April 17, 1915. 
LAND AND JVIATER. 
from them by very steep-sided ravines in wEich the 
village of Les Eparges lies. To the west of this 
ravine the hills, long held by the French, are a mass 
of woods, and the summits of these hills top a 
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contour 400 feet above the stream which runs 
through the valley. A rounded plateau on the 
eastern side, to the capture of which the French 
bent all their efforts, is only 300 feet above the 
water in the village. 
This plateau is fairly free of wood, and the 
view from it commands the whole plain of the 
[Woevre. Beyond it and below, on the edge of the 
plain, is the little village of Combres. It is fairly 
clear that the capture of this height must have 
been effected by a concentration of heavy gun fire 
from behind the ridge of the forest of Amblonville, 
to the West, and that here, as in every other case 
along this front, it is the new superiority in heavy 
pieces and their niunitionment which is wearing 
down the German line. 
The local importance of the plateau above 
Combres is peculiar and worthy of study, for it led 
at once to the bitter tenacity of the defence, and 
the continuous concentration of the assault, with 
the very hea\'y losses involved upon either side. 
It was not a case of capturing an elevated gun 
position, for the plateau is dominated more and 
more by the rising crest of the spur southward. 
Nor was it, as it would have been in the old days, 
the obtaining of a commanding height, whence the 
plain below could be shelled, for a gun position 
of this sort is but a disadvantage in the present 
trench warfare against any well-hidden position 
from which heavy gun fire can be directed by air 
work. 
But the point of the plateau between Les 
Eparges and Combres was that it thrust out 
a hill in front of future hea^y gun positions 
to be established in the forest to the west, 
it permitted batteries there established to 
shell positions in the plain, their effect per- 
petually observed from the new summit, and 
themselves shielded by it. Therefore, the enemy 
had erected regular fortifications upon this 
plateau, now long-established, and attack on it 
had the effect of compelling the enemy to concen- 
trate upon that one spot great numbers of men. 
The narrow hill between Combres and Les Eparges 
was, as it were, the nucleus of the defence which 
the Germans had established from the line of their 
railway up to the neighbourhood of Fresnes. 
The line is not cut by the occupation of the 
plateau. There is plenty of opportunity for the 
enemy to entrench to the east of the captured 
position, but here, as everywhere, the object to bo 
attained was the compelling him to bring up 
renewed masses of men, and to sacrifice them in the 
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