“Near the gorge, the courtyard of the barracks had previously formed a concrete platform about five yards thick above the underground corridors and magazines; but it was now only a huge ploughed-up crater. The heavy shells, even in this crater, had hollowed out a sort of funnel, at the bottom of which a narrow opening, pierced through the last vault, seemed as if it might give access to the interior of the structure. The French, till then completely screened from above and entirely shut in, were suddenly in great danger of being smoked out through this opening. The bombardment that overwhelmed the fort, however, made observation almost impossible for us. The French were the first to notice, from the interior, that the bombardment had almost entirely staved in a ceiling; they at once occupied the edge of the funnel, stopped up the hole with sandbags, and installed a machine-gun. Thus they commanded a portion of that broken country, which now constituted the top of the fort; In consequence, the German communications with this top part, which had before this been unhampered, were now somewhat restricted; nor could they manage to come close enough to overwhelm the new pivot point with bombs.
“Among the French the signs of hunger and thirst became more and more marked. Some succeeded in escaping, by the ditch of the gorge (this was still in their hands), towards the Montagne Wood, in front of Fort Souville. In this direction lay the first line of French infantry. By this route, too, the commandant of the fort, when he had no more carrier-pigeons, sent liaison officers. The underground telephone communications had been destroyed by heavy shells.
“On June 5 and 6, the position of the French garrison grew steadily worse; the number of dead and especially of wounded increased with rapid strides; at last there were no more than a hundred pints of water left, even for the wounded. Those who had not been wounded had not a drop, and had eaten scarcely anything since the 4th. Yet the French continued to fire from the direction of the gorge, through the embrasures in the barracks and those in the ditch, at every target that offered itself. In this way the German garrison of Fort Vaux suffered losses. Other losses, by no means negligible, were inflicted upon it by the continual flanking fire directed against the fort from the infantry tactical point, situated quite close at hand, to the west; it was provided with a field gun. Similarly, the high-perched battery of Damloup, on the south, opened a very troublesome bombardment.