Even the day before, so peaceful was the tranquillity, this same officer had been out partridge-shooting. It looks as if it might be a fairly good partridge country, though to English eyes there is rather a lack of cover. The fort stands fairly high, and far off to the south, across the bare sweep of the down-like grass and stubbles, you can see higher still the jagged outline of the Camp des Romains, silhouetted against the sky like the sand dunes at Sandwich on a slightly larger scale. (At that time, of course, the Camp des Romains was still in the hands of the French.) Troyon itself is not very large. Outside it looks the most innocent thing in the world—a more or less quadrangular collection of rounded gravel banks, thickly covered with grass. Inside there are—or were—deep wide ramparts and ditches and vaults and walls of earth and solid masonry and iron—and the guns (155’s) and the steel cupolas. On the evening of the 7th the garrison received news that a strong column coming from the direction of Metz (through the gap between the French Second and Third and the German Fifth and Sixth Armies) had reached Mouilly and St. Remy in the Hauts de Meuse, a little way south of Les Eparges, and five miles north-east of Troyon, and the next morning they were at Seuzey, nearly due east of the fort and only three miles away. At eight o’clock the bombardment began, and by eleven the German siege-mortars of 150 millimetres, concealed in deep ravines where the French gunners could not get at them, had dropped one hundred and eighty shells into the fort, which, though they only killed one man and wounded four, had knocked out seven of the French guns. The garrison were clearly in a bad position. All the French troops which had been on that side of the Meuse had crossed the river to join the final stages of the Battle of the Marne, so that they could count on no immediate support, though they knew that a division of cavalry and a regiment of artillery had left Toul early that morning. But there was no chance of their arriving till next day. The Governor of Verdun telephoned soon after the bombardment began to tell them that the success of the big battle on the other side of the river depended on their holding out for forty-eight hours; the commandant replied that they would—and prayed that the gun cupolas might not be smashed. Then Verdun telephoned again to say that they were sending an aeroplane to spot the enemy’s gun positions for them, but as they could not show themselves on the parapets that was cold comfort. At three, by which time four hundred shells had fallen, there was a short breathing space of comparative quiet, and they were able to take stock of the extensive damage done by the shells, of which, fortunately, about one in four failed to burst. Then came a third message to say that if the worst came to the worst the men were to take shelter in the ammunition cellars, but that the fall of