Artillery activity of more than usual intensity at a number of points marked the 17th, 18th and 19th of December, 1915. To the east of Ypres French and British batteries bombarded the German trenches from which suffocating gas was directed toward the British line. No infantry attacks followed. By December 22, 1915, the French had gained the summit of Hartmannsweilerkopf, a dominating peak in southern Alsace, overlooking the roads leading to the Rhine. For eight months they had fought for the position, and thousands of lives were sacrificed by the attackers and the defenders. The Germans succeeded in recovering part of the ground next day. The French took 1,300 prisoners in the capture, and the Germans claimed 1,553 prisoners in the recapture. Fighting continued around the spot for months. Christmas passed with no break in the hostilities and no material change in the situation on the western front. The year 1915 closed, in a military sense, less favorably for the Allies than it began. Only a few square miles had been reconquered in the west at a heavy sacrifice; Italy had made little progress; the Dardanelles expedition had proved a failure; the British had not reached Bagdad nor attained their aim in Greece; while Russia had lost nearly all Galicia, with Poland and Courland as well, and the Serbian army had been practically eliminated. On the other hand, the Allies had maintained supremacy on the seas, had captured all but one of the German colonies, and still held all German sea-borne trade in a vise of steel. Not one of the armies of the Allies other than that of Serbia had been struck down; each of them was hard at work raising new armies and developing the supply of munitions. The spirit of all the warring peoples, without exception, appeared to be that of a grim, unbending determination. Germany, with a large proportion of her able-bodied manhood disposed of and her trade with the outer world cut off, was perhaps in greater straits than a superficial examination of her military successes showed. The care with which the Germans economized their supplies of men, and made the fullest possible use in the field of men who were not physically fit for actual military service, was illustrated by the creation of some new formations called Armierungsbattalionen. These battalions, of which, it was said, no full description would be published before the end of the war, consisted of all sorts of men with slight physical defects, underofficers and noncommissioned officers who were either too old for service or had been invalided. Their duty was to relieve the soldiers of as much work as possible. They were employed in roadmaking and in transporting munitions and supplies in difficult country--for example, in the Vosges Mountains. Most of these men--and there were many thousands of them--wore uniforms, but carried no arms.