cost in lives, manage to encircle the three companies which still occupy the western section. On April 2 the 1st Battalion of the 149th Regiment (under Major Maganiosc), which occupies the shelters of the Les Fontaines ravine, is ordered to reoccupy the village. At daybreak it makes for the dyke, where it breaks up into three detachments, each consisting of a company, with the fourth as a support. One company has the main road for its objective; another will operate farther north, between the railway and the brook, in conjunction with the 31st Battalion of Light Infantry; the third farther south, through the gardens.