[Illustration: THE SOUTH-WESTERN SLOPES OF MORT-HOMME IN JANUARY, 1917.]
In 1917 the sector was often the scene of violent combats, especially on January 25th, and March 18th, 20th and 29th. After many efforts and at heavy cost the Germans succeeded in occupying Hill 265 and the crest of Hill 295, where they organised formidable defences, including deep shell-proof tunnels.
On August 20th, 1917, during the French attack along the entire Verdun front, the 31st D.I. carried all the German defences and recaptured the Mort-Homme and its tunnels, including the one known as the “=Crown-Prince=,” which was “cleaned out” by the Foreign Legion. In one of the tunnels several cavalry-men, units of the XXXVIth and a whole battalion of the XXth Regiment of the German Reserve, were captured, while among the officers taken was Count Bernstorff, nephew of the ex-German Ambassador to the United States. An entire staff was captured in another of the tunnels.
[Illustration: MORT-HOMME AFTER THE ATTACK OF AUGUST, 1917 (see p. 23)]
=Corbeaux Wood.=—The plateaux dominated by the two Mort-Homme Hills are cut into on the north of the high road by a ravine bordered by Corbeaux Wood. This wood offers favourable cover for the massing of attacking troops. It was by this fiercely disputed route that the enemy tried to reach Hill 295. On March 6th the French line was brought back in front of the wood. On the 7th the enemy, after bombarding it, succeeded in getting a footing there, but on the following day the 92nd Infantry Regiment, in a magnificent counter-attack, retook the wood in twenty minutes. On the morning of the 10th, reinforced by another infantry battalion, the same regiment further captured the N.E. outskirts of Cumières Wood (to the E. of Corbeaux Wood), but in the evening, deprived of its commanding officer (Colonel Macker, who had fallen that morning), and lacking the support of the French artillery, which the trees prevented from seeing the rocket-signals, the regiment was compelled to fall back before an impetuous attack by a whole enemy division. However, it was only at frightful cost that the Germans were able to score these two successes, as the French gave ground only inch by inch.