THE BATTLE OF THE ARTOIS.--II.
At ten in the morning of Sunday, 9th May, the infantry advanced; the
right seized the ruins of La Targette, and pushed on to capture Neuville
St. Vaast, which lies in a hollow to the east of it. The big church, the
cemetery, and almost every house in the place bristled with machine
guns, and furious fights took place inside the buildings from cellar to
garret. Nevertheless, by noon the village was in French hands. Farther
north the centre had swept over the torn and tumbled ground which had
once been the White Works, had crossed the highroad, and had dug itself
in two and a half miles to the east of the position from which it had
started that morning. Never since the trench war began had so much
ground been gained in a single day. The French troops in the centre were
in the highest spirits; as they surged on they plucked sprigs of lilac
and hawthorn and stuck them in their caps. Had the whole line been able
to advance along with the centre, Lens would have been captured that
day. The left, however, was held up in front of Carency, which was now
being bombarded. When night fell three lines of German trenches had been
won, 3,000 prisoners had been taken, and 10 field guns and 50 machine
guns had been captured.
[Illustration: A French Bayonet Charge in the "Labyrinth."
(_By permission of The Illustrated London News._)
In the left background is seen the cemetery of Neuville St. Vaast,
through the walls of which French troops are seen advancing towards the
Labyrinth. Our illustration shows the fighting reported by the French on
June 6. At Neuville St. Vaast, said the report, we captured several
houses, and drew closer to a redoubt on the north-west and occupied the
communication trench which leads to it. We captured new trenches in the
centre and in the south of the Labyrinth, and advanced a hundred yards.
In this great work the struggle has continued without ceasing for eight
days, and we now hold two-thirds of it.]
Next day the French were hard at it again. They pushed on to the
outskirts of Loos, attacked the church on the Lorette ridge, took
trenches to the south of it, seized the cemetery at Neuville, and beat
off the German reserves which had been hurried up in motor cars.
Everywhere the fighting was most desperate, for the Germans had turned
every possible place into a little fort, and each of them had to be
carried by storm. By Wednesday, 12th May, the Germans in Carency were
surrounded. More than 20,000 shells had been hurled into the village,
and 2,000 Germans were obliged to hold up their hands. Meanwhile the
summit of the Lorette ridge had been carried, and only two or three
strongholds on this high ground held out. The Germans at once rained
shells on the ridge, and the ghastly scenes of Hill 60 were repeated.
The French, however, clung to their trenches; nothing could move them.
[Illustration]
On the 13th, amidst drenching rain, and in teeth of a bitter north wind,
they returned to the assault. They had broken the German line; but their
work was by no means done, for though the trenches had been carried, the
German forts all along the front still held out, and each of them had to
be besieged. The strongest position of all lay to the south of Neuville,
and was known as the Labyrinth.[39] It was a wonderful network of
trenches and redoubts, tunnels and roofed-in pits; it covered two square
miles, and was so situated that the long-range fire of the French
artillery could not get at it. Probably never before had such a
stronghold been constructed. It was a cunning maze, furnished with every
death-dealing device known to the science of war. It contained engines
for making poison gas, machines for throwing liquid fire, scores of
small fortresses, and underground passages which enabled the defenders
to get to the rear of the attackers. In the background an enormous
collection of big guns was in position, ready to sweep away any troops
advancing upon it. Such was the Labyrinth which the French were
attacking. They could not proceed until it was captured, for, as you
will observe from the map on page 223, it enfiladed their advance.
By the end of May good progress had been made in clearing the Labyrinth.
The German salient had gone, the French line had been straightened out,
and Lens was closely beset.
An officer gives us a vivid picture of the struggle in the Labyrinth,
which was not captured till towards the end of September:--
"The war of trenches is nothing compared with the struggle of
the burrows. Picture to yourselves narrow galleries, feebly
lighted by flickering oil lamps, in which the foes are separated
only by sand-bags, which they keep pushing against each other.
As soon as an opening shows, a terrific hand-to-hand fight
begins, in which grenades and the bayonet are the only arms
possible. Sometimes the Germans take to knives and revolvers,
and one day they even began throwing burning liquids; but in
spite of these cowardly tricks, our men always had the best of
it. They fought with clubbed rifles and fists when required, and
their courage was never shaken, as the Germans soon saw. . . .
"The passages in which we were advancing were 18 feet deep, and
often 24 feet and more. The water was sweating through in all
directions, and the sickly smell was unbearable. Imagine, too,
that for three weeks we were not able to get rid of the dead
bodies, amongst which we had to live night and day! One burrow,
120 feet long, took us thirteen days of ceaseless fighting to
conquer entirely. The Germans had placed barricades, trap doors,
and traps of all kinds in it. When we stumbled we ran the risk
of being pierced by bayonets hidden in holes lightly covered
with earth. And all this went on in almost complete darkness. We
had to use pocket electric lamps and advance with the utmost
caution."
The first stage of the Battle of Artois may be said to have ended with
the capture of Neuville St. Vaast on 8th June. The French had done
splendidly, though they had not yet won a decisive success. The German
losses during the terrible month of May cannot have been less than
60,000, and the French had suffered almost as severely. They had
advanced with but few casualties; it was in the hand-to-hand fighting in
the villages and against the forts that so many of their men fell. The
victory was due largely to the French artillery, but the infantry did
more than its fair share. It had shown itself as full of fiery courage
and dashing bravery as in the great days of Napoleon.
[Footnote 39: According to the old classical story, there was in Crete a
building constructed for King Minos, in which dwelt the terrible beast
known as the Minotaur. This building, which was known as the Labyrinth,
contained many winding passages, arranged in such a fashion that a way
out was most difficult to find.]