No waves of storming infantry swept into the battered works.
Only strong patrols at first came cautiously forward, to discover if it
were safe for the main body of troops to advance and reorganize the
French line so as to allow the artillery to move onward. There was thus
a large element of truth in the marvelous tales afterwards told by
German prisoners. Their commanders thought it would be possible to do
all the fighting with long-range artillery, leaving the infantry to act
as squatters to the great guns and occupy and rebuild line after line of
the French defenses without any serious hand-to-hand struggles. All they
had to do was to protect the gunners from surprise attack, while the
guns made an easy path for them.
"But, ingenious as was this scheme for saving the man-power of Germany
by an unparalleled expenditure of shell, it required for full success
the co-operation of the French troops. But the French did not
co-operate. Their High Command had continually improved their system of
trench defense in accordance with the experiences of their own hurricane
bombardments in Champagne and the Carency sector. General Castelnau, the
acting Commander-in-Chief on the French front, was indeed the inventor
of hurricane fire tactics, which he had used for the first time in
February, 1915, in Champagne.
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