Look at the little map on page 70. You notice a railway running from Ste. Menehould,[11] on the Aisne at the edge of the Argonne forest, to Rheims. By means of this railway the French troops operating on the plain were supplied with all their needs. The Germans relied on the line which you see running from Grand Pré in the Argonne to Bazancourt. The object of the French was to nibble at the German lines in the hope of pushing back the enemy and seizing this railway. If it could be cut or commanded, the Germans would be obliged to fall back along their whole line. At any rate, a French advance towards the railway would compel the enemy to waste men and shells, and would force him to keep in the region large forces which otherwise would have been sent to the East, where von Hindenburg was badly in need of assistance.
I want you to fix your attention on the little towns of Souain[12] and Perthes,[13] and the farm of Beau Séjour,[14] all of which are marked on the map. Beau Séjour, you will notice, is about 3½ miles east of Perthes. At the beginning of January the French line ran through Souain, south of Perthes and south of Beau Séjour. Almost every day during January the French attacked the German positions. They won a hill to the north of Perthes, which gave them the best gun position in the neighbourhood, and on the 16th of February a general advance began. The Germans held a strong post north of the farm, on a ridge between two little glens. On this ridge they had constructed a fort, which was held by about 500 men.
The French attacked on a plan which was soon to become the regular method of puncturing the German lines all along the Western front. Let me give you some account of this plan--the only possible method of capturing the strongly fortified trenches of the enemy without a terrible loss of life. As you know, the first obstacle to an attack on a line of trenches consists of the barbed wire entanglements which are fixed up in front of them. The attackers are held up by the network of wire, and can be shot down in droves by rifles and machine guns. Then the trench itself has a strong parapet, with loopholes through which the defenders fire on the attackers. For infantry to charge the barbed wire while the parapets are held by an enemy is to court almost certain disaster.