The artillery preparation, roaring on the horizon like a furious storm,
ceases sharply, and a tragic silence falls over the field of battle. The
infantry leaves its parallels in a single movement, at a walk,
magnificently aligned, crowned with the scintillation of thousands of
bayonets. Then the hostile trenches burst out suddenly with fire, the
fusillade rattles immediately, madly, dominated by the pitiless rattling
of the machine guns. The wave of assailants thins out, entire units
disappear, mowed down. Some lie down and advance no further, while
others, better commanded, march ahead in spite of all. Some, more
favored, find themselves in places where the artillery preparation has
cleared the enemy out. They reach the first trench, and hand-to-hand
fighting commences.
The second wave arrives in its turn, avoids the zone of destruction,
plunges into the parts where the resistance has weakened, and thus the
first trench, split up into enveloped sections, is definitely submerged
by the second wave. They form beyond the captured trench and start
forward again; but it is a disorganized combat by groups in the midst of
shots and bullets which cross each other in every direction. The second
trench is assaulted, certain parts are conquered through which the flood
of assailants spreads out while desperate groups resist stubbornly in
some redoubts.
Now in the first line of attack, there is no more order, the dead cover
the ground passed over, here mowed down by ranks, there hung in clusters
on the wire entanglements, or forming a crown on top of the parapets, or
sown here and there by the scattering of the hand-to-hand fights; the
wounded flow back in numbers to the rear, isolated soldiers are
scattered in all corners for the most diverse reasons; even
organizations are stopped in the conquered trenches by their chiefs who
find that they have done enough and that it is high time to get out of
the trouble. But beyond this immense dispersion, some heroic groups,
weak nuclei of many companies, led by ardent leaders, make their way
further into the hostile territory. They suddenly appear, urged into a
gallop over the trenches; magnified ten times by the imagination of the
enemy who loses his head, they run beyond into the open fields,
receiving some shots here and there but surprised at the emptiness of
the field of battle. Behind them, the combat of extermination continues
in places, but nothing follows, only some groups of stragglers and
wounded are returning. Then these foremost parties feel their weakness
and count their numbers; the emptiness, the silence, the invisible
resistance impress them, they scent the ambush and soon stop.
In front of the centers of resistance, the fight is hard and murderous;
they have taken one or two trenches, carried the first houses, but the
organizations are dissolved in the interminable individual fighting in
the _boyaux_ or ruins; here the progress has been inappreciable in spite
of enormous losses.
Thus the first line has made its effort; in the centers of resistance,
it has scarcely gotten a good hold on the exterior borders; in the
intervals, on the contrary, it has expanded widely like a wave which had
broken through a dike at one point. But it has been stopped, out of
breath, in front of the second line of defense, whose resistance is
organizing, or it has been nailed to its place by flanking fire from the
still unconquered centers of resistance; it is composed from now on of
weak groups of real fighters, just strong enough to mark out here and
there the limits of the conquered ground, and of a multitude of isolated
individuals and entire units which are scattered over the whole zone of
attack.
This has all lasted perhaps less than an hour.