The Second Offensive Battle of Verdun begins

At 4.40 a.m. on 20 August 1917, at dawn, the French Second Army of General Adolphe Guillaumat attacked the German positions on both banks of the Meuse north of Verdun. Eight divisions went into the attack on a front that, according to various sources, was about 18–25 km wide, from Avocourt Wood in the west to the vicinity of Bezonvaux in the east. The objectives were the heights from which the Germans had been observing the French rear since 1916: Mort-Homme and Hill 304 on the left bank, and Talou hill and Hill 344 on the right. It was the French army’s first major attack since the April defeat on the Aisne and since the mutinies that had engulfed dozens of divisions in May and June.

Pétain’s attack

General Philippe Pétain, commander-in-chief since May, had given up great breakthrough offensives in favour of carefully prepared attacks with limited objectives, in which most of the work was to be done by the artillery. At Verdun the French assembled, according to various accounts, nearly three thousand guns. Counter-battery fire had been going on since 11 August, and the destructive bombardment since 13 August. The attack was originally set for 17 August, but bad weather, which prevented observation from aircraft, forced a postponement of three days. On 17 and 19 August the artillery simulated the fire that would accompany an attack, to mislead the Germans. During the night before the attack the French drenched the German batteries with gas shells, and the Germans, who in the preceding weeks had often shelled the French with a new gas as well, mustard gas, replied by shelling the French lines with gas shells. The assault troops went up to their starting positions in masks, groping their way through the gas cloud.

Mort-Homme and Talou

The infantry advanced behind a creeping barrage. On the left bank the 31st Division of XVI Corps took the summit of Mort-Homme in its first bound and seized the exits of the Kronprinz tunnel, one of the tunnels through which the Germans brought supplies up to the hill. The neighbouring Moroccan Division took Corbeaux Wood and the village of Cumières, which was captured by the Marching Regiment of the Foreign Legion, and in the afternoon the legionaries pushed on towards the Côte de l’Oie on the Meuse. In the Gallwitz tunnel, named after the commander of the German Fifth Army, General Max von Gallwitz, about 600 Germans held out for another day. XVI Corps took more than 3,800 prisoners that day. On the left flank the 25th Division passed through Avocourt Wood, but the attack on Hill 304 failed: machine-gun fire and a German counter-attack threw the 121st Infantry Regiment back to its starting positions. The hill was taken only a few days later.

On the right bank the 126th Division of XV Corps retook Talou hill, for many months in 1916 a no man’s land, and the village of Champneuville. The attack on nearby Samogneux was postponed to the following day. The 123rd Division took Hill 344, and the divisions of XXXII Corps occupied part of Fosses Wood, Chaume Wood and Mormont Farm. German counter-attacks, including in the evening and at night, were broken up by French barrage fire. During the night German aircraft bombed French field hospitals in the rear, killing and wounding several dozen people.

The day’s balance

According to French accounts, the prisoners were unanimous that the surprise had been complete: the attack at first light caught many Germans deep in their shelters and tunnels, and their barrage opened too late. On both the left and the right bank the French achieved almost all their objectives except Hill 304, and took several thousand prisoners, dozens of guns and hundreds of machine guns. It was not without losses: XIII Corps alone, which attacked Avocourt Wood and Hill 304, lost according to a French account more than 3,100 killed, wounded and gassed. In the following days the French took Samogneux and Regnéville, and on 24 August Hill 304. By 26 August they had taken about 9,500 prisoners. Mort-Homme and Hill 304, which had been fought over from March to May in the Battle of Verdun in 1916, were once again in French hands, and the French army had shown that after the spring crisis it could once more attack effectively.