took part in the struggle, quite agree--are as follows: The 47th
Division, London Territorials all of them, the heroes of the day, but
of whose performances, because less showy, little has been heard, had
by 9.30 a.m. surmounted a series of obstacles, the storming of any
one of which would have earned them lasting fame. Like a tide they
poured over the western end of the dreaded Double Crassier, utterly
regardless of withering machine-gun fire, and swept to the attack of
the walled cemetery that stands to the south-west of Loos. From here,
after a titanic struggle, they dislodged the strong party of its
defenders, and, gaining fresh impetus from the check, irresistibly
fought their way through the outskirts of the village, in which every
point of vantage was held against them, right up to its heart, the
mine buildings that cluster at the foot of the Pylons. This fortress
they stormed and won, and the rush of their assault carried them on
its crest over the Loos Crassier--another high embankment of refuse
and slag--over the exposed surface of the plain, into the copse that
stretches westward from Loos Chalk Pit. Here at last for a while they
rested, and here for the present we may leave them. May the great
city be for ever proud of the achievements of her sons this day, the
thousand forgotten deeds of heroism of which her ears will never hear!
Meanwhile the 15th Division, having captured the Lens Road Redoubt
that straddled the Lens-Béthune road, were engaged in clearing the
northern portion of the village of Loos. The 1st Division, the left
wing of the Fourth Corps, had met with varying fortune. The 1st Brigade
had penetrated to the enemy's reserve trenches in front of Cité St.
Elie and Hulluch, roughly upon the line of the Lens-La Bassée road.
The 2nd Brigade, impeded by a mass of concealed wire that our fire had
failed to destroy, were held up in the direction of Lone Tree and Bois
Carrée. This necessitated the bringing up of the divisional reserve,
who managed to advance between the left flank of the 15th Division and
the Loos Road Redoubt, a strong point in the German line on the track
leading from Loos to Vermelles. This relieved the pressure on the
2nd Brigade, and the Loos Road Redoubt, attacked from the front and
both flanks, fell into our hands, compelling some six or seven hundred
of the enemy to surrender. But the delay had enabled the Germans to
reinforce Hulluch and the Crassier of Puits XIII bis to such an extent
that the attack was diverted to the right, in which direction it
advanced as far as the Bois Hugo and Puits XIV bis, both being situated
on the eastern slope of the valley to the north of Hill 70. Of the
events of the afternoon it is impossible to speak with any degree of
certainty. It seems most probable that the paths of the three divisions
having brought them all on to the rising ground to the eastward and
north-eastward of Loos, an attack was made upon the redoubt that
existed on Hill 70 at the point where a track from Loos to Cité St.
Auguste crosses the Lens-La Bassée road. It also seems probable that
after many vicissitudes this redoubt was captured and subsequently
held, though by a force utterly inadequate for the purpose. About 8
p.m. a messenger reached one of our batteries, having lost his way in
the dark, bearing a message addressed to the headquarters of one of the
Brigades forming the 15th Division, to the effect that the sender was
holding Hill 70 with a mixed handful of men, numbering a thousand in
all, and urgently requesting the immediate supply of sandbags and other
material for defence.
In the battery we were, of course, ignorant of all these things at
the time, and the progress of events could only be conjectured by
the position of the spots upon which we were ordered to fire and the
reports of wounded passing by us on their way to the rear. We knew of
the fall of Loos by the forlorn procession of refugees who had been
living in the village all through the German occupation, but who were
sent back immediately upon the capture of the place by our troops. Be
it noted in parenthesis that much consternation was caused in a certain
office by the arrival of a telephone message to this effect: "The loose
women are expected shortly, please arrange for their accommodation!"
From the observation post came the news of the taking of the Double
Crassier and the Cemetery, but beyond that, and the information that
no attack had been launched towards the Puits XVI ridge, the observing
officer had nothing further to tell us. But I think that in the ominous
absence of any further reference to our projected advance, we all felt
something of the chill breath of disappointment, that whispered that
our high hopes had somehow failed of their realization.
VI
STRAIGHTENING THE LINE
Straightening out the line is an expression frequently found in
official dispatches, and it may usually be understood to cover the
operations that take place after a definite attack. In the case of
the Battle of Loos, these operations extended into the third week
of October, and as a corollary to an account of this great event,
and as a study of what was in effect a series of minor battles, the
following sketch is intended. There were many events during these days
that are not yet fully understood, the time has not yet come when a
dispassionate history may be written. Controversy is yet busy with the
names of many disputed positions. I make no attempt at contribution to
any opinion expressed, but merely endeavour to convey some faint idea
of such portions of the drama as were played before the eyes of the
artillery observers.
During the night of September 25-26, the general position was
something as follows. The enemy, from a point not far south of Fosse
8 to the Double Crassier, had been driven out of his front line to a
greater or less distance in rear. Here, many months before this time,
he had already constructed a second line of defence in anticipation of
such a possibility. We, finding ourselves confronted by this line, were
obliged to make some sort of cover for our advanced infantry, using
the abandoned German front line and communication trenches as far as
they could be adapted for our reserves and supports. Along the whole
of this front of advance, therefore, both sides were busily engaged
upon strengthening their respective positions, covering meanwhile their
working parties with rifle fire. The artillery could not render much
direct assistance, the light had failed before the final positions of
the infantry on either side were determined, and the risk of injuring
friends as much as foes was too great. The function of the guns was
to keep a steady fire directed upon the possible lines of approach of
hostile reinforcements, which were pouring up on both sides during the
whole of the night. The front of advance was something as follows: From
the south of the canal we remained in our old trenches to a point just
north of the quarries, and from here the position we held ran through
the front line of the Hohenzollern Redoubt, of which we held the front
and the enemy the rear, thence somewhat to the west of the Lens-La
Bassée road in front of Cité St. Elie and Hulluch, through Chalk Pit
Wood and Puits XIV his, somewhere over the western slopes of Hill 70,
then abruptly back to the Double Crassier, where it joined our old line
again.
Up till midnight both sides worked comparatively undisturbed, except on
Hill 70, where attacks and counter-attacks followed one another without
intermission. But at about 12.30 a.m., the enemy, having apparently
succeeded in bringing up sufficient troops for the purpose, made a
series of local attacks, the fiercest of which seems to have been on
our line from the Bois Hugo to Hill 70. This attack was repulsed, as
were the remainder of the series made at the same time. The weather
now became even more misty than before, and the cold drizzle that had
been falling all the evening increased in intensity. Shortly after
dawn, at 5.30 a.m., the enemy made a more determined attack from much
the same part of his line, in which he scored some initial successes,
afterwards retrieved, and by 6.30 a.m. the position was the same as it
had been all night. Observation was extremely bad on the morning of
the 26th, so much so that it was fully 8 a.m. before artillery could
be effectively used. But at this hour we again assumed the offensive,
and opened a furious bombardment upon the redoubt on the summit of Hill
70, a work already of extreme strength, and now doubly so after the
feverish energies of large working parties during the night. At nine
o'clock the bombardment ceased, and the infantry rushed to the assault,
but were unable to penetrate the hostile defences. They were re-formed
and the attempt was repeated, again unsuccessfully.
Towards mid-day the local offensive passed into the hands of the enemy,
who made a determined attack from the Bois Hugo and succeeded in
driving our line back a considerable distance and recapturing Puits XIV
bis. This was a distinct advantage to him, for it gave him a point of
vantage from which he could direct machine-gun fire upon the flank of
troops moving to the assault of Hill 70. No further determined attacks
were made by either side on the afternoon of the 26th or the night
26th-27th, although desultory fighting continued, and various reliefs
and reinforcements were made amongst our own troops. The 3rd Cavalry
Division, who up till now had been waiting for the chance that would
have been theirs had we succeeded in piercing the German line, were
dismounted and relieved the troops holding Loos, where they remained
for a couple of days, some of them taking part in the final assault
upon Hill 70 on the 27th.
On the afternoon of the 27th every gun that could possibly be brought
to bear opened a furious fire upon the Hill 70 Redoubt. For two hours
the bombardment continued in a light that nearly broke the observers'
hearts, so early did the evening close in, and so persistently hung the
mist. Then, with one earth-shaking salvo from the massed batteries,
it ceased, and the Guards Division rushed to the assault. What they
achieved will probably never be accurately known, undoubtedly they
penetrated the first line of the redoubt, but the enemy, continually
reinforced from his fortress of Cité St. Auguste, contrived to expel
them, and slowly they were swept back, in the gathering darkness of
night, to the positions from which they had sprung. The attack had
failed, Hill 70, the key of Lens, was still in the enemy's hands.
The strength of this position lay perhaps not so much in its natural
advantages, as in the artificial means which had been employed to
render it capable of effective defence. Its position upon one of
the main arteries leading from the fortress of Lens made it easy to
reinforce from Cité St. Auguste, one of the outliers of that fortress.
The western slopes of the hill, up which the attack must come, formed
a sort of glacis to the redoubt, on to which observers in the redoubt
itself or in the woods around La Ferme des Mines de Lens could direct
fire from their batteries at Pont-a-Vendin, Cité St. Emile and Cité St.
Laurent. The work itself was of considerable extent and exceptionally
formidable, and was probably impregnable by frontal attack when fully
manned. Further, all possible approaches to it were enfiladed from the
northward by machine-gun fire from Puits XIV bis and some ruined houses
at the edge of a small wood, and from the southward by the strong works
at the edge of Cité St. Auguste, namely Puits XI and a building known
as the Dynamitière. Our failure to capture this important strategical
point was therefore regrettable, but not incomprehensible.
A couple of days after the failure of our last attack upon Hill 70, a
redistribution of the front took place between the Allied Armies. The
Tenth French Army took over the new line up to a point near the Chalk
Pit Wood, the boundary of their territory, which included the village
of Loos, being now roughly a line drawn from this point through Quality
Street, and thence along the Lens-Béthune Road. From this time Hill 70
ceased to be a British objective, and the whole of the line in front of
Lens came under one command, instead of being divided right in front of
the fortress, a change of considerable administrative advantage.
During these days, from the 25th to the end of the month, there had
been spasmodic fighting along the rest of the front of advance,
especially about the quarries and the Hohenzollern Redoubt. This latter
work, in which we had gained a footing on the 25th, was repeatedly
reported lost and re-captured, but eventually it was found to be
untenable under the enemy's fire from Auchy and Fosse 8, and to a
lesser degree from Cité St. Elie and Hulloch. The actual new line as
now consolidated was therefore the same as on the evening of the 25th,
except that it ran to the westward of the Hohenzollern and at the foot
of the slopes of Hill 70.
During the succeeding week no events of outstanding importance took
place, the infantry were busy in the improvement of their new trenches,
and the artillery in keeping the hostile batteries quiet while they
did so. But on October 8, "the lid suddenly came off Hell," as Gunner
Wolverhampton aptly expressed it. During the early part of the morning
the enemy had been unusually quiet, but about ten o'clock he opened a
bombardment upon the whole of the new line, more especially upon that
part of it in front of Loos, upon the village itself, and upon the
trenches between Hill 70 and the Double Crassier. This bombardment
grew in intensity, and towards noon we were ordered to retaliate
upon certain parts of his line. A few minutes later, the wind being
in his favour, he let loose a dense cloud of smoke and gas, and at
the same time lifted his fire on to our batteries and observation
stations, employing a large percentage of lachrymatory gas shell. Very
shortly after this, his counter-attack was launched. As on the 25th,
very little was visible from our observation stations, owing to the
obscurity caused by the smoke. It appears, however, that he developed
two separate attacks, one issuing from the Bois Hugo and the other
from the directions of the Dynamentière and Puits XI. These attacking
columns were composed of waves of men in close order, each wave,
according to the French observers, who were more suitably placed as far
as noting details went than our own, as the smoke did not blow in their
direction, being composed of a mass of men six abreast and twenty-five
deep. The French field batteries were at that time massed close
together, and their commander held their fire until the attackers were
well clear of the cover from which they issued. As soon as this was
the case, every battery was ordered to open fire at its maximum rate,
which they did with results that were nothing short of appalling. Our
battery happened to be just in front of them, and anything like their
fire cannot be imagined. For fully an hour the continuous roar was
such that telephones were useless, orders shouted through a megaphone
into the recipient's ear absolutely inaudible. The effect of such a
cannonade upon a slow moving mass of men in the open may be imagined.
It is said that the loss of one of the attacking columns in dead alone
was upwards of six thousand, and this estimate was subsequently largely
increased. The hopeless position of these unfortunates, was, curiously
enough, enhanced by an accident. One French battery had suffered
severely a few days before, having been badly shelled, whereby it had
lost all its officers and had had to change its position. Being at this
time still somewhat disorganized, it was late in opening fire, and when
it did so, opened at the same range as the other batteries had done
some minutes before, thereby directing its fire upon a point that the
attackers had already passed over, so placing a curtain of fire behind
them. Caught thus between two hail-storms of shell, the massed columns
had no escape, and were mown down where they stood.
The conditions in the battery during this affair were curious and
extremely interesting. Each gun was firing as fast as the shell could
be loaded and the round laid, orders being passed by gesticulation
as best they could. Behind us the roar of the French batteries grew
until it was only by watching for the flashes that we could tell when
our own guns had fired. All round the hostile shells were bursting,
filling the air with a sweet ether-like vapour that sent a sharp pain
shooting through one's eyes until it seemed as if complete blindness
must shortly supervene. The tears coursing down the men's faces made
strange white tracks through the grime of battle, till the detachments
became fierce, ghost-like and terrible, the reeking demons of the
pit, striving and sweating that they might slay ever more and more,
that the bitter screams of their mutilated victims might swell ever
louder into the livid heavens. And the endless succession of ammunition
wagons, their drivers clad in gas-helmets till they resembled the
Inquisitors of old, lashing their horses into a yet more frantic gallop
as they neared their goal, seemed as the shell burst all about them
like monstrous chariots of hell. And all the time the French reserves
were massing behind us, passing in turn down the _boyaux_ into the
threatened trenches, each party as they passed cheering the roaring
guns, and winning from the detachments a hoarse shout in return, as for
a moment they rested from their ceaseless labour.
Slowly the inferno of sound died away, and with its first ebb came
the voice of rumour. We had lost the Double Crassier, and the enemy
had gained a footing on the slag-heap of Fosse 5, he was close to us,
and we should have to save the guns as best we could! The French had
repelled the attack, and, following up their advantage, had swept into
Lens! The truth of the affair we did not discover till later, when it
appeared that a portion of our new line from the middle of the Double
Crassier northwards had been captured, re-occupied and captured again,
that the enemy had been finally driven out, but that the trench was
now so full of dead as to afford no cover to the living. But for this
minor success, if success it was, the furious counter-attack had failed
with great loss to the enemy. If our total losses during the operations
of September and October were between eighty and ninety thousand,
it is believed that the enemy lost about ten thousand upon this one
day alone. During the night of the 8th-9th the Germans contrived to
establish themselves in the disputed length of trench, but otherwise
the position remained for the next two days the same as before the
counter-attack.
On the 11th the French developed a fresh attack in this sector, with
the primary object of retaking the lost trench, and the secondary
object of pushing such successes they might achieve right up past the
end of the Double Crassier and Puits XI until they should rest upon
the mineral railway running past Puits XI and Cité St. Pierre as far
as Cité St. Elisabeth, thus forming an offensive line from which to
threaten the Dynamitière and the enemy's approaches to Hill 70. We were
called upon to assist in this enterprise, and at 2 p.m. commenced to
drop shell along the Lens-La Bassée and Lens-Béthune roads, from their
junction in Lens up to Cité St. Auguste and Cité St. Laurent. We also
kept the church in the latter place under fire to prevent its use as
an observation station. About 3 p.m. the French launched their troops
to the assault, and succeeded in recapturing the lost trench, but
owing to intense machine-gun fire from Puits XI and XII and from Cité
St. Pierre, they failed to advance any further along the line of the
Double Crassier towards the mineral railway.
The primary object of the operations so far had been the capture of
Lens. The importance of the place can hardly be over-estimated. If
we imagine England with Lancashire and the West Riding in hostile
occupation, we shall have a parallel to the case of France deprived of
the Department du Nord and part of Pas de Calais, except that in our
own case we should still have left to us many manufacturing districts,
and France has but few. The importance to the economic life of France
of the three towns of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing is comparable to the
importance of Manchester to us, and the coal-mining districts lying
round Lens, which include such fields as those of Courrières, Drocourt
and Dourges occupy relatively a far more important position than
those of the West Riding. Lens itself is the key to this productive
area, whose energies are at least as valuable to the enemy as to its
rightful owners, and Lens has in skilful hands become a fortress in the
modern sense, far more difficult of capture than older works at one
time deemed impregnable. It is comparatively easy to concentrate fire
upon guns whose position is known, as they must be when permanently
mounted in the fortifications of the text-books, and once a sufficient
concentration of fire has been obtained, guns so sited, being incapable
of removal, must sooner or later be put out of action, but it is
impossible so utterly to destroy a city and its suburbs that its ruins
are no longer sufficient to afford cover to mobile ordnance and machine
guns. It has been found that a building that in itself is merely a
screen from direct observation, becomes, when destroyed by artillery
fire, a heap of ruins amongst which may be concealed artillery and
machine guns, and which by its very mass is an excellent protection
against hostile fire. Bombard this type of fortress as you will, its
defenders are not tied by their gun-mountings to any one position,
but can move their batteries from place to place, knowing full well
that the attackers, with each round they fire, are preparing fresh
situations wherein they may be concealed. It will surely be found that
this war has sounded the knell of permanently fixed guns except for
purposes of coast defence, where alone the immobile gun has triumphed
in the face of many years' accumulation of scornful criticism.
The last phase of the operations was due to a desire on our part to
strengthen as much as possible our position from the quarries to the
new point of junction with the French. On October 13 our battery was
ordered to open a bombardment upon the German trenches that lay along
the Lens-La Bassée road to the west of Hulluch. This bombardment
continued for an hour or so, and at two o'clock the infantry advanced
to the assault, we at the same time lifting our fire on to the village
of Hulluch itself, starting at the western end and slowly increasing
the range so as gradually to drive through the whole place. But at
half-past three our hopes of a capture of Hulluch similar to that
of Loos were dashed to the ground by an order from headquarters to
come back on to the western edge of the village. This we did until
darkness supervened, and we were ordered to cease firing. As far as
we were concerned, this was the most exacting day we had yet known,
our expenditure of ammunition during the five or six hours that we
were in action being greater than that of any previous day. So rapidly
were the guns worked that the continual concussion broke the platform
of one of the guns, so that in the middle of the action it had to be
hauled out of its pit on to a hard road close by, and fired without
concealment of any kind, regardless of the risk of observation from
hostile captive balloons or aeroplanes. It may be added that next day
the detachment found some rafters in a ruined building and from these
constructed a new platform for themselves without any form of skilled
assistance.
It was not until the next day that we learnt the history of the attack.
The intention had been to capture the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and from
that as a _point d'appui_ to extend our line along the Lens-La Bassée
road as far as Chalk Pit Wood, with the possibility of capturing Cité
St. Elie and Hulluch as advance posts. The attempt only partially
succeeded. We contrived to advance our line in front of Hulluch almost
on to the road, but failed to occupy permanently any of the German
trenches. The Hohenzollern was apparently taken, but could not be held,
as upon September 25, under concentrated fire from Fosse 8. Between
Cité St. Elie and Hulluch, also, history repeated itself. Concealed
wire, so placed that the artillery observers could find no place from
which satisfactorily to observe the effect of their fire, held up the
infantry assault. An attempt had been made to destroy this wire by
map shooting combined with the use of high-explosive shell, but the
destruction was not complete, and the attack failed. It was said that
a handful of men actually penetrated into Hulluch but were never seen
again, and that for a short time our infantry held the German trenches
in front of the village. But with the enemy established in houses
overlooking them, and occupying a strong commanding line along the
crassier of Puits XIII bis, these trenches were untenable and had to be
evacuated. The net gain of ground during the day was a depth of some
two hundred yards on a front of rather less than a mile. At the same
time the French, who had been supporting our attack upon the right,
reported that the northern suburbs of Lens, Cités St. Auguste, St.
Laurent and St. Pierre, had been so carefully prepared and were held
in such strength that for the moment a frontal attack upon them was
inadvisable.