Opposite his and its neighbouring positions, Falkenhayn had assembled, during January and February 1916, a reinforcement to Fifth Army, the German Crown Prince’s, of ten divisions, including six regular, supported by an enormous concentration of artillery. Among the 542 heavy guns were thirteen of the 420mm and seventeen of the 305mm howitzers that had devastated the Belgian forts eighteen months earlier, and to supply them and the field and medium artillery a stock of two and a half million shells had been accumulated.
