It is of course impossible to estimate precisely what the German losses were. There are certain known details, however, which may serve to indicate their extent. One underofficer declared that he was the only man remaining out of his company. A soldier of the third battalion of the 123d Regiment, engaged on the 26th, stated that his regiment was withdrawn from the front after only two days' fighting because its losses were too great. The 118th Regiment relieved the 158th Regiment in the trenches after it had been reduced to fifteen or twenty men per company. Certain units disappeared completely, as for instance the Twenty-seventh Reserve Regiment and the Fifty-second Regular Regiment, which, by the evening of the 25th, had left in French hands the first 13 officers and 933 men, and the other 21 officers and 927 men. Certain figures may help to arrive at the total losses. At the beginning of September, 1915, the German strength on the Champagne front amounted to seventy battalions. In anticipation of a French attack they brought there, before the 25th, another twenty-nine battalions, making a total of ninety-nine battalions. Reckoning the corresponding artillery and pioneer formations, this would represent 115,000 men directly engaged. The losses due to the artillery preparation and the first attacks were such that from September 25 to October 15, 1915, the German General Staff was compelled to renew its effectives almost in their entirety by sending out ninety-three fresh battalions. It is assumed that the units engaged on September 25-26, 1915, suffered losses amounting to from sixty to eighty per cent (even more for certain corps which had entirely disappeared). The new units brought into line for the counterattacks, and subjected in connection with these to an incessant bombardment, lost fifty per cent of their effectives, if not more. Hence it would be hardly overstating the case to set down 140,000 men as the sum of the German losses in Champagne. It must also be taken into account that of this number the proportion of slightly wounded men able to recuperate quickly and return to the front was, in the case of the Germans, very much below the average proportion of other engagements, for they were unable to collect their wounded. Thus nearly the whole of the troops defending the first position fell into French hands.