_Monday, April 15._--In the attempt to surround Bailleul two heavy
attacks were made--one on the west toward Meteren, and one on the east
at Neuve Eglise. Near Meteren the enemy failed utterly and suffered
immense losses. There has been fierce fighting around a place called the
Steam Mill, near Meteren, the enemy having been ordered to capture the
Meteren road and the high ground beyond it at whatever sacrifice. They
made the sacrifice, but did not get the ground.
Neuve Eglise, however, is now theirs. Last night the British troops who
had held it through three days and nights of intense strife withdrew,
unknown to the enemy, to a line a short distance back from the village,
in order to avoid remaining a target for unceasing shellfire.
It is now the enemy's soldiers who this morning are in the ruins under
the great bombardment. This battle at Neuve Eglise has been filled with
grim episodes, for the village changed hands several times. Each side
fought most fiercely, with any kind of weapon, small bodies of men
attacking and counterattacking among the broken walls and bits of houses
and under the stump of the church tower deathtrap, as it now is for
them. Without yielding to the direct assaults, the British obeyed
orders, stumbled out of the place, silently and unknown to the enemy,
and took up a line further back.
On the night before last the British line fell back from near La Chèche
and swung around in a loop south of Neuve Eglise toward Ravelsberg Farm.
It was then that Neuve Eglise itself became a place of hellish battle.
The enemy broke through into its ruined streets, and small parties of
Wiltshires, Worcesters, and others sprang on the Germans or were killed.
They fought desperately in backyards, over broken walls, and in
shell-pierced houses, wherever they could find Germans or hear the
tattoo of machine guns.
Several times the enemy was cleared out of most of the town, and the
British held a hollow square containing most of the streets and defended
it as a kind of fortress, though with dwindling numbers, under a heavy
fire of shells and trench mortars and machine guns.