In order to distract the enemy's attention and hold his troops away from
the main battle-front, “subsidiary attacks” were made upon the German
lines as far north as Bellewarde Farm, to the east of Ypres, and
southward to La Bassee Canal at Givenchy, by the troops of the Second
and Third Armies. This object, wrote Sir John French, in his despatch,
“was most effectively achieved.” It was achieved by the bloody sacrifice
of many brave battalions in the 3d and 14th Divisions (Yorkshire, Royal
Scots, King's Royal Rifles, and others), and by the Meerut Division
of the Indian Corps, who set out to attack terrible lines without
sufficient artillery support, and without reserves behind them, and
without any chance of holding the ground they might capture. It was part
of the system of war. They were the pawns of “strategy,” serving a high
purpose in a way that seemed to them without reason. Not for them was
the glory of a victorious assault. Their job was to “demonstrate” by
exposing their bodies to devouring fire, and by attacking earthworks
which they were not expected to hold. Here and there men of ours, after
their rush over No Man's Land under a deadly sweep of machine-gun fire,
flung themselves into the enemy's trenches, bayoneting the Germans and
capturing the greater part of their first line. There they lay panting
among wounded and dead, and after that shoveled up earth and burrowed to
get cover from the shelling which was soon to fall on them. Quickly the
enemy discovered their whereabouts and laid down a barrage fire which,
with deadly accuracy, plowed up their old front line and tossed it about
on the pitchforks of bursting shells. Our men's bodies were mangled
in that earth. High explosives plunged into the midst of little groups
crouching in holes and caverns of the ground, and scattered their limbs.
Living, unwounded men lay under those screaming shells with the panting
hearts of toads under the beat of flails. Wounded men crawled back over
No Man's Land, and some were blown to bits as they crawled, and others
got back. Before nightfall, in the dark, a general retirement was
ordered to our original line in that northern sector, owing to the
increasing casualties under the relentless work of the German guns. Like
ants on the move, thousands of men rose from the upheaved earth, and
with their stomachs close to it, crouching, came back, dragging their
wounded. The dead were left.
“On the front of the Third Army,” wrote Sir John French, “subsidiary
operations of a similar nature were successfully carried out.”
From the point of view of high generalship those holding attacks had
served their purpose pretty well. From the point of view of mothers'
sons they had been a bloody shambles without any gain. The point of view
depends on the angle of vision.