_A part of the centre of Verdun, on the Meuse. Oddly enough, buildings just opposite these, on the other side of the river, are almost untouched. But the fighting at Verdun--with which only the fighting on the Somme and in Flanders are comparable--was concentrated on the hilly ground some miles north of the city._] [Illustration: _PLATE C._ VAUX FORT--NORTH FOSSE. _The holding of the fort at Vaux, one of those nearest Verdun, by Major Raynal and his men, was one of the finest episodes of the war. The Germans were held at bay for three months, but eventually the defenders were driven down to the underground passages connected to the North Fosse, and were overpowered after seven days' continuous fighting._] Vaux Fort--although we did not hear so much of it in England as of Douaumont--was the scene of one of the most gallant episodes of the war. The fort is somewhat less than five miles north-east of the city; it was completed only in 1911, and is a huge mass of masonry and reinforced concrete, with many underground works, on an eminence which dominates the country on the side away from the city and faces the Douaumont Ridge across a valley in which lies the village of Vaux. The tops of both Vaux and Douaumont Forts look like a wilderness of shell-holes in a gravel bed; apparently the concrete has been covered over with many feet of something in the nature of gravel as an additional protection. Vaux Fort was held against three months of incessant attacks by Major Raynal and his men, the last of whom were finally completely imprisoned within it, but held out and fought hand to hand in the steep underground passages leading to the northern fosse (Plate 100), the only outlet remaining to them. Great efforts were made to relieve them, but without success, and after a final week of continuous fighting, during the last two days of which they had only water enough for the wounded men, the little garrison was overpowered on the 8th of June, 1916. The Germans had the courtesy, in recognition of his splendid defence, to allow Major Raynal to retain his sword. The fort was finally regained on the 2nd of November of the same year. The village of Vaux, which lies in the valley north of the fort, was fought for strenuously and eventually taken long before the fort itself. I tried to find some sign of its existence; its site is certainly somewhere in the centre of Plate 101, but such remains as may exist are entirely blotted out by the growth of the rank herbage which fills the whole valley from side to side.