And now, it seemed, the army command had finally gone too far.

General Nivelle’s offensive that spring had been bold, yet strangely unimaginative.

“We’ll smash through the German line on the River Aisne, and win the war,” Nivelle declared.

To Roland the plan seemed little different from the strategy that had cost countless lives already.

“We’re going to break through at the section known as Chemin des Dames,” his commanding general told him, “and roll up the German line. And here’s the clever thing,” his general continued. “We’re going to use a tactic that we tried out at Verdun, but on a huge scale.”

“What is that, mon général?”

“A creeping barrage. The artillery will fire just ahead of our troops as they advance. We lay down a stupendous shelling on the enemy trenches. What’s left of the men there will be entirely disoriented. And then our men will be able to race in behind the barrage and overwhelm the trenches before the enemy can even see them coming.”

“Won’t a good many of the shells fall short and hit our own troops?”

“Yes, but not too much, we hope. And it’s a lesser price to pay, if our men can sweep into the trenches almost unopposed.”

Roland had his doubts, but he knew it was pointless for him to say anything.

“What about tanks?” he asked. Personally, he thought of the new metal chariots as mechanical knights in armor. Partly for that reason, he believed they were important.

“Lots of them,” the general said. “We know what we’re doing.”

Nivelle’s offensive had succeeded in taking some points on the German lines, despite appalling weather, and the incompetent failure of the tank attack. But the German front did not collapse. And the losses of Frenchmen had been terrible.

“It wasn’t our fault. It was poor intelligence, my dear de Cygne,” his general had told him. “Who could have guessed the Germans were making their trenches like that?”

As the French troops advanced, taking huge casualties from their own artillery, and finally reached the German trenches, they did not find the Germans smashed and disoriented at all.

For the German trenches were not like the French ones in the least. To the French soldier, a trench was just a temporary, makeshift cover, from which to attack. To the Germans, a trench was a system.

Many of the German trenches had the advantage of high ground, but above all, their construction was entirely superior. The Germans dug far deeper. They fortified. They even had shelters underground. When the French laid down their huge bombardment, the Germans waited it out in the relative safety of their deep redoubts, and when the French troops finally raced toward the line, they found the Germans waiting for them, freshly supplied with first-rate new machine guns, with which they mowed the Frenchmen down.

The Nivelle offensive did not smash the German front. It hardly made a dent.