The men of the Saxon Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 107 were adepts in taking French prisoners. They had a system of their own and found it infallible. Thus, at night, our brave fellows had to engage in hand-to-hand encounters, at day had to endure the frightful fire of the French artillery, and when the firing ceased there was still not a moment's rest for them, for they then had to repulse the onslaughts of the French infantrymen. Nor was that all. The positions which had been shot to pieces by the enemy by day in the field, had to be rebuilt, as far as was possible, at night. The reserves were requisitioned to assist in this work, although they had really been sent back of the firing line to rest up. The Reserves were also frequently called upon at night to help defend with the bayonet any menaced point. Thus their supposed "resting-up" in the protected zone was somewhat problematical in nature, not alone because they were frequently called upon to help out, but because the French had a pretty trick of training their heavy artillery fire, night and day, upon these outlying points, positions and roads. Unbelievable as it seems, the men in the trenches actually suffered less from the artillery fire at night than did the men in the rear. Alternately fighting and working by day and by night, our brave men performed the work of supermen. Each man was actuated by one thought only--to defend his position to the last, to overcome the enemy, to endure through it all, no matter what happened. Each leader, each division, conceived it to be a task of honour to hold the position, or, if it had been lost, to regain it. VI--THE PRINCE GIVES HIS OPINION OF HIS ADVERSARY Let us now consider the method which our foe employed in preparing the attacks. The French attacks must be classified as partial attacks and as attacks en masse. The former invariably preceded the latter. The numerical strength of the troops thus employed varied from a company to a division. They were never an end in themselves, but a mere link in the chain of a general, comprehensive plan. A destructive "drum-fire" was followed up by an attack upon a particular trench. Having secured the trench, they did one of two things. Either they used every effort to secure a second trench, several hundred meters further along the line, so that, working and fighting toward each other, they might reasonably expect to unite the two trenches; or, using the captured trench as a base for an attack en masse, they sought to indent our line and to break it, a thing which was never attempted when a partial attack was made. In conducting these attacks en masse, the French always adhered to their well-known scheme. A compact line of sharpshooters at the front was followed at a distance of one hundred meters by densely packed masses of company and battalion columns.