be spared while Verdun still raged, were to move forward across no man’s land and, in the expectation that the enemy surviving the shelling would have been stunned into inactivity, pass through the broken wire entanglements, enter the trenches, take possession and move on to the open country in the rear. So certain were Haig and most of his subordinates of the crushing effect the artillery would produce, that they had decided not to allow the inexperienced infantry to advance by the tried and tested means of “fire and movement,” when some lay down to cover with rifle volleys the advance of the
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