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A HISTORY OF THE .
GREAT WAR
BY
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
VOLUME TWO
THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN
IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS
1915
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN
IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS
1915
BY
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
AUTHOR or “THE GREAT BOEB WAR,”
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMIPANY


COPYRIGHT, 1917,
GEORGE H. Donn: COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


PREFACE
In the previous volume of this work, which dealt
with the doings of the British Army in France and
Flanders during the year 1914, I ventured to claim
that a great deal of it was not only accurate but that
it was very precisely correct in its detail. This claim
has been made good, for although many military
critics and many distinguished soldiers have read it
there has been no instance up to date of any serious
correction. Emboldened by this I am now putting
forward an account of the doings of 1915, which will
be equally detailed and, as I hope, equally accurate.
In the late autumn a third volume will carry the
story up to the end of 1916, covering the series of
battles upon the Somme.
The three years of war may be roughly divided
into the year of defence, the year of equilibrium,
and the year of attack. This volume concerns it-
self with the second, which in its very nature must
be less dramatic than the ﬁrst or third. None the
less it contains some of the most moving scenes of
the great world tragedy, and especially the second
Battle of Ypres and the great Battle of Loos, two
v


vi PREFACE
desperate conﬂicts the details of which have not,
so far as I know, been given up to now to the public.
Now, as before, I must plead guilty to many faults
of omission, which often involve some injustice,
since an author is naturally tempted to enlarge upon
what he knows at the expense of that about which he
is less well informed. These faults may be remedied
with time, but in the meantime I can only claim in-
dulgence for the obvious difﬁculty of my task.
With the fullest possible information at his dis-
posal, I do not envy the task of the chronicler who
has to strike a just balance amid the claims of some
ﬁfty divisions.
ARTHUR CON AN DOYLE.
Wmnmsam, Cnownonouon,
April, 1917.


gaff 'Cby-I-Ll-I;
“I‘l‘ﬁl/V (I 'I\.'.‘<
:J-fjC" ’
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE OPENING MONTHS or 1915
Conﬂict of the 1st Brigade at Cuinchy, and of the 3rd Brigade at
Givenehy—Heavy losses of the Guards—Michael O'Leary. V.C.—
Relief of French Divisions by the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-
eighth British—Pressure on the Fifth Corps—Force subdivided
into two armies—Disaster to 16th Lancers—The dearth of muni-
IAGI
CHAPTER II
Nsuvn CHAPELLE AND HILL 60
The opening of the spring campaign—Surprise of Neuve Chapelle—The
new artillery—Gallant advance and terrible lesser—The Indians
in Neuve Chapello—A sterile victory—The night action of St. Eloi
—Hill GO—The monstrous mink—The veteran 13th Brigade—A
bloody battle—London Territorials on the Hill—A contest of
endurance—The ﬁrst signs of poison . . . . . . . . 12
CHAPTER III
THE SECOND BA'I'rLE OF YPRES
(Stage I.—The Gas Attack, April 22-30)
Situation at Ypres—The poison gas—The Canadian ordeal—The ﬁght
in the wood of St. J ulien—The French recovery—Miracle days—-
The glorious Indians—The Northern Territorials—Hard ﬁghting
-—Thenetresult—LossofHi1160 . . . . . . . . . 46
vi


viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND BA'I'I‘LE or YPRES
(Stage II.—The Bellewaarde Lines)
an
The second phase—Attack on the Fourth Division—Great stand of
the Princess Pats—Breaking of the line—Desperate attacks—The
cavalry save the situation—The ordeal of the 11th Brigade—The
German failure—Terrible strain on the British—The last eﬁort of
May 2é—Result of the battle—Sequence of events . . . . 82
CHAPTER V
THE BA'I'I‘LE or RICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT
(May 9-24)
The new attack—Ordeal of the 25th Brigade—Attack of the First
Division—Fateful days—A diﬁcult situation—Attack of the
Second Division—Attack of the Seventh Division—British success
—Good work of the Canadians—Advance of the Forty- seventh
London Division—The lull before the storm . . . . . . 114
CHAPTER VI
THE TBENCHEs or Hooen
The British line in June 1915—Canadians at Givenchy—Attack of
154th Brigade—8th Liverpool Irish—Third Division at Hooge
—11th Brigade near Ypres—Flame attack on the Fourteenth
Light Division—Victory of the Sixth Division at Hooge . . . 138
CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLE or Loos
(The First Day—September 25)
General order of battle—Check of the Second Division—Advance oi the
Ninth and Seventh Divisions—Advance of the First Division—
Fine progress of the Fifteenth Division—Capture of Loos—Work
oi the Forty-seventh London Division . . . . . . . . 170


CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER VIII
THE BA'rrnn or Loos
(The Second Day—September 26)
no:
Death of General Capper—Retirement of the Fifteenth Division—
Advance of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-ﬁrst Divisions—Heavy
losses—Desperate struggle—General retirement on the right—-
Rally round Loos—Position in the evening . . . . . . 196
CHAPTER IX
THE BA’I'I‘LE or Loos
(From September 27 to the end of the year)
Loss of Fosee 8-—Death of General Thesiger—Advance of the Guards—-
Attack of the Twenty-eighth Division—Arrival of the Twelfth
Division—German counter-attacks—Attack by the Forty-sixth
Division upon Hohenzollern Redoubt—Subsidiary attacks—Gen-
eral observations—Return of Lord French to England . . . 213
o I e n 0 o 0 a A c o I e a 0 e c o m


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RNLWAYS an
ROADS


THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN
IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS
1915


CHAPTER I
THE OPENING MONTHS or 1915
Conﬂict of the 1st Brigade at Cuinchy, and of the 8rd Brigade at
Givenchy—Hesvy losses Of the Guards—Michael O'Leary, v.0.
-—-Relief of French Divisions by the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-
eighth British—Pressure on the Fifth Corps—Force subdivided
into two armies—Disaster to 16th Lancers—The dearth of muni-
tions.
Tnr. weather after the new year was atrocious,
heavy rain, frost, and gales of wind succeeding each
other with hardly a break. The ground was so sod-
den that all movements Of troops became impossible,
and the trench work was more diﬂicult than ever.
The British, with their steadily increasing numbers,
were now able to take over some of the trenches Of
the French and to extend their general line. This
trench work came particularly hard upon the men
who were new to the work and Often fresh from the
tropics. A great number of the soldiers contracted
frost-bite and other ailments. The trenches were
very wet, and the discomfort was extreme. There
had been some thousands of casualties in the Fifth
Corps from this cause before it can be said to have
been in action. On the other hand, the medical serv-
ice, which was extraordinarily eﬂicient, did every-
thing possible tO preserve the health of the men.
Wooden troughs were provided as a stance for them
in the trenches, and vats heated to warm them when
CHAPTER
I.

The
opening
months
of 1915.
1


2 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
I.

The
opening
months
0! 1915.
they emerged. Considering that typhoid fever was
common among the civilian residents, the health of
the troops remained remarkably good, thanks to the
general adoption of inoculation, a practice de-
nounced by a handful of fanatics at home, but of
supreme importance at the front, where the lesson
of old wars, that disease was more deadly than the
bullet, ceased to hold good.
On January 25 the Germans again became aggres-
sive. If their spy system is as good as is claimed,
they must by this time have known that all talk of
bluff in connection with the new British armies was
mere self-deception, and that if ever they were to
attempt anything with a hope of success, it must be
speedily before the line had thickened. As usual
there was a heavy bombardment, and then a deter-
mined infantry advance—this time to the immediate
south of the Bethune Canal, where there was a sali-
ent held by the 1st Infantry Brigade with the French
upon their right. The line was thinly held at the
time by a half-battalion 1st Scots Guards and a
half-battalion 1st Coldstream, a thousand men in all.
One trench of the Scots Guards was blown up by a
mine and the German infantry rushed it, killing,
wounding, or taking every man of the 130 defenders.
Three ofﬁcers were hit, and Major Morrison-Bell, a
member of parliament, was taken after being buried
in the debris of the explosion. The remainder of the
front line, after severe losses both in casualties and
in prisoners, fell back from the salient and estab-
lished themselves with the rest of their respective
battalions on a straight line of defence, one ﬂank on
the canal, the other on the main Bethune—La Bassée
high road. A small redoubt or keep had been es-


THE OPENING MONTHS OF 1915 3
tablished here, which became the centre of the de- CHAPTER
fence. '
Whilst the advance of the enemy was arrested at The!
this line, preparations were made for a strong coun- 13.85.35
ter-attack. An attempt had been made by the enemy M 1915'
with their heavy guns to knock down the lock gates
of the canal and to ﬂood the ground in the rear of
the position. This, however, was unsuccessful, and
the counter-attack dashed to the front. The advanc-
ing troops consisted of the 1st Black Watch, part
of the 1st Camerons, and the 2nd Riﬂes from the
reserve. The London Scottish supported the move-
ment. The enemy had ﬂooded past the keep, which
remained as a British island in a German lake.
They were driven back with difﬁculty, the Black
Watch advancing through mud up to their knees and
losing very heavily from a cross ﬁre. Two compa-
nies were practically destroyed. Finally, by an ad-
vance of the Riﬂes and 2nd Sussex after dark the
Germans were ousted from all positions in advance
of the keep, and this line between the canal and the
road was held once more by the British. The night
fell, and after dark the 1st Brigade, having suﬁered
severely, was withdrawn, and the 2nd Brigade re-
mained in occupation with the French upon their
right. This was the action of Cuinchy falling upon
the 1st Brigade, supported by part of the 2nd.
Whilst this long-drawn ﬁght of January 25 had
been going on to the south of the canal, there had
been a vigorous German advance to the north of it,
over the old ground which centres on Givenchy.
The German attack, which came on in six lines, fell
principally upon the 1st Gloucesters, who held the
front trench. Captain Richmond, who commanded


4 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
Curran
I.
h-u—I
The
opening
months
of 1916
the advanced posts, had Observed at dawn that the
German wire had been disturbed and was on the
alert. Large numbers advanced, but were brought
to a standstill about forty yards from the position.
These were nearly all shot down. Some of the storm-
ers broke through upon the left of the Gloucesters,
and for a time the battalion had the enemy upon
their ﬂank and even in their rear, but they showed
great steadiness and ﬁne ﬁre discipline. A charge
was made presently upon the ﬂank by the 2nd Welsh
aided by a handful Of the Black Watch under Lieu-
tenant Green, who were there as a working party,
but found more congenial work awaiting them.
Lieutenant Bush of the Gloucesters with his ma-
chine-guns did particularly ﬁne work. This attack
was organised by Captain Rees, aided by Major
MacNaughton, who was in the village as an artillery
observer. The upshot was that the Germans on the
ﬂank were all killed, wounded, or taken. A remark-
able individual exploit was performed by Lieutenant
James and Corporal Thomas of the Welsh, who took
a trench with 40 prisoners. A series of attacks to
the northeast of the village were also repulsed, the
South Wales Borderers doing some splendid work.
Thus the result Of the day’s ﬁghting was that on
the north the British gained a minor success, beating
Oﬂ all attacks, while to the south the Germans could
claim an advantage, having gained some ground.
The losses on both sides were considerable, those Of
the British being principally among Scots Guards,
Coldstream and Black Watch to the south, and
Welsh to the north. The action was barren of prac-
tical results.
There were some days of quiet, and than upon


6 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
0111mm ing something of the reputation of his brother peer,
1' Lord “Salamander” Cutts, in the days of Marl-
The borough. On February 6 he again made a dashing
$325.“ attack with a party of the 3rd Coldstream and Irish,
°'1915' in which the Germans were driven out of the Brick-
ﬁeld position; The sappers under Major Fowkes
rapidly made good the ground that the infantry had
won, and it remained permanently with the British.
Another long lull followed this outburst of activity
in the region of the La Bassée Canal, and the troops
sank back once more into their muddy ditches, where,
under the constant menace of the sniper, the bomb
and the shell, they passed the weary weeks with a
patience which was as remarkable as their valour.
The British Army was still gradually relieving the
French troops, who had previously relieved them.
Thus in the north the newly-arrived Twenty-seventh
and Twenty-eighth Divisions occupied several miles
which had been held on the Ypres salient by General
D’Urbal’s m-en. Unfortunately, these two divisions,
largely composed of men who had come straight
from the tropics, ran into a peculiarly trying sea-
son of frost and rain, which for a time inﬂicted
great hardship and loss upon them. To add to their
trials, the trenches at the time they took them over
were not only in a very bad state of repair, but had
actually been mined by the Germans, and these mines
were exploded shortly after the transfer, to the loss
of the new occupants. The pressure of the enemy
was incessant and severe in this part of the line, so
that the losses of the Fifth Corps were for some
weeks considerably greater than those of all the
rest of the line put together. Two of the vet-
eran brigades of the Second Corps, the 9th Fusi-


THE OPENING MONTHS OF 1915 7
lier Brigade (Douglas Smith) and the 13th (Wanless
O’Gowan), were sent north to support their com-
rades, with the result that this sector was once again
ﬁrmly held. Any temporary failure was in no way
due to a weakness of the Fifth Army Corps, who
were to prove their mettle in many a future ﬁght,
but came from the fact, no doubt unavoidable
but none the less unfortunate, that these troops,
before they had gained any experience, were placed
in the very worst trenches of the whole British line.
“The trenches (so called) scarcely existed,” said
one who went through this trying experience, “and
the ruts which were honoured with the name were
liquid. We crouched in this morass of water and
mud, living, dying, wounded and dead together for
48 hours at a stretch.” Add to this that the weather
was bitterly cold with incessant rain, and more mis-
erable conditions could hardly be imagined. In
places the trenches of the enemy were not more than
twenty yards Off, and the shower of bombs was in-
cessant.
The British Army had now attained a size when
it was no longer proper that a corps should be its
highest unit. From this time onwards the corps
were themselves distributed into diﬁerent armies.
At present, two of these armies were organised. The
First, under General Sir Douglas Haig, comprised
the First Corps, the Fourth Corps (Rawlinson), and
the Indian Corps. The Second Army contained the
Second Corps (Ferguson), the Third Corps (Pul-
teney), and the Fifth Corps (Plumer), all under Sir
Horace Smith-Dorrien. The new formations as they
came out were either ﬁtted into these or formed part
of a third army. Most of the brigades were
Cnirrm
I.

The
opening
months
of 1915.


8 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
I.

The
opening
months
of 1915.
strengthened by the addition of one, and often of
two, territorial battalions. Each army consisted
roughly at this time of 120,000 men. The Second
Army was in charge of the line to the north, and the
First to the south.
On the night of February 14 Snow’s Twenty-
seventh Division, which had been somewhat hustled
by the Germans in the Ypres section, made a strong
counter-attack under the cover of darkness, and won
back four trenches near St. Eloi from which they had
been driven by a German rush. This dashing ad—
vance was carried out by the 82nd Brigade (Long-
ley’s), and the particular battalions which were most
closely engaged were the 2nd Cornwalls, the lst
Royal Irish, and 2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers. They
were supported by the 80th Brigade (Fortescue’s).
The losses amounted to 300 killed and wounded.
The Germans lost as many and a few prisoners were
taken. The affair was of no great consequence in
itself, but it marked a turn in the affairs of Plumer’s
Army Corps, whose experience up till now had been
depressing. The enemy, however, was still aggres-
sive and enterprising in this part of the line. Upon
the 20th they ran a mine under a trench occupied by
the 16th Lancers, and the explosion produced most
serious effects. Five officers killed, 3 wounded,
and 60 men .hors dc combat were the fruits of this
unfortunate incident, which pushed our trenches
back for 40 yards on a front of 150 yards. The Ger—
mans had followed up the explosion by an infantry
attack, which was met and held by the remains of
the 16th, aided by a handful of French infantry and
a squadron of the 11th Hussars. On this same day
an accidental shot killed General Gough, chief staff


THE OPENING MONTHS OF 1915 9
oﬂicer of the First Corps, one of the most experi- 011mm
enced and valuable leaders of the Army. 1'
On the 2lst, the Twenty-eighth Division near The
Ypres had a good deal of hard ﬁghting, losing 3.”;521'35
trenches and winning them, but coming out at the °t 1915'
ﬁnish rather the loser on balance. The losses of the
day were 250 killed and wounded, the greatest suf-
ferers being the Royal Lancasters. Somewhat south
of Ypres, at Zwarteleen, the 1st West Kents were ex-
posed to a shower of projectiles from the deadly
minewwerfcr, which are more of the nature of aerial
torpedoes than ordinary bombs. Their losses under
this trying ordeal were 3 ofﬁcers and 19 men killed,
1 ofﬁcer and 18 men wounded. There was a lull after
this in the trench ﬁghting for some little time, which
was broken upon February 28 by a very dashing
little attack of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian reg-
iment, which as one of the units of the 80th Brigade
had been the ﬁrst Canadian Battalion to reach the
front. Upon this occasion, led by Lieutenants Crabb
and Papineau, they rushed a trench in their front,
killed eleven of its occupants, drove off the re-
mainder, and levelled it so that it should be unten-
able. Their losses in this exploit were very small.
During this period of the trench warfare it may be
said generally that the tendency was for the Ger-
mans to encroach upon British ground in the Ypres
section and for the British to take theirs in the
region of La Bassée.
With the opening of the warmer weather great
preparations had been made by Great Britain for
carrying on the land campaign, and these now began
to bear fruit. Apart from the numerous Territorial
regiments which had already been incorporated with


10 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
I.

The
opening
months
of 1915.
regular brigades—some ﬁfty battalions in all—there
now appeared several divisions entirely composed of
Territorials. The 46th North Midland and 48th South
Midland Divisions were the ﬁrst to form independent
units, but they were soon followed by others. It had
been insuﬂiciently grasped that the supply of muni-
tions was as important as that of men, and that the
expenditure of shell was something so enormous in
modern warfare that the greedy guns, large and
small, could keep a great army of workmen employed
in satisfying their immoderate demands. The out—
put of shells and cartridges in the month of March
was, it is true, eighteen times greater than in Sep-
tember, and 3000 separate ﬁrms were directly or in-
directly employed in war production; but opera-
tions were hampered by the needs of batteries which
could consume in a day what the workshops could at
that time hardly produce in a month. Among
the other activities Of Great Britain at this period
was the great strengthening of her heavy artillery, ,
in which for many months her well-prepared enemy
had so vast an advantage. Huge engines lurked in
the hearts of groves and behind hillocks at the back
of the British lines, and the cheery news went round
that even the heaviest bully that ever came out of
Essen would ﬁnd something of its own weight
stripped and ready for the fray.
There was still considerable activity in the St.
Eloi sector south-east Of Ypres, where the German
attacks were all, as it proved, the preliminaries of
a strong advance. SO persistent were they that
Plumer’s men were constantly striving for elbow
room. On March 2 part of Fortescue’s 80th Bri-
gade, under Major Widdington of the 4th Riﬂes, en-


THE OPENING MONTHS OF 1915 11
deavoured to push back the pressure in this region,
and carried the nearest trench, but were driven out
again by the German bombs. The losses were about
200, of which 47 fell upon the 3rd, and 110 upon
the 4th Riﬂes. In these operations a very great
strain came upon the Engineers, who were continu-
ally in front of the trenches at night, ﬁxing the wire
entanglements and doing other dangerous work un-
der the very riﬂes of the Germans. It is pleasing to
record that in this most hazardous task the Terri-
torial sappers showed that they were worthy com-
rades 0f the Regulars. Major Gardner, Commander
of the North Midland Field Company, and many ofﬁ-
cers and men died in the performance of this danger-
ous duty.
CHAPTER
I.

The
opening
months
of 1916.


CHAPTER II
NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60
The opening of the spring campaign—Surprise of Neuve Chapelle—
The new artillery—Gallant advance and terrible losses—The In-
dians in Neuve Chapelle—A sterile victory—The night action of
St. Eloi—Hill 60-—The monstrous mine—The veteran 13th Bri-
gade—A bloody battle—London Territorials on the Hill—A con-
test of endurance—The ﬁrst signs of poison.
011mm WE now come to the close of the long period of petty
11‘ and desultory warfare, which is only relieved from
gimme. insigniﬁcance by the fact that the cumulative result
and during the winter was a loss to the Army of not less
Hm‘m- than twenty thousand men. With the breaking of
the spring and the drying of the water-soaked mead-
ows of Flanders, an era of larger and more ambi-
tious operations had set in, involving, it is true, little
change of position, but far stronger forces on the
side of the British. The ﬁrst hammer-blow of Sir
John French was directed, upon March 10, against
that village of N euve Chapelle which had, as already
described, changed hands several times, and eventu-
ally remained with the Germans during the hard
ﬁghting of Smith-Dorrien’s Corps in the last week
of October. The British trenches had been drawn a
few hundred yards to the west of the village, and
there had been no change during the last four
months. Behind the village was the Aubers Ridge,
and behind that again the whole great plain of Lille
and Turcoing. This was the spot upon which the

12


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 13
British General had determined to try the effects of
his new artillery.
His secret was remarkably well kept. Few British
and no Germans knew where the blow was to fall.
The boasted spy system was completely at fault.
The success of Sir John in keeping his secret was
largely dependent upon the fact that above the
British lines an air space had been cleared into which
no German airman could enter save at his own very
great peril. NO great movement of troops was
needed since Haig’s army lay opposite to the point
to be attacked, and it was to two of his corps that the
main assault was assigned. On the other hand, there
was a considerable concentration of guns, which were
arranged, over three hundred in number, in such a
position that their ﬁre could converge from various
directions upon the area of the German defences.
It was planned that Smith-Dorrien, along the
whole line held by the Second Army to the north,
should demonstrate with sufﬁcient energy to hold the
Germans from reinforcing their comrades. TO the
south Of the point of attack, the First Army Corps
in the Givenchy neighbourhood had also received in—
structions to make a strong demonstration. Thus
the Germans of Neuve Chapelle, who were believed
to number only a few battalions, were isolated on
either side. It was advisable also to hinder their
reinforcements coming from the reserves in the
northern towns behind the ﬁghting lines. With this
object, instructions were given to the British airmen
at any personal risk to attack all the railway points
along which the trains could come. This was duly
done, and the junctions of Menin, Courtrai, Don,
and Douai were attacked, Captain Carmichael and
Cairns
II.

Neuve
Chapeile
and
Hill 60.
The
British
surprise.


14 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAP'rm
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Terriﬁc
bombard-
ment.
other airmen bravely descending within a hundred
feet of their mark. I
The troops chosen for the assault were Rawlin-
son’s Fourth Army Corps upon the left and the In-
dian Corps upon the right, upon a front of half a
mile, which as the operation developed broadened to
three thousand yards. The object was not the mere
occupation of the village, but an advance to the
farthest point attainable. The Second Division of
Cavalry was held in reserve, to be used in
case the German line should be penetrated. All dur-
ing the hours of the night the troops in single ﬁle v
were brought up to the advanced trenches, which in
many cases were less than a hundred yards from the
enemy. Before daylight they were crammed with
men waiting most eagerly for the signal to advance.
Short ladders had been distributed, so that the
stormers could swarm swiftly out of the deep
trenches.
The obstacle in front of the Army was a most
serious one. The barbed wire entanglements were
on an immense scale, the trenches were bristling with
machine-guns, and the village in the rear contained
several large outlying houses with walls and or-
chards, each of which had been converted into a
fortress. On the other hand, the defenders had re-
ceived no warning, and therefore no reinforcement,
so that the attackers were far the more numerous. It
is said that a German oﬂicer’s attention was called to
the stir in the opposing trenches, and that he was
actually at the telephone reporting his misgivings to
headquarters when the storm broke loose.
It was at half-past seven that the ﬁrst gun boomed
from the rear of the British position. Within a few


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 15
minutes three hundred were hard at work, the gun—
ners striving desperately to pour in the greatest pos-
sible number of shells in the shortest period of time.
It had been supposed that some of the very heavy
guns could get in forty rounds in the time, but they
actually ﬁred nearly a hundred, and at the end of it
the huge garrison gunners were lying panting like
spent hounds round their pieces. From the 18-
pounder of the ﬁeld-gun to the huge MOO-pound pro-
jectile from the new monsters in the rear, a shower
of every sort and size of missile poured down upon
the Germans, many of whom were absolutely bereft
of their senses by the sudden and horrible experi-
ence. Trenches, machine-guns, and human bodies
ﬂew high into the air, while the stakes which sup
ported the barbed wire were uprooted, and the wire
itself torn into ribbons and twisted into a thousand
fantastic coils with many a gap between. In front
of part of the Indian line there was a clean sweep of
the impediments. So also to the right of the British
line. Only at the left of the line, to the extreme north
of the German position, was the fatal wire still quite
unbroken and the trenches unapproachable. Mean-
while, so completely was the resistance ﬂattened out
by the overpowering weight of ﬁre that the British
infantry, with their own shells ﬂowing in a steady
stream within a few feet of their heads, were able to
line their parapets and stare across at the wonderful
smoking and roaring swirl of destruction that faced
them. Here and there men sprang upon the para-
pets waving their riﬂes and shouting in the hot ea-
gerness of their hearts. “Our bomb-throwers,” says
one correspondent, “started cake-walking.” It was
but half an hour that they waited, and yet to many it
CHAPTER
II.
Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.


16 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapeile
and
Hill 60.
The
infantry
attack.
seemed the longest half-hour of their lives. It was
an extraordinary revelation of the absolute accuracy
Of scientiﬁc gunﬁre that the British batteries should
dare to shell the German trenches which were only a
hundred yards away from their own, and this at a
range Of ﬁve or six thousand yards.
At ﬁve minutes past eight the guns ceased as sud-
denly as they had begun, the shrill whistles of the
ofﬁcers sounded all along the line, and the ardent
infantry poured OVei' the long lip Of the trenches.
The assault upon the left was undertaken by Pin-
ney’s 23rd Infantry Brigade of the Eighth Division.
The 25th Brigade of the same division (Lowry-
Cole’s) was on the right, and on the right of them
again were the Indians. The 25th Brigade was
headed by the 2nd Lincolns (left) and the 2nd Berk-
shires (right), who were ordered to clear the
trenches, and then to form a supporting line while
their comrades of the 1st Irish Riﬂes (left) and the
2nd Riﬂe Brigade (right) passed through their ranks
and carried the village beyond. The 1st Londons
and 13th London (Kensingtons) were pressing up
in support. Colonel McAndrew, of the Lincolns,
was mortally hit at the outset, but watched the as-
sault with constant questions as to its progress until
he died. It was nothing but good news that he
heard, for the work of the brigade went splendidly
from the start. It overwhelmed the trenches in an
instant, seizing the bewildered survivors, who
crouched, yellow with lyddite and shaken by the
horror of their situation, in the corners of the earth-
works. As the Berkshires rushed down the German
trench they met with no resistance at all, save from


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 17
two gallant German oﬂicers, who fought a machine-
gun until both were bayoneted.
It was very different, however, with the 23rd
Brigade upon the left. Their experience was a ter~
rible one. As they rushed forward, they came upon
a broad sheet of partly-broken wire entanglement
between themselves and the trenches which had es-
caped the artillery ﬁre. The obstacle could not be
passed, and yet the furious men would not retire,
but tore and raged at the edge of the barrier even as
their ancestors raged against the scythe~blades of
the breach of Badajoz. The 2nd Scottish Riﬂes
and the 2nd Middlesex were the ﬁrst two regi-
ments, and their losses were ghastly. Of the
Scottish Riﬂes, Colonel Bliss was killed, every
oﬂicer but one was either killed or wounded, and
half the men were on the ground. The battalion
found some openings, however, especially B Com-
pany (Captain Ferrers), upon their right ﬂank, and
in spite of their murderous losses made their way
into the German trenches, the bombardiers, under
Lieutenant Bibby, doing ﬁne work in clearing them,
though half their number were killed. The Middle-
sex men, after charging through a driving sleet of
machine-gun bullets, were completely held up by an
unbroken obstacle, and after three gallant and costly
attacks, when the old “Diehards” lived up to their
historic name, the remains of the regiment were com-
pelled to move to the right and make their way
through the gap cleared by the Scottish Riﬂes.
“Rally, boys, and at it again!” they yelled at every
repulse. The 2nd Devons and 2nd West Yorkshires
were in close support of the ﬁrst line, but their losses
were comparatively small. The bombers of the Dev-
Cmrm
II.
Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
The ordeal
of the 23rd
Brigade.


18 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
Gallium ons, under Lieutenant Wright, got round the obstacle
I" and cleared two hundred yards of trench. On ac-
lgﬁgzne count of the impregnable German position upon the
and left, the right of the brigade was soon three hundred
mum yards in advance and suﬁered severely from the
enﬁlade ﬁre of riﬂes and machine-guns, the two
ﬂanks being connected up by a line of men facing
half left, and making the best of the very imperfect
cover.
It should be mentioned that the getting forward
of the 23rd Brigade was largely due to the personal
intervention of General Pinney, who, about 8.30,
hearing of their difﬁcult position, came forward him-
self across the open and inspected the obstacle. He
then called off his men for a breather while he tele-
phoned to the gunners to re-open ﬁre. This cool and
practical manoeuvre had the effect of partly smash-
ing the wires. At the same time much depended
upon the advance of the 25th Brigade. Having, as
stated, occupied the position which faced them, they
were able to outﬂank the section of the German line
which was still intact. Their left ﬂank having been
turned, the defenders fell back or surrendered, and
the remains of the 23rd Brigade were able to get
forward into an alignment with their comrades, the
Devons and West Yorkshires passing through the
thinned ranks in front of them. The whole body
then advanced for about a thousand yards.
At this period Major Carter Campbell, who had
been wounded in the head, and Second Lieutenant
Somervail, from the Special Reserve, were the only
oﬂicers left with the Scottish Riﬂes; while the Mid-
dlesex were hardly in better case. Of the former
battalion only 150 men could be collected after the


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 19
action. The 24th Brigade was following closely
behind the other two, and the 1st Worcesters, 2nd
East Lancashires, 1st Sherwood Foresters, and 2nd
Northamptons were each in turn warmly engaged
as they made good the ground that had been won.
The East Lancashires materially helped to turn the
Germans out of the trenches on the left.
Whilst the British brigades had been making this
advance upon the left the Indians had dashed for-
ward with equal ﬁre and zeal upon the right. It was
their ﬁrst real chance of attack upon a large scale,
and they rose grandly to the occasion. The Garh-
wali Brigade attacked upon the left of the Indian
line, with the Dehra Duns (Jacob) upon their right,
and the Bareillys (Southey) in support, all being of
the Meerut Division. The Garhwalis, consisting of
men from the mountains of Northern India, ad-
vanced with reckless courage, the 39th Regiment
upon the left, the 3rd Gurkhas in the centre, the 2nd
Leicesters upon the right, while the 8th Gurkhas,
together with the 3rd London Territorials and the
second battalion of the Garhwalis, were in sup-
‘ port. Part of the front was still covered with
wire, and the Garhwalis were held up for a time, but
the Leicesters, on their right, smashed a way through
all obstacles. Their Indian comrades endured the
loss of 20 Ofﬁcers and 350 men, but none the less they
persevered, ﬁnally swerving to the right and ﬁnding
a gap which brought them through. The Gurkhas,
however, had passed them, the agile little men slip-
ping under, over, or through the tangled wire in a
wonderful fashion. The 3rd Londons closely fol-
lowed the Leicesters, and were heavily engaged for
some hours in forcing a stronghold on the right
CHAPTER
II.

N euvc
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Gallant
Indian
advance.


20 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
ﬂank, held by 70 Germans with machine-guns. They
lost 2 oﬂicers, Captain Pulman and Lieutenant
Mathieson, and 50 men of A Company, but stuck to
their task, and eventually, with the help of a gun,
overcame the resistance, taking 50 prisoners. The
battalion lost 200 men and did very ﬁne work.
Gradually the Territorials were winning their place
in the Army. “They can’t call us Saturday night
soldiers now,” said a dying lad of the 3rd Londons;
and he spoke for the whole force who have endured
perverse criticism for so long.
The moment that the infantry advance upon the
trenches had begun, the British guns were turned
upon the village itself. Supported by their ﬁre, as
already described, the victorious Indians from the
south and the 25th Brigade from the west rushed
into the streets and took possession of the ruins
which ﬂanked them, advancing with an ardour which
brought them occasionally into the zone of ﬁre from
their own guns. By twelve o’clock the whole posi-
tion, trenches, village, and detached houses, had been
carried, while the artillery had lengthened its range
and rained shrapnel upon the ground over which
reinforcements must advance. The Riﬂes of the
25th Brigade and the 3rd Gurkhas of the Indians
were the ﬁrst troops in Neuve Chapelle.
It is not to be imagined that the powerful guns
of the enemy had acquiesced tamely in these rapid
developments. On the contrary, they had kept up
a ﬁre which was only second to that of the British
in volume, but inferior in effect, since the latter
had registered upon such ﬁxed marks as the trenches
and the village, while the others had but the ever-
changing line of an open order attack. How dense


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 21
was the fall of the German shells may be reckoned Games
from the fact that the telephone lines by which the 11'
observers in the ﬁring line controlled the gunners 182m“
some miles behind them were continually severed, “Spa 0
although they had been laid down in duplicate, and mu“-
often in triplicate. There were heavy losses among
the stormers, but they were cheerfully endured as
part of the price of victory. The jovial exultation
of the wounded as they were carried or led to the
dressing stations was one of the recollections which
stood out clearest amid the confused impressions
which a modern battle leaves upon the half-stunned
mind of the spectator.
At twelve o’clock the position had been carried,
and yet it was not possible to renew the advance
before three. These few hours were consumed in
rearranging the units, which had been greatly mixed
up during the advance, in getting back into position
the left wing of the 25th Brigade, which had been
deﬂected by the necessity of relieving the 23rd Bri-
gade, and in bringing up reserves to take the place
of regiments which had endured very heavy losses.
Meanwhile the enemy seemed to have been com-
pletely stunned by the blow which had so suddenly
fallen upon him. The ﬁre from his lines had died
down, and British brigades on the right, forming up
for the renewed advance, were able to do so unmo-
lested in the open, amid the horrible chaos of pits,
mounds, wire tangles, splintered 'woodwork, and
shattered bodies which marked where the steel cy-
clone had passed. The left was still under very
heavy ﬁre.
At half-past three the word was given, and again T1"
renewal
the eager khaki fringe pushed swiftly to the front. advance.


22 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER.
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
On the extreme left of the line of attack Watts ’s 21st
Brigade pushed onwards with ﬁerce impetuosity.
This attack was an extension to the left of the origi-
nal attack. The 21st was the only brigade of the
Seventh Division to be employed that day. There is
a hamlet to the north-east of N euve Chapelle called
Moulin-du-Pietre, and this was the immediate ob—
jective of the attack. Several hundreds of yards
were gained before the advance was held up by a
severe ﬁre from the houses, and by the discovery of
a fresh, undamaged line of German trenches oppo-
site to the right of the 21st Brigade. Here the in-
fantry was held, and did no more than keep their
ground until evening. Their comrades of the Eighth
Division upon their right had also advanced, the
24th Brigade (Carter’s) taking the place of the deci-
mated 23rd in the front line; but they also came to
a standstill under the ﬁre of German machine-guns,
which were directed from the bridge crossing the
stream of the little Des Layes River in front of them.
The Bois du Biez is an important wood on the
south-east of Neuve Chapelle, and the Indians, after
their successful assault, directed their renewed ad-
vance upon this objective. The Garhwali Brigade,
which had helped to carry the village, was now held
back, and the Dehra Dun Brigade of 1st and 4th Sea-
forths, J ats, and Gurkhas, supported by the J ullun-
dur Brigade from the Lahore Division, moved for-
ward to carry the wood. They gained a considerable
stretch of ground by a magniﬁcent charge over the
open, but were held up along the line of the river as
their European comrades had been to the north.
More than once the gallant Indians cleared the wood,
but could not permanently hold it. The German post


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 23
at the bridge was able to enﬁlade the line, and our
artillery was unable to drive it out. Three regiments
of the lst Brigade were brought up to Richebourg in
support of the attack, but darkness came on before
the preparations were complete. The troops slept
upon the ground which they had won, ready and
eager for the renewal of the battle in the morning.
The losses had been heavy during the day, falling
with undue severity upon a few particular battal-
ions; but the soldiers were of good heart, for con-
tinual strings of German prisoners, numbering nine
hundred in all, had been led through their lines, and
they had but to look around them to assure them-
selves of the loss which they had inﬂicted upon the
enemy. In that long winter struggle a few yards to
west or east had been a matter for which a man
might gladly lay down his life, so that now, when
more than a thousand yards had been gained by a
single forward spring, there was no desire to ﬂinch
from the grievous cost.
It has already been stated that the British had
made demonstrations to right and to left in order to
hold the enemy in their trenches. In the case of
Smith-Dorrien’s Second Army, a bombardment
along the line was suﬂicient for the purpose. To the
south, however, at Givenchy, the First Corps made
an attack upon the trenches two hundred yards in
front of them, which had no success, as the wire had
been uncut. This attack was carried out by Fan-
shawe’s 6th Infantry Brigade, and if it failed the
failure was not due to want of intrepid leading by
the ofﬁcers and desperate courage of the men. The
1st King’s (Liverpool) suffered very heavily in
front of the impassable wire. “Our boys took their
CHAPTER
II.
Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Subsidiary
attacks.


24 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER bayonets and hacked away. It was impossible to
11' break through.” Colonel Carter was wounded, but
gaging continued to lead his men. Feveran and Suatt, who
and led the assault, were respectively killed and
mu“- wounded. The oiiicers were nearly all hit, down to
the young Subaltern Webb, who kept shouting
“Come on, the King’s!” until he could shout no
more. A hundred were killed and 119 wounded in
the ranks. Both the 2nd South Staﬁords and the 1st
King’s Royal Riﬂes joined in this brave, but ineffec-
tual, attack, and lost very heavily. The total loss of
the brigade was between six and seven hundred, but
at least it had prevented this section of the line from
reinforcing Neuve Chapelle. All along the line the
night was spent in making good the ground that had
been won.
Second day The morning of the 11th broke with thick mist,
“bath a condition which continued during the whole of the
day. Both the use of the aircraft and the direction
of the artillery were negatived by the state of the
weather—a. grievous piece of ill-fortune, as it put a
stop to any serious advance during the day, since it
would have been a desperate business to march in-
fantry against a difﬁcult front without any artillery
preparation. In this way the Germans gained a
precious respite during which they might reinforce
their line and prepare for a further attack. They
essayed a counter-attack from the Bois du Biez in
the morning, but it was easily repulsed by the In—
dians. Their shell-ﬁre, however, was very murder-
ous. The British infantry still faced Moulin-du-
Piétre in the north and the Bois du Biez in the south,
but could make no progress without support, while
they lost heavily from the German artillery. The


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 25
Indians were still at the south of the line, the 24th
Brigade in the middle and the 2lst in the north.
Farther north still, at a point just south of Armen-
tieres, a useful little advance was made, for late at
night, or early in the morning of the 12th, the 17th
Infantry Brigade (Harper’s) had made a swift dash
at the village of l’Epinette, calculating, no doubt,
that some of its defenders had been drafted south to
strengthen the stricken line. The place was carried
by storm at the small cost of ﬁve ofﬁcers and thirty.
men, and the line carried forward at this point to a
depth of three hundred yards over a front of half a
mile. A counter-attack upon the 13th was driven ofﬁ
with loss.
So far as the main operation was concerned, the
weather upon the 12th was hardly more favourable
than upon the 11th. The veil of mist still intervened
between the heavy artillery and its target. Three
aeroplanes were lost in the determined efforts of the
airmen to get close observation of the position. It
also interfered with the accuracy of the German ﬁre,
which was poured upon the area held by the British
troops, but inﬂicted small damage upon them. The
day began by an attack in which the Germans got
possession of a trench held by the lat Sherwood
Foresters. As the mist rose the ﬂank company of
the 2nd West Yorks perceived these unwelcome
neighbours and, under the lead of Captain Harring-
ton, turned them out again. Both the Indians on the
right and the Seventh Division on the left lost a.
number of men during the morning in endeavouring,
with poor success, to drive the German garrisons out
of the various farmhouses, which were impegnable
to anything but artillery. The gallant 20th Brigade,
Cmma
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Third day.


26 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER which had done such great work at Ypres in October,
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
came into action this day and stormed up to the
strongholds of the Moulin-du-Pietre. One of them,
with three hundred Germans inside, was carried by
the 2nd Borders, the defenders being made prison-
ers. All the battalions of the brigade—~the 2nd Scots
Guards, the 1st Grenadiers, the 2nd Gordons, and
their Territorial comrades, the 6th Gordons—lost
heavily in this most desperate of all forms of ﬁght-
ing. Colonel McLean of the latter regiment died
at the head of his men. “Go about your duty,” was
his last speech to those who tended him. The Gren-
adiers fought like heroes, and one of them, Corporal
Fuller, perform-ed the extraordinary feat of heading
off ﬁfty Germans by ﬂeetness of foot, and single-
handed compelling the surrender of all of them. At
the other end of the line, the 25th Brigade, led by the
Riﬂe Brigade, also made desperate eﬁ’orts to get on,
but were brought to a standstill by the trenches and
machine-guns in the houses. The losses of the
British upon this day were heavy, but they
were a small matter compared to those of the Ger-
mans, who made several counter-attacks in close
formation from dawn onwards in the vain hope of
recovering the ground that had been lost. It is
doubtful if in the whole war greater slaughter has
been inﬂicted in a shorter time and in so conﬁned a
space as in the case of some of these advances, where
whole dense bodies of infantry were caught in the
converging ﬁre of machine-guns and riﬂes. In front
of the 1st Worcesters, of the 24th Brigade, alone
more than a thousand dead were counted. From the
ridge of Aubers, half a mile to the eastward, down
to the front of the Indian and British line, the whole


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 27
sloping countryside was mottled grey with the bodies
of the fallen. All that the British had suffered in
front of the barbed wire upon the 10th was repaid
with heavy interest during the counter-attacks of the
12th. Gradually they faded away and were renewed
no more. For the ﬁrst time in the war the Germans
ﬁnally abandoned a position that they had lost, and
made no further attempt to retake it. The Battle of
Neuve Chapelle was at an end, and the British,
though their accomplishment fell far short of their
hopes, had none the less made a permanent advance
of a thousand yards along a front of three thousand,
and obtained a valuable position for their operations
in the future. The sappers were busy all evening
in wiring and sand-bagging the ground gained, while
the medical organisation, which was strained to the
uttermost, did its work with a bravery and a techni-
cal eﬁiciency which could not be surpassed.
Upon the last day of the ﬁghting some 700 more
prisoners had been taken, bringing the total number
to 30 ofﬁcers and 1650 men. The original defenders
had been men of the Seventh German Corps, raised
from Karlsruhe in Westphalia; but the reinforce-
ments which suffered so heavily were either Saxons
or Bavarians. The losses of the Germans were esti-
mated, and possibly over-estimated at 18,000 men.
The British losses were very heavy, consisting of
562 ofﬁcers and 12,239 men. Some 1800 of these
were returned as “Missing,” but these were the
men who fell in the advanced attack upon ground
which was not retained. Only the wounded fell into
the enemy’s hands. The Fourth Corps lost 7500
men, and the Indians about 4000.
Of the six brigades of the Fourth Corps, all suf-
(Emma
I I.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Result of
Battle of
Neuve
Chapelle.


28 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
Cmr'rna fered about equally, except the 22nd, which was not
11‘ so hard hit as the others. The remaining brigades
Sign" lost over 25 per cent of their numbers, but nothing
and of their efﬁciency and zeal, as they were very soon to
Hm'm' show in the later engagements. When one remem-
bers that Julius Caesar describes an action as a se-
vere one upon the ground that every tenth man was
wounded, it may be conjectured that he would have
welcomed a legion of Scottish Riﬂes or Sherwood
Foresters. Certainly no British soldier was likely to
live long enough to have his teeth worn down by the
ration bread, as was the case with the Tenth Legion.
The two units named may have suffered most, but
the 2nd Lincolns, 2nd Berkshires, 2nd Borders, 2nd
Scots Fusiliers, 1st Irish Riﬂes, 2nd Riﬂe Brigade,
the two battalions of Gordons, and the 1st Worces-
ters were all badly cut up. Of the ﬁve commanding
oﬂﬁcers of the 20th Brigade, Uniacke of the 2nd Gor—
dons, McLean of the 5th Gordons, and Fisher Rowe
of the Grenadiers were killed, while Paynter of the
2nd Scots Guards was wounded. The only survivor,
the Colonel of the Borders, was shot a few days
later. It was said at the time of the African War
that the British colonels had led their men up to and
through the gates of Death. The words were still
true. Of the brave Indian Corps, the 1st Seaforths,
2nd Leicesters, 39th Garhwalis, with the 3rd and 4th
Gurkhas, were the chief sufferers. The 1st Lon-
dons, 3rd Londons and 13th (Kensingtons) had also
shown that they could stand punishment with the
best.
So ended the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, a ﬁerce
and murderous encounter in which every weapon of
modern warfare—the giant howitzer, the bomb, and


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 29
the machine-gun—was used to the full, and where
the reward of the vict0r was a slice of ground no
larger than a moderate farm. And yet the moral
prevails over the material, and the fact that a Prus-
sian line, built up with four months of labour, could
be rushed in a couple of hours, and that by no exer-
tion could a German set foot upon it again, was a
hopeful ﬁrst lesson in the spring campaign.
On March 12 an attack was made upon the enemy’s
trenches south-west of the village of Wytschaete—
the region where, on November 1, the Bavarians had
forced back the lines of our cavalry. The advance
was delayed by the mist, and eventually was ordered
for four in the afternoon. It was carried out by the
1st Wilts and the 3rd Worcesters, of the 7th Brigade
(Ballard), advancing for two hundred yards up a
considerable slope. The defence was too strong,
however, and the attack was abandoned with a loss
of 28 ofﬁcers and 343 men. It may be said, however,
to have served the general purpose of diverting
troops from the important action in the south. It is
to be hoped that this was so, as the attack itself,
though fruitless, was carried out with unﬂinching
bravery and devotion.
On March 14, two days after the Battle of Neuve
Chapelle, the Germans endeavoured to bring about
a counter-stroke in the north which should avenge
their defeat, arguing, no doubt, that the considerable
strength which Haig’s First Army had exhibited in
the south meant some subtraction from Smith-Dor-
rien at the other end of the line. This new action
broke out at the hamlet of St. Eloi, some miles to the
south-east of Ypres, a spot where many preliminary
bickerings and a good deal of trench activity had
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapello
and
Hill 60.
Action of
St. Eloi.


30 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
0mm: heralded this more serious effort. This particular
H' section of the line was held by the 82nd Brigade
1813:2110 (Longley’s) of the Twenty-seventh Division,
and the whole quarter being under the supervision of
EMO- General Plumer. There was a small mound in a
brickﬁeld to the south-east of the village with
trenches upon either side of it which were held by
the men of the 2nd Cornish Light Infantry. It is a
mere clay dump about seventy feet long and twenty
feet high. After a brief but furious bombardment,
a mine which had been run under this mound was ex-
ploded at ﬁve in the evening, and both mound and
trenches were carried by a rush of German stormers.
These trenches in turn enﬁladed other ones, and a
considerable stretch was lost, including two support
trenches west of the mound and close to it, two
breast-works and trenches to the north-east of it,
and also the southern end of St. Eloi village.
So intense had been the preliminary ﬁre that every
wire connecting with the rear had been severed, and
it was only the actual explosion upon the mound—an
explosion which buried many of the defenders, in-
cluding two machine-guns with their detachments—
which made the situation clear to the artillery in
support. The 19th and 20th Brigades concentrated
their thirty-six 18-pounders upon the mound and
its vicinity. The German infantry were already in
possession, having overwhelmed the few survivors of
the 2nd Cornwalls and driven back a company of
the 2nd Irish Fusiliers, who were either behind the
mound or in the adjacent trenches to the east of the
village. The stormers had rushed forward, pre-
ceded by a swarm of men carrying bombs and with-
out riﬂes. Behind them came a detachment of sap-


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 31
pers with planks, fascines, and sand-bags, together
with machine-gun detachments, who dug themselves
instantly into the shattered mound. The whole Ger-
man organisation and execution of the attack were
admirable. Lieutenants Fry and Aston of the Corn-
wall Light Infantry put up a brave ﬁght with their
handful of shaken men. As the survivors of the Brit-
ish front line fell back, two companies of the 1st Cam-
bridge Territorials took up a rallying position. The
situation was exceedingly obscure from the rear, for,
as already stated, all wires had been cut, but dar-
ing personal reconnaissance by individual oﬂicers,
notably Captain Follett and Lieutenant Elton,
cleared it up to some extent. By nine o’clock prepa-
rations had been made for a counter-attack, the 1st
Leinsters and 1st Royal Irish, of the 82nd Brigade,
being brought up, while Fortescue’s 80th Brigade
was warned to support the movement.
It was pitch-dark, and the advance, which could
only be organised and started at two in the morning,
had to pass over very difﬁcult ground. The line was
formed by two companies of the Royal Irish, the
Leinster Regiment, and the 4th Riﬂes in general
support. The latter regiment was guided to their
position by Captain Harrison, of the Cornwalls, who
was unfortunately shot, so that the movement, so
far as they were concerned, became disorganised.
Colonel Prowse, of the Leinsters, commanded the
attack. The Irishmen rushed forward, but the Ger-
mans fought manfully, and there was a desperate
struggle in the darkness, illuminated only by the
quick red ﬂash of the guns and the ﬂares thrown up
from the trenches. By the light of these the ma-
chine-guns installed upon the mound held up the ad-
Carma
11.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.


32 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
vance of the Royal Irish, who tried bravely to carry
the position, but were forced in the end, after losing
Colonel Forbes, to be content with the nearest house,
and with gaining a ﬁrm grip upon the village. The
Leinsters made good progress and carried ﬁrst a
breastwork and then a trench in front of them, but
could get no farther. About 4.30 the 80th Brigade
joined in the attack. The advance was carried out
by the 4th Riﬂe Brigade upon the right and the
Princess Patricia’s (Canadians) upon the left, with
the Shropshires and the 3rd Riﬂes in support. It
was- all-important to get in the attack before day-
light, and the result was that the dispositions were
necessarily somewhat hurried and incomplete. The
Canadians attacked upon the left, but their attack
was lacking in weight, being conﬁned to three pla-
toons, and they could make no headway against the
ﬁre from the mound. They lost 3 oﬁcers and 24 men
in the venture. Thesiger’s 4th Riﬂe Brigade di-
rected its attack, not upon the mound, but on a trench
at the side of it. This was carried with a rush by
Captain Mostyn Pryce ’s company. Several ob-
stacles were also taken in succession by the Riﬂemen,
but though repeated attempts were made to get pos-
session of the mound, all of them were repulsed.
One company, under Captain Selby-Smith, made so
determined an attack upon one barricade that all
save four were killed or wounded, in spite of which
the barricade was actually carried. A second one lay
behind, which was taken by Lieutenant Sackville’s
company, only to disclose a third one behind. Two
companies of the Shropshires were brought up to
give weight to the further attack, but already day
was breaking and there was no chance of success


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 33
when once it was light, as all the front trenches were
dominated by the mound. This vigorous night action
ended, therefore, by leaving the mound itself and
the front trench in the hands of the Germans, who
had been pushed back from all the other trenches
and the portion of the village which they had been
able to occupy in the ﬁrst rush of their attack. The
losses of the British amounted to 40 ofﬁcers and 680
men—killed, wounded, and missing, about 100 com-
ing under the last category, who represent the men
destroyed by the explosion. The German losses were
certainly not less, but it must be admitted that the
mound, as representing the trophy of victory, re-
mained in their hands. In the morning of the 15th
the Germans endeavoured to turn the Leinsters out
of the trench which they had recaptured, but their
attack was blown back, and they left 34 dead in front
of the position.
It is pleasing in this most barbarous of all wars
to be able to record that all German troops did not
debase themselves to the degraded standards of
Prussia. Upon this occasion the Bavarian general
in charge consented at once to a mutual gathering in
of the wounded and a burying of the dead—things
which have been a matter of course in all civilised
warfare until the disciples of Kultur embarked upon
their campaign. It is also to be remarked that in
this section of the ﬁeld a further amenity can be
noted, for twice messages were dropped within the
British lines containing news as to missing aviators
who had been brought down by the German guns.
It was hoped for a time that the struggle, however
stern, was at last about to conform to the usual prac-
tices of humanity—a hope which was destined to be
Carmen
II.
Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 35
or the lurking sniper exacted a continual toll, Gen-
eral Maude of the 14th Brigade, Major Leslie Old-
ham, one of the heroes of Chitral, and other valu-
able oﬁicers being killed or wounded in this manner.
On April 17 there began a contest which was
destined to rage with great fury, though at inter-
mittent intervals, for several weeks. This was the
ﬁght for Hill 60. Hill 60 was a low ridge about ﬁfty
feet high and two hundred and ﬁfty yards from end
to end, which faced the Allied trenches in the Zille-
beke region to the south-east of Ypres. This portion
of the line had been recently taken over by Smith-
Dorrien’s Army from the French, and one of the
ﬁrst tasks which the British had set themselves was
to regain the hill, which was of considerable strategic
importance, because by their possession of it the
Germans were able to establish an observation post
and direct the ﬁre of their guns towards any por—
tion of the British line which seemed to be vulner-
able. With the hill in British hands it would be
possible to move troops from point to point without
their being overseen and subjected to ﬁre. There-
fore the British had directed their mines towards the
hill, and ran six underneath it, each of them
ending in a chamber which contained a ton of gun-
powder. This work, begun by Lieutenant Bum-
yeat and a hundred miners of the Monmouth bat-
talions, was very difﬁcult owing to the wet soil.
It was charged by Major Norton Grifﬁths and the
171st Mining Company Royal Engineers. At seven
in the evening of Saturday, April 17, the whole was
exploded with terriﬁc effect. Before the smoke had
cleared away the British infantry had dashed from
their trench and the bill was occupied. A handful of
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Battle of
Hill 60.


36 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Storming
of the Hill.
dazed Germans were taken prisoners and 150 were
buried under the debris.
The storming party was drawn from two bat-
talions of the veteran 13th Brigade, and the Briga-
dier Wanless O’Gowan was in general control of the
operations under General Morland, of the Fifth Divi-
sion. The two battalions immediately concerned
were the 1st Royal West Kents and the 2nd Scottish
Borderers. Major J oslin, 0f the Kents, led the as-
' sault, and C Company of that regiment, under Cap-
tain Moulton Barrett, was actually the ﬁrst to reach
the crest while it was still reeking and heaving from
the immense explosion. Sappers of the 2nd Home
Counties Company raced up with the infantry, bear-
ing sand-bags and entrenching tools to make good
the ground, while a ponderous backing of artillery
searched on every side to break up the inevitable
,' counter-attack. There was desperate digging upon
the hill to raise some cover, and especially to cut
back communication trenches to the rear. Without
an over-crowding which would have been dangerous
under artillery ﬁre, there was only room for one
company upon the very crest. The rest were in sup-
porting trenches immediately behind. By half-past
one in the morning of the 18th the troops were dug
in, but the Germans, after a lull which followed the
shock, were already thickening for the attack. Their
trenches came up to the base of the hill, and many of
their snipers and bomb-throwers hid themselves
amid the darkness in the numerous deep holes with
which the whole hill was pocked. Showers of bombs
fell upon the British line, which held on as best it
might.
At 3.30 an. the Scots Borderers pushed forward


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 37
to take over the advanced ﬁre trench from the Kents,
who had suffered severely. This exchange was an
expensive one, as several ofﬁcers, including Major
J oslin, the leader of the assault, Colonel Sladen, and
Captains Dering and Burnett, were killed or
wounded, and in the confusion the Germans were
able to get more of their bombers thrown forward,
making the front trench hardly tenable. The British
losses up to this time had almost entirely arisen
from these bombs, and two attempts at regular coun-
ter-attacks had been nipped in the bud by the artil-
lery ﬁre, aided by motor machine-guns. As the sky
was beginning to whiten in the east, however, there
was a more formidable advance, supported by heavy
and incessant bombing, so that at half-past ﬁve the
2nd West Ridings were sent forward, supported by
the 1st Bedfords from the 15th Brigade. A desper-
ate ﬁght ensued. In the cold of the morning, with
bomb and bayonet men stood up to each other at
close quarters, neither side ﬂinching from the slaugh-
ter. By seven o’clock the Germans had got a grip of
part of the hill crest, while the weary Yorkshiremen,
supported by their fellow-countrymen of the 2nd
Yorkshire Light Infantry, were hanging on to the
broken ground and the edge of the mine craters.
From then onwards the day was spent by the Ger-
mans in strengthening their hold, and by the British
in preparing for a renewed assault. This second
assault, more formidable than the ﬁrst, since it was
undertaken against an expectant enemy, was ﬁxed
for six o’clock in the evening.
At the signal ﬁve companies of infantry, three
from the West Ridings and two from the Yorkshire
Light Infantry, rushed to the front. The losses of
Cmr'rm
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.


38 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CRAFT“ the storming party were heavy, but nothing could
11‘ stop them. Of 0 Company of the West Ridings only
gaging Captain Barton and eleven men were left out of a
and hundred, but none the less they carried the point at
“meo- which their charge was aimed. D Company lost all
its oﬂicers, but the men carried on. After a ﬁerce
struggle the Germans were ejected once again, and
the whole crest held by the British. The losses had.
been very heavy, the various craters formed by the
mines and the heavy shells being desperately fought
for by either party. It was about seven o’clock on
the evening of the 18th that the Yorkshiremen of
both regiments drew together in the dusk and made
an organised charge across the whole length of the
hill, sweeping it clear from end to end, while the 59th
Company Royal Engineers helped in making good
the ground. It was a desperate tussle, in which men
charged each other like bulls, drove their bayonets
through each other, and hurled bombs at a range of
a few yards into each other’s faces. Seldom in the
war has there been more furious ﬁghting, and in the
whole Army it would have been difﬁcult to ﬁnd better
men for such work than the units engaged.
From early morning of that day till late at night
the Brigadier-General O’Gowan was in the closest
touch with the ﬁghting line, feeding it, binding it,
supporting it, thickening it, until he brought it
through to victory. His Staff-Captain Egerton was
killed at his side, and he had several narrow escapes.
The losses were heavy and the men exhausted, but
the German defence was for the time completely
broken, and the British took advantage of the lull to
push fresh men into the advanced trenches and with-
draw the tired soldiers. This was done about mid-


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 39
night on the 18th, and the ﬁght from then onwards
was under the direction of General Northey, who had
under him the lst East Surrey, the 1st Bedfords, and
the 9th London (Queen Victoria) Riﬂes. Already in
this murderous action the British casualties had
been 50 oﬂicers and 1500 men, who lay, with as many
of the Germans, within a space no larger than a
moderate meadow.
During the whole of the daylight hours of April
19 a furious bombardment was directed upon the hill,
on and behind which the defenders were crouching.
Oli‘icers of experience described this concentration
of ﬁre as the worst that they had ever experienced.
Colonel Grifﬁth of the Bedfords held grimly to his
front trench, but the losses continued to be heavy.
During that afternoon a new phenomenon was ob-
served for the ﬁrst time—an indication of what was
to come. Ofﬁcers seated in a dug-out immediately
behind the ﬁghting line experienced a strong feeling
of suﬂ’ocation, and were driven from their shelter,
the candles in which were extinguished by the nox-
ious air. Shells bursting on the hill set the troops
coughing and gasping. It was the ﬁrst German ex-
periment in the use of poison—an expedient which
is the most cowardly in the history of warfare, re-
ducing their army from being honourable soldiers to
the level of assassins, even as the sailors of their
submarines had been made the agents for the cold-
blooded murder of helpless civilians. Attacked by
this new agent, the troops still held their ground.
Tuesday, April 20, was another day of furious
shell-ﬁre. A single shell upon that morning blew in
a parapet and buried Lieutenant Watson with twenty
men of the Surreys. The Queen Victorias under
CHAPTER.
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
Desperate
ﬁghting.


40 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
Cmrm Colonel Shipley upheld the rising reputation of the
11' Territorial troops by their admirable steadiness.
gaggle Major Lees, Lieutenant Summerhays, and many oth-
md ers died an heroic death; but there was no ﬂinching
mm“ from that trench which was so often a grave. As
already explained, there was only one trench and
room for a very limited number of men on the actual
crest, while the rest were kept just behind the curve,
so as to avoid a second Spion Kop. At one time
upon this eventful day a handful of London Ter-
ritorials under a boy oﬂicer, Woolley of the Victo-
rias, were the only troops upon the top, but it was in
safe keeping none the less. This oﬂicer received the
Victoria Cross. Hour after hour the deadly bom-
bardment went on. About 7.30 in the evening the
bombers of the enemy got into some folds in the
ground within twenty yards and began a most ha-
rassing attack. All night, under the sudden glare of
star shells, there were a succession of assaults which
tried the half-stupeﬁed troops to the utmost. Soon
after midnight in the early morning of Wednesday,
April 21, the report came in to the Brigadier that
the 1st Surreys in the trenches to the left had lost all
their ofﬁcers except one subaltern. As a matter of
fact, every man in one detachment had been killed
or wounded by the grenades. It was rumoured that
the company was falling back, but on a message
reaching them based upon this supposition, the an-
swer was, “We have not budged a yard, and have
no intention of doing so.” At 2.30 in the morning
the position seemed very precarious, so ﬁerce was
the assault and so worn the defence. Of A Company
of the Surreys only 55 privates were left out of 180,
while of the ﬁve oﬂicers none were now standing,


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 41
Major Paterson and Captain Wynyard being killed,
while Lieutenant Roupell, who got the Cross, and
two others were wounded. It was really a subal-
terns’ battle, and splendidly the boys played up.
All the long night trench-mortars and ruine-
throwers played upon them, while monstrous ex-
plosions ﬂung shattered khaki ﬁgures amid a red
glare into the drifting clouds of smoke, but still the
hill was British. With daylight the 1st Devons were
1 brought up into the ﬁght, and an hour later the bill
was clear of the enemy once more, save for a hand-
ful of snipers concealed in the craters of the north~
west corner. In vain the Germans tried to win back
a foothold. Nothing could shift that tenacious in-
fantry. Field-guns were brought up by the attack-
ers and ﬁred at short range at the parapets hastily
thrown up, but the Devons lay ﬂat and held tight.
It had been a grand ﬁght. Heavy as were the strokes
of the Thor hammer of Germany, they had sometimes
bent but never shattered the iron line of Britain.
Already the death-roll had been doubled, and 100
oﬂicers with 3000 of our men were stretched upon
that little space, littered with bodies and red with
blood from end to end. But now the action was at
last drawing to its close. Five days it had raged with
hardly a break. British guns were now run up and
drove the German ones to cover. Bombers who still
lurked in the craters were routed out with the bayo-
net. In the afternoon of the 21st the ﬁre died gradu-
ally away and the assaults came to an end. Hill 60
remained with the British. The weary survivors
were relieved, and limped back singing ragtime
music to their rest-camps in the rear, while the 2nd
0mm

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.


42 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
anxpm Cameron Highlanders, under Colonel Campbell, took

11' over the gruesome trenches. '
gguven It was a ﬁne feat of arms for which the various
ape e
and brigadiers, with General Morland of the Fifth Divi-
H‘“ 60' sion, should have the credit. It was not a question of
the little mound—important as that might be, it could
not justify so excessive a loss of life, whether Ger-
man or British. Hill 60 was a secondary matter.
What was really being fought for was the ascendancy
of the British or the Prussian soldier—~that subtle
thing which would tinge every battle which might be
fought thereafter. Who would cry “Enough!”
ﬁrst? Who would stick it to the bitter end? Which
had the staying-power when tried out to a ﬁnish?
The answer to that question was of more deﬁnite
military importance than an observation post, and
it was worth our three thousand slain or maimed
to have the award of the God of battles to strengthen
us hereafter.
This description may well be ended by the general
order in which Sir John French acknowledged the
services of the troops engaged in this arduous affair:
“I congratulate you and the troops of the Second
Army on your brilliant capture and retention of the
important position at Hill 60. Great credit is due to
Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Ferguson, com-
manding Second Corps; Major-General Morland,
commanding Fifth Division; Brigadier-General
Wanless O’Gowan, commanding 13th Brigade; and
Brigadier-General Northey, commanding 15th Bri-
gade, for their energy and skill in carrying out the
operations. I wish particularly to express my warm-
est admiration for the splendid dash and spirit dis-
played by the battalions of the 13th, 14th, and 15th


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 43
Brigades which took part under their respective
commanding oﬁicers. This has been shown in the
ﬁrst seizure of the position, by the ﬁre attack of the
Royal West Kents and the King’s Own Scottish Bor-
derers, and in the heroic tenacity with which the hill
has been held by the other battalions of these bri-
gades against the most violent counter-attacks and
terriﬁc artillery bombardment. I also must com-
mend the skilful work of the Mining Company R.E.,
of the 59th Field Company RE, and 2nd Home
Counties Field Company RE, and of the Artillery.
I fully recognise the skill and foresight of Major-
General Bulﬁn, commanding Twenty-eighth Divi-
sion, and his C.R.E., Colonel Jerome, who are re-
sponsible for the original conception and plan of the
undertaking. ’ ’
It will be noticed that in his generous commenda-
tion Sir John French quotes the diﬁerent separate
units of Engineers as a token of his appreciation of
the heavy work which fell upon them before as well
as during the battle. Many anecdotes were current
in the Army as to the extraordinary daring and
energy of the subterranean workers, who were never
so happy as when, deep in the bowels of the earth,
they were planning some counter-mine with the tap-
ping of the German picks growing louder on their
ears. One authentic deed by Captain Johnston’s
172nd Mining Company may well be placed upon
record. The sapping upon this occasion was directed
against the Peckham Farm held by the Germans.
Finding that the enemy were countermining, a ca-
mouﬂet was laid down which destroyed their tunnel.
After an interval a cOrporal descended into the
shaft, but was poisoned by the fumes. An ofﬁcer
Cnum
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.


44 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.
A military
crime.
followed him and seized him by the ankles, but be-
came unconscious. A private came next and
grabbed the ofﬁcer, but lost his own senses. Seven
men in succession were in turn rescuers and rescued,
until the whole chain was at last brought to the sur-
face. Lieutenants Severne and Williams, with Cor-
poral Gray and Sappers Hattersley, Hayes, Lannon,
and Smith, were the heroes of this incident. It is
pleasant to add that though the corporal died, the
six others were all resuscitated.
It is with a feeling of loathing that the chronicler
turns from such knightly deeds as these to narrate
the next episode of the war, in which the gallant
profession of arms was degraded to the level of the
assassin, and the Germans, foiled in fair ﬁghting,
stole away a few miles of ground by the arts of the
murderer. So long as military history is written,
the poisoning of Langemarck will be recorded as a
loathsome incident by which warfare was degraded
to a depth unknown among savages, and a great
army, which had long been honoured as the ﬁnest
ﬁghting force in the world, became in a single day
an object of horror and contempt, ﬂying to the bot-
tles of a chemist to make the clearance which all the
cannons of Krupp were unable to effect. The crime
‘ was no sudden outbreak of spite, nor was it the
work of some unscrupulous subordinate. It could
only have been eﬁected by long preparation, in
which the making of great retorts and wholesale
experiments upon animals had their place. Our gen-
erals, and even our papers, heard some rumours of
such doings, but dismissed them as being an incred-
ible slur upon German honour. It proved now that
it was only too true, and that it represented the de-


NEUVE CHAPELLE AND HILL 60 45
liberate, cold-blooded plan of the military leaders.
Their lies, which are as much part of their military
equipment as their batteries, represented that the
British had themselves used such devices in the
ﬁghting on Hill 60. Such an assertion may be left to
the judgment of the world.
CHAPTER
II.

Neuve
Chapelle
and
Hill 60.


Cmr'r
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
CHAPTER III
THE snoonn BATTLE or YPBES
Stage I.—The Gas Attack, April 22-30
Situation at Ypres—The oison gas—The Canadian ordeal—The ﬁght
in the wood of St. ulien—The French recovery—Miracle days
-—The glorious Indians—The Northern Territorials—Hard ﬁght-
ing—The net result—Loss of Hill 60.
IT may be remembered that the northern line of the
Ypres position, extending from Steenstraate to
Langemarck, with Pilken somewhat to the south of
the centre, had been established and held by the
British during the ﬁghting of October 21, 22, and 23.
Later, when the pressure upon the British to the east
and south became excessive, the French took over
this section. The general disposition of the Allies
at the 22nd of April was as follows.
The Belgians still held the ﬂooded Yser Canal
up to the neighbourhood of Bixschoote. There the
line was carried on by the French Eighth Army, now
commanded by General Putz in the place of General
d’Urbal. His troops seem to have been all either
Colonial or Territorial, two classes which had fre-
quently shown the utmost gallantry, but were less
likely to meet an unexpected danger with steadiness
than the regular infantry of the line. These forma-
tions held the trenches from Bixschoote on the canal
to the Ypres-Poelcapelle road, two thousand yards
east of Langemarck, on the right. At this point they
46


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47


48 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
The
coming of
the poison
gas.
April 22.
joined on to Plumer’s Fifth Corps, the Canadian
Division, Twenty~eighth and Twenty-seventh British
Divisions, forming a line which passed a mile north
of Zonnebeke, curling round south outside the Poly-
gon Wood to the point where the Fifth Division of
the Second Corps kept their iron grip upon Hill 60.
The average distance from Ypres to all these varie
ous lines would be about ﬁve miles. Smith-Dorrien,
as commander of the Second Army, was general
warden of the district.
Up to the third week of April the enemy opposite
the French had consisted of the Twenty-sixth Corps,
with the Fifteenth Corps on the right, all under the
Duke of Wiirtemberg, whose headquarters were at
Thielt. There were signs, however, of secret con_
centration which had not entirely escaped the obser-
vation of the Allied aviators, and on April 20 and 21
the German guns showered shells on Ypres. About
5 mm. upon Thursday, April 22, a furious artillery
bombardment from Bixschoote to Langemarck be-
gan along the French lines, including the left of the
Canadians, and it was reported that the Forty-
ﬁfth French Division was being heavily attacked.
At the same time a phenomenon was observed which
would seem to be more in place in the pages of a ro-
mance than in the record of an historian. From the
base of the German trenches over a considerable
length there appeared jets of whitish vapour, which
gathered and swirled until they settled into a deﬁ-
nite low cloud-bank, greenish-brown below and yel-
low above, where it reﬂected the rays of the sinking
sun. This ominous bank of vapour, impelled by a
northern breeze, drifted swiftly across the space
which separated the two lines. The French troops,


50 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.
The second
Battle of
Ypres.
April 22.
The
Canadian
ordeal.
received, a blow particularly demoralising to African
troops, with their fears of magic and the unknown, it
was impossible to rally them effectually until the
next day. It is to be remembered in explanation of
this disorganisation that it was the ﬁrst experience
of these poison tactics, and that the troops engaged
received the gas in a very much more severe form
than our own men on the right of Langemarck. For
a time there was a gap ﬁve miles broad in the front
of the position of the Allies, and there were many
hours during which there was no substantial force
between the Germans and Ypres. They wasted their
time, however, in consolidating their ground, and the
chance of a great coup passed for ever. They had
sold their souls as soldiers, but the Devil’s price was
a poor one. Had they had a corps of cavalry ready,
and pushed them through the gap, it would have
been the most dangerous moment of the war.
A portion of the German force, which had passed
through the gap left by the retirement of the French,
moved eastwards in an endeavour to roll up the
Canadian line, the ﬂank of which they had turned.
Had they succeeded in doing this the situation would
have become most critical, as they would have
been to the rear of the whole of the Fifth Army
Corps. General Alderson, commanding the Cana-
dians, took instant measures to hold his line. On
the exposed ﬂank were the 13th (Royal Highlanders)
and 15th (48th Highlanders), both of the 3rd Bri-
gade. To the right of these were the 8th Canadians
and 5th Canadians in the order named. The attack
developed along two-thirds of a front of ﬁve thou-
sand yards, but was most severe upon the left, where
it had become a ﬂank as well as a frontal assault; but


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 51
in spite of the sudden and severe nature of the ac-
tion, the line held splendidly ﬁrm. Any doubt as to
the quality of our Canadian troops—if any such
doubt had existed—was set at rest for ever, for they
met the danger with a joyous and disciplined alac-
rity. General Turner, who commanded the 3rd Bri-
gade upon the left, extended his men to such an
extent that, while covering his original front, he
could still throw back a line several thousand yards
long to the south-west and so prevent the Germans
breaking through. By bending and thinning his line
in this fashion he obviously formed a vulnerable
salient which was furiously attacked by the Germans
by shell and riﬂe ﬁre, with occasional blasts of their
hellish gas, which lost something of its eﬁectiveness
through the direction of the wind. The Canadian
guns, swinging round from north to west, were pour-
ing shrapnel into the advancing masses at a range of
two hundred yards with fuses set at zero, while the
infantry without trenches ﬁred so rapidly and stead-
ily that the attack recoiled from the severity of the
punishment. The British 118th and 365th Batteries
did good work in holding back this German ad-
vance.
Two reserve battalions had been brought up in
hot haste from Ypres to strengthen the left of the
line. These were the 16th (Canadian Scottish) and
the 10th Canadians. Their advance was directed
against the wood to the west of St. Julien, in which
lay our four guns which, as already described,
had fallen into the hands of the Germans. Advanc-
ing about midnight by the light of the moon, these
two brave regiments, under Colonels Leckie and
Boyle, rushed at the wood which the Germans had
CHAPTER,
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


52 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
April 23.
already entrenched and carried it at the point of the
bayonet after a furious hand-to-hand struggle. Fol-
lowing at the heels of the ﬂying Germans, they drove
them ever deeper into the recesses of the wood, where
there loomed up under the trees the huge bulk of the
captured guns. For a time they were once again in
British hands, but there was no possible means of
removing them, so that the Canadians had to be con-
tent with satisfying themselves that they were un-
serviceable. For some time the Canadians held the
whole of the wood, but Colonel Leckie, who was in
command, found that there were Germans on each
side of him and no supports. It was clear, since he
was already a thousand yards behind the German
line, that he would be cut off in the morning. With
quick decision he withdrew unmolested through the
wood, and occupied the German trenches at the south
end of it. Colonel Boyle lost his life in this very
gallant advance, which may truly be said to have
saved the situation, since it engaged the German
attention and gave time for reinforcements to arrive.
The immediate pressing necessity was to give the
French time to re-form, and to make some sort of
line between the Canadian left and the French right.
As early as half-past two in the morning, while the
two Canadian regiments were struggling in the wood
of St. J'ulien, the First Cavalry Division were show-
ing once again the value of a mobile reserve. De
Lisle’s horsemen were despatched at full speed to
get across the Canal, so as to act as a support and
an immediate reserve for the French. The 2nd East
Yorks from the Twenty-eighth Division was also
sent on the same errand.
With the dawn it became of most pressing im-


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 53
portance to do something to lessen, if not to ﬁll, the
huge gap which yawned between the left of the
Canadians and the canal, like a great open door ﬁve
miles wide leading into Ypres. Troops were already
streaming north at the call of Smith-Dorrien from
all parts of the British lines, but the need was quick
and pressing. The Canadian 1st Brigade, which had
been in reserve, was thrown into the broad avenue
down which the German army was pouring. The
four battalions of General Mercer’s Brigade—the
1st (Ontario), 4th, 2nd, and 3rd (Toronto)-—ad-
vanced south of Pilken. Nearer still to St. Julien
was the wood, still fringed by their comrades of
the 10th and the 16th, while to the east of St.
Julien the remaining six battalions of Canadians
were facing north-eastwards to hold up the German
advance from that quarter, with their ﬂank turned
north-west to prevent the force from being taken in
the rear. Of these six battalions the most northern
was the 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders, and it
was on the unsupported left ﬂank of this regiment
that the pressure was most severe, as the Germans
were in the French trenches alongside them, and
raked them with their machine-guns without causing
them to leave their position, which was the pivot of
the whole line.
Gradually, out of the chaos and confusion, the
facts of the situation began to emerge, and in the
early morning of April 23 French saw clearly how
great an emergency he had to meet and what forces
he had with which to meet it. The prospect at ﬁrst
sight was appalling if it were handled by men who
allowed themselves to be appalled. It was known
now that the Germans had not only broken a ﬁve-
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
The crisis.


54 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
mile gap in the line and penetrated two miles into it,
but that they had taken Steenstraate, had forced the
canal, had taken Lizerne upon the farther side, and
had descended the eastern side as far south as
Boesinghe. At that time it became known, to the
great relief of the British higher command, that the
left of the Canadian 1st Brigade, which had been
thrown out, was in touch with six French battalions
—-much exhausted by their terrible experience—on
the east bank of the canal, about a mile south-east of
Boesinghe. From that moment the situation began
to mend, for it had become clear where the rein-
forcements which were now coming to hand should
be applied. A line had been drawn across the gap,
and it only remained to stiffen and to hold it, while
taking steps to modify and support the salient in
the St. Julien direction, where a dangerous angle
had been created by the new hasty rearrangement
of the Canadian line.
It has been said that a line had been drawn across
the gap, but dots rather than a line would have de-
scribed the situation more exactly. Patrols had
reached the French, but there was no solid obstacle
to a German advance. This was partially remedied
through the sacriﬁces of a body of men, who have
up to now received the less credit in the matter be-
cause, being a mere chance collection of military
atoms, they had no representative character. No
ﬁner proof of soldierly virtue could be given than
the behaviour of these isolated British regiments
which were now pushed up out of their rest camps
near Ypres, many of them wearied from recent ﬁght-
ing, and none of them heartened by the presence of
the comrades and superior oﬂicers who had formed


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 55
their old brigades. The battalions were the 2nd
Buffs, half of the 3rd Middlesex, the 1st York and
Lancasters, the 5th Royal Lancasters, the 4th Riﬂe
Brigade, the 2nd Cornwalls, the 9th Royal Scots,
and half the 2nd Shropshires. These odd battalions
were placed under the command of Colonel Geddes
of the Buffs, and may be described as Geddes’ De-
tachment. These scattered units, hardly conscious
of each other’s presence, were ordered upon April
23 not only to advance and ﬁll the gap, but actually
to attack the German Army, so as to give the im-
pression of strength, and bring the assailants to a
halt while reinforcements were being hurried to the
Ypres front. These battalions, regardless of ﬁre
and gas, marched straight across country at the Ger-
mans, got right up to their line, and though unable
to break it, held them fast in their positions. The
1st Royal Irish, under Colonel Gloster, had done the
same farther to the eastward. For three days these
battalions played their part in the front line, de-
liberately sacriﬁcing themselves for the sake of the
army. Colonel Geddes himself, with many senior
ofﬁcers, was killed, and the losses of some of these
stubborn units were so heavy that it is reported that
an observer approached a long row of prostrate men,
whom he took to be the 1st York and Lancaster, only
to ﬁnd that it was the helpless swathe of their dead
and wounded ﬁlling a position from which the sur-
vivors had been moved. The other battalions were
in no better case, but their audacity in attacking at a
time when even a defence might seem a desperate
business, had its effect, and held up the bewildered
van of the enemy. It might well be quoted as a
classical example of military bluff. Nearly all these
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle or
Ypres.


56 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
battalions were in reserve to the 27th or 28th Divi-
sions, who were themselves holding a long line in
face of the enemy, and who, by turning their reserves
to the West, were like a bank which transfers money
to a neighbour at a time when it may have to face
a run upon its own resources. But the times were
recognised as being desperate, and any risk must be
run to keep the Germans out of Ypres and to hold
the pass until further help should come from the
south. It was of course well understood that, swiftly
as our reinforcements could come, the movement of
the German troops, all swirling towards this sudden
gap in the dam, would necessarily be even swifter,
since they could anticipate such a situation and we
could not. The remains of these battalions had by
the evening of the 23rd dug themselves in on a line
which roughly joined up the French and the Cana-
dians.
In the afternoon of the 23rd those of the French
troops who had escaped the gas attack advanced
gallantly to recover some of their ground, and their
movement was shared by the Canadian troops on the
British left wing and by Geddes’ detachment. The
advance was towards Pilken, the French being on the
left of the Ypres-Pilken road, and the British on the
right. Few troops would have come back to the
battle as quickly as our allies, but these survivors of
the Forty-ﬁfth Division were still rather a collection
of brave men than an organised force. The strain
of this difﬁcult advance upon a Victorious enemy fell
largely upon the 1st and 4th Battalions of Mercer’s
1st Canadian Brigade. Burchall, of the latter regi-
ment, with a light cane in his hand, led his men on
in a debonair fashion, which was a reversion to more


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 57
chivalrous days.
see his infantry in occupation of the front German
line of trenches. No further progress could be made,
but at least the advance had for the moment been
stayed, and a few hours gained at a time when
every hour was an hour of destiny.
A line had now been formed upon the left, and the
Germans had been held off. But in the salient to
the right in the St. J ulien section the situation was
becoming ever more serious. The gallant 13th Ca-
nadians (Royal Highlanders) were learning some-
thing of what their French comrades had endured
the day before, for in the early dawn the horrible
gases were drifting down upon their lines, while
through the yellow mist of death there came the
steady thresh of the German shells.
seemed mechanical and inhuman—such an ordeal as
ﬂesh and blood can hardly be expected to bear. Yet
with admirable constancy the 13th and their neigh-
bours, the 15th, held on to their positions, though the
trenches were ﬁlled with choking and gasping men.
The German advance was blown back by riﬂe-ﬁre,
even if the ﬁngers which pulled the triggers were
already stiffening in death. N o soldiers in the world
could have done more ﬁnely than these volunteers,
who combined the dashing American spirit with
the cool endurance of the North. Little did Bern-
hardi think when he penned his famous paragraph
about our Colonial Militia and their uselessness
upon a European battleﬁeld that a division of those
very troops were destined at a supreme moment to
hold up one of the most vital German movements
in the Western campaign.
The French upon the left were not yet in a
He fell, but lived long enough to.
The ordeal-
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
Canadian
gallantry.


58 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
Cmrr
II I.
The second
Battle of
Ypres.
April 24.
position to render much help, so General Alderson,
who was in command of this movement, threw back
his left wing and held a line facing westwards with
the 4th Riﬂe Brigade and a few Zouaves, so as to
guard against a German advance between him and
the canal. When the night of the 23rd fell it ended a
day of hard desultory ﬁghting, but the Allies could
congratulate themselves that the general line held in
the morning had been maintained, and even im-
proved.
Reinforcements were urgently needed by the ad-
vanced line, so during the early hours of the morning
of April 24 two battalions of the York and Durham
Territorial Brigade—the 4th East Yorkshires and
another—were sent from the west to Ypres to rein-
force the weary 13th Brigade, much reduced by its
exertions at Hill 60, which was in immediate sup-
port near Brielen. There was no ﬁghting at
this point during the night, but just about day-
break some of the 2nd Canadian Brigade upon the
right of the British line, who were still holding their
original trenches, were driven out of them by gas,
and compelled to re-form a short distance behind
them.
Though the British advance upon the left had
gained touch with the Canadian 3rd Brigade, the
latter still formed a salient which was so exposed
that the edge of it, especially the 13th and 15th
battalions, were assailed by infantry from the ﬂank,
and even from the rear. To them it seemed, during
the long morning of April 24, as if they were entirely
isolated, and that nothing remained but to sell their
lives dearly. They were circumstances under which
less spirited troops might well have surrendered.


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 59
So close was the ﬁghting that bayonets were crossed
more than once, Major Norsworthy, of the 13th,
among others, being stabbed in a ﬁerce encounter.
Very grim was the spirit of the Canadians. “Fine
men, wonderful fellows, absolutely calm, and I have
never seen such courage,” wrote a Victoria Riﬂe
Territorial, who had himself come fresh from the
heroic carnage of Hill 60. It may be added that, good
as the Canadian infantry was, their artillery was
worthy to stand behind it. It is on record that one
Canadian heavy battery, that of Colonel McGee, was
so pro-eminently efﬁcient that it was in demand at
any threatened portion of the line.
It was clear on the morning of April 24 that the
advanced angle, where the French and Canadians
had been torn apart, could no longer be held in face
of the tremendous shell-ﬁre which was directed upon
it and the continuous pressure of the infantry at-
tacks. The 3rd Canadian Brigade fell slowly back
upon the village of St. Julien. This they endeav-
oured to hold, but a concentrated ﬁre rained upon it
from several sides and the retreat continued. A de-
tachment of the 13th and 14th Canadians were cut
off before they could get clear, and surrounded in
the village. Here they held out as long as their
cartridges allowed, but were ﬁnally all killed,
wounded, and taken. The prisoners are said to have
amounted to 700 men. The remainder of the heroic
and decimated 3rd Brigade rallied to the south of St.
Julien, but their retirement had exposed the ﬂank
of the 2nd Canadian Brigade (Curry’s), even as
their own ﬂank had been exposed by the retirement
of the French Forty-ﬁfth Division. This 2nd Bri-
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


60 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
0mm: gade ﬂung back its left ﬂank in order to meet the
E situation, and successfully held its ground.
3:52?!“ In doing this they were greatly aided by supports
Ypres, which came from the rear. This welcome reinforce-
The annulment consisted of three battalions of the 84th Bri-
jgrfgents. gade, under Colonel Wallace. These three battalions
were ordered to advance about four o’clock in the
afternoon, their instructions being to make straight
for Fortuin. Their assault was a desperate one,
since there was inadequate artillery support, and
they had to cross two miles of open ground under a
dreadful ﬁre. They went forward in the open Brit-
ish formation—the 1st Suffolks in the van, then the
12th London Rangers, and behind them the 1st Mon-
mouths. Numerous gassed Canadians covered the
ground over which they advanced. The losses were
very heavy, several hundred in the Suﬁolks alone,
but they reached a point within a few hundred yards
of the enemy, where they joined hands with the few
Canadians who were left alive in those trenches.
They hailed their advent with cheers. The whole
line lay down at this point, being unable to get
farther, and they were joined at a later date by the
9th Durhams, who came up on the right. This body,
which may be called Wallace’s detachment, remained
in this position during the night, and were exposed
to severe attack next day, as will be seen later. So
perilous was their position at the time the 9th Dur-
hams came up that preparations had been made for
destroying all conﬁdential records in view of the
imminent danger of being overwhelmed.
In this and subsequent ﬁghting the reader is likely
to complain that he ﬁnds it diﬂicult to follow the
movements or order of the troops, but the same trou-


62 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
looked upon as raw Colonial Militia, with such odds
and ends of reinforcements as could be suddenly
called upon. And yet of the ﬁve miles they could
only accomplish two, and now after days of struggle
the shattered tower of the old Cloth Hall in front
of them was as inaccessible as ever. It needs no
visions of overwrought men to see the doom of
God in such episodes as that. The innocent
blood of Belgium for ever clogged the hand of
Germany.
Reinforcements were now assembling to the imme-
diate south of St. J ulien. By evening the Northum-
berland Brigade and the Durham Light Infantry
Brigade—both of the Fiftieth Territorial Division
—had reached Potijze. More experienced, but not
more eager, was Hull’s 10th Regular Brigade, which
had come swiftly from the Armentieres region. All
these troops, together with Geddes’ detachment and
two battalions of the York and Durham Territorials,
were placed under the hand of General Alderson for
the purpose of a strong counter-attack upon St.
Julien. This attack was planned to take place on
the morning of Sunday, April 25. When night fell
upon the 24th the front British line was formed
as follows :—
The Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Divisions
held their original trenches facing eastwards. In
touch with their left was the 2nd Canadian Brigade,
with one battalion of the 1st Canadian Brigade.
Then came Wallace’s detachment with two battalions
of the York and Durham Territorials joining with
the remains of the 3rd Canadian Brigade. Thence
Geddes’ detachment and the 13th Brigade prolonged


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 63
the line, as already described, towards the canal.
Behind this screen the reinforcements gathered for
the attack.
The advance was made at 6.30 in the morning of
April 25, General Hull being in immediate control of
the attack. It was made in the ﬁrst instance by the
10th Brigade and the 1st Royal Irish from the 82nd
Brigade. The remains of the indomitable 3rd Cana-
dian Brigade kept pace with it upon the right. Little
progress was made, however, and it became clear
that there was not weight enough behind the advance
to crush a way through the obstacles in front. Two
ﬁank battalions retired, and the 2nd Seaforths were
exposed to a terrible cross-ﬁre. “We shouted to our
oﬂicers (what was left of them) to give the order to
charge, knowing in our minds that it was hopeless,
as the smoke was so thick from their gas shells that
we could see nothing on either side of us.” Some
cavalry was seen, the ﬁrst for many days, but was
driven oﬁ by the machine-gun of the Highlanders.
Finally a brigade of Northumberland Territorials
came up to sustain the hard-pressed line, passing
over some two miles of open country under heavy
ﬁre on their advance. It was then nearly mid-day.
From that point onwards the attackers accepted the
situation and dug themselves in at the farthest point
which they could reach near the hamlet of Fortuin,
about a mile south of St. Julien.
It will be remembered that Wallace’s detachment
had upon the day before already reached this point.
They were in a position of considerable danger,
forming a salient in front of the general line. To-
gether with the 9th Durhams upon their right, they
sustained several German assaults, which they drove
CHAPTER
I I I.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
April 25.


64 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.
The second
Battle of
Ypres.
back while thrusting wet riﬂe rags into their mouths
to keep out the drifting gas. From their right
trenches they had the curious experience of seeing
clearly the detraining of the German reserves at
Langemarck Station, and even of observing a speech
made by a German general before his troops hurried
from the train into the battle. This advanced line
was held by these troops, not only during the 25th,
but for three more days, until they were ﬁnally
relieved after suffering very heavy losses, but hav-
ing rendered most vital service.
Whilst the-British were vainly endeavouring to
advance to the north, a new German attack developed
suddenly from the north-east in the region of Brood-
seinde, some ﬁve miles from St. Julien. This attack ‘
was on a front of eight hundred yards. The trenches
attacked were those of the 84th and 85th Brigades
of the Twenty-eighth Division, and no doubt the
Germans held the theory that these would be found
to be denuded or at least fatally weakened, their
occupants having been drafted off to stiffen the
Western line. Like so many other German theories,
this particular one proved to be a fallacy. In spite of
a constant shower of poison shells, which suffocated
many of the soldiers, the enemy were vigorously
repulsed, the 2nd East Surrey Regiment getting at
one time to hand-to-hand ﬁghting; the few who were
able to reach the trenches remained in them as
prisoners. Great slaughter was caused by a machine-
gun of the 3rd Royal Fusiliers under Lieutenant
Mallandain. Still, the movement caused a further
strain upon the resources of the British General, as it
was necessary to send up three battalions to remain
in reserve in this quarter in case of a renewal of the


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 65
attack. On the other hand, the 11th Brigade (Has-
ler), less the 1st East Lancashires, came up from the
south to join the 10th, and Indian troops were known
to be upon the way. The ﬂank of the 85th Brigade
was in danger all day, and it was covered by the
great devotion of the 8th Durham Light Infantry to
the north of it. This battalion lost heavily both in
killed, wounded, and prisoners, but it fought with
remarkable valour in a very critical portion of the
ﬁeld. Early in the morning of the 26th the 1st
Hants, on the right of the newly-arrived 11th Bri-
gade, joined up with the 3rd Royal Fusiliers on the
left of the 85th Brigade, and so made the line com-
plete. Shortly after the arrival of the Hampshires
the enemy charged through the dim dawn with a
shout of “ Ve vos the Royal Fusiliers. ” Wily Hamp-
shire was awake, however, and the trick was a fail-
ure.
Up to the evening of Sunday, April 25, the 2nd
Canadian Brigade had succeeded in holding its orig-
inal line, which was along a slight eminence called
the Gravenstrafel Ridge. All the regiments had
fought splendidly, but the greatest pressure had
been borne by Colonel Lipsett’s 8th Battalion (90th
Winnipeg Riﬂes), who had been gassed, enﬁladed,
and bombarded to the last pitch of human endur-
ance. About ﬁve o’clock their trenches were oblit-
erated by the fury of the German bombardment, and
the weary soldiers, who had been ﬁghting for the
best part of four days, fell back towards Wieltje.
That evening a large part of the Canadian Division,
which had endured losses of nearly 50 per cent and
established a lasting reputation for steadfast valour,
were moved into reserve, while the Lahore Indian
\
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


66 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER Division (Keary) came into the ﬁghting line. It is
2; a remarkable illustration, if one were needed, of the
£232?!“ unity of the British Empire that, as the weary men
Ypres, from Montreal or Manitoba moved from the ﬁeld,
their place was ﬁlled by eager soldiers from the
Punjab and the slopes of the Himalayas.
That evening a fresh French Division, the One
Hundred and Fifty-second, under General de Ligne,
came up from the south, and two others were an~
nounced as being on their way, so that a powerful
French oﬂensive was assured for next day upon the
further side of the Canal. De Lisle’s First Division
of Cavalry continued to support the French opposite
Lizerne, while Kavanagh’s Second Division was
dismounted and pushed into the French territorial
trenches in front of Boesinghe. The enemy had
come within shelling distance of Poperinghe, and
caused considerable annoyance there, as the town
was crowded with wounded.
Splendid work was done during these days by
the motor ambulances, which on this one evening
brought 600 wounded men from under the very
muzzles of the German riﬂes in front of St. J ulien.
Several of them were destroyed by direct hits, but
no losses damped their splendid ardour.
Glorious The Lahore Division having now arrived, it was
232:“ directed to advance on the left of the British and on
India!“- the right of the French, along the general line of the
Ypres-Langemarck road. Encouraged by this rein-
forcement, and by the thickening line of the French,
General Smith-Dorrien, who had spent several night-
mare days, meeting one dire emergency after another
with never-failing coolness and resource, ordered a
general counter-attack for the early afternoon of


68 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle 0!
Ypres.
The
Northern
Terri-
torials.
the survivors dug themselves in, and were eventually
supported and relieved by the Sirhind Brigade, who,
with the help of the 3rd Sappers and Miners and the
34th Pioneers, consolidated the front line. General
Smith-Dorrien tersely summed up the characteristics
of this advance of the Lahore Division when he said
that it was done “with insufﬁcient artillery prepara-
tion, up an open slope in the face of overwhelming
shell, riﬂe, and machine-gun ﬁre and clouds of poison
gas, but it prevented the German advance and
ensured the safety of Ypres.” In this war of great
military deeds there have been few more heroic
than this, but it was done at a terrible cost. Of the
129th Baluchis, only a hundred could be collected
that night, and many regiments were in little better
case. The 1st Manchesters and 1st Connaughts had
fought magniﬁcently, but it cannot be said that there
was any difference of gallantry between Briton and
Indian.
Farther to the eastwards another ﬁne advance
had been made by the Northumberland Brigade of
Territorials (Riddell) of the Fiftieth Division, who
had just arrived from England. Some military his-
torian has remarked that British soldiers never ﬁght
better than in their ﬁrst battle, and this particular
performance, carried out by men with the home dust
still upon their boots, could not have been improved
upon. '
In this as in other attacks it was well understood
that the object of the operations was rather to bluﬁ
the Germans into suspending their dangerous ad-
vance than to actually gain and permanently hold
any of the lost ground. The brigade advanced in
artillery formation which soon broke into open order.


70 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER line without gaps, and great danger arose from this
III.
cause on several occasions. Thus a gap formed upon
The second the left of the Hampshire Regiment, the ﬂank of the
Battle of
Ypres.
A day 0!
hard
ﬁghting.
11th Brigade, through which the Germans poured.
Another gap formed on the right of the Hampshires
between them and the 3rd Royal Fusiliers of the 85th
Brigade. One company of the 8th Middlesex was
practically annihilated in ﬁlling this gap, but by the
help of the 8th Durham Light Infantry and other
Durham and Yorkshire Territorials the line was
restored. The 2nd Shropshire Light Infantry also
co-operated in this ﬁerce piece of ﬁghting, their
Colonel Bridgford directing the operation.
The Indians upon the left had suﬁered from the
gas attack, but the French near the Canal had been
very badly poisoned. By 3.30 they had steadied
themselves, however, and came forward once again,
\while the Indians kept pace with them. The whole
net advance of the day upon this wing did not ex-
ceed three hundred yards, but it was effected in the
face of the poison fumes, which might well have ex-
cused a retreat. In the night the front line was con-
solidated and the Sirhind reserve brigade brought
up to occupy it. It was a day of heavy losses and
uncertain gains, but the one vital fact remained that,
with their artillery, their devil’s gas, and their
north-east wind, the Germans were not a yard nearer
to that gaunt, tottering tower which marked the goal
of their desire.
The night of the 26th was spent by the British in
reorganising their line, taking out the troops who
were worn to the bone, and substituting such reserves
as could be found. The French had been unable to
get forward on the east of the Canal, but on the west,


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 71
where they were farther from the gas, they had made
progress, taking trenches between Boesinghe and
Lizerne, and partially occupying the latter village.
In the early afternoon of the 27th our indomitable
Allies renewed their advance upon our left. They
were held up by artillery ﬁre, and ﬁnally, about
7 P.M., were driven back by gas fumes. The Sirhind
and Ferozepor-e Indian Brigades kept pace with the
French upon the right, but made little progress, for
the ﬁre was terriﬁc. The losses of the Sirhind Bri-
gade were very heavy, but they held their own man-
fully. The 1st and 4th Gurkhas had only two oﬂicers
left unwounded in each battalion. The 4th King’s
also made a very ﬁne advance. Four battalions from
corps reserve—the 2nd Cornwalls, 2nd West Rid-
ings, 5th King’s Own, and 1st York and Lancaster—
were sent up at 3 P.M., under Colonel Tuson, to
support the Indians. The whole of this composite
brigade was only one thousand three hundred riﬂes,
three out of the four battalions having been with
Geddes’ decimated force. The advance could not
get forward, but when in the late evening the French
recoiled before the deadly gas, the left of the Sirhind
Brigade would have been in the air but for the de-
ployment of part of Tuson’s detachment to cover
their ﬂank. At 9 RM. the Morocco Brigade of the
French Division came forward once more and the
line was re-formed, Tuson’s detachment falling back
into support. Once again it was a day of hard ﬁght-
ing, considerable losses, and inconclusive results, but
yet another day had gone and Ypres was still intact.
On the right of the British the 10th and 11th Bri—
gades had more than held their own, and the line of
the Gravenstrafel Ridge was in their hands. Across
CHAPTER
III.
The second
Battle of
Ypres.
April 21.


72 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.
The second
Battle 01‘
Ypres.
Results.
the Canal also the French had come on, and the Ger-
mans were being slowly but surely pushed across to
the farther side. By the evening of the 28th a con-
tinuation of this movement had entirely cleared the
western side, and on the eastern had brought the
French line up to the neighbourhood of Steenstraate.
At this point the ﬁrst phase of the second battle
of Ypres may be said to have come to an end, al-
though for the next few days there was desultory
ﬁghting here and there along the French and British
fronts. The net result of the ﬁve days’ close combat
had been that the Germans had advanced some two
miles nearer to Ypres. They had also captured the
four large guns of the London battery, eight bat-
teries of French ﬁeld-guns, a number of machine-
guns, several thousand French, and about a thousand
British prisoners. The losses of the Allies had been
very heavy, for the troops had fought with the ut-
most devotion in the most diﬂicult circumstances.
Our casualties up to the end of the month in this
region came to nearly 20,000 men, and at least 12,000
French would have to be added to represent the total
Allied loss. The single unit which suffered most was
the British 10th Brigade (Hull), consisting of the
1st Warwicks, 2nd Seaforths, 1st Irish Fusiliers, 2nd
Dublin Fusiliers, and 7th Argyll and Sutherlands.
These battalions lost among them no fewer than 63
ofﬁcers and 2300 men, a very high proportion of
their total numbers. Nearly as high were the losses
of the three Canadian brigades, the ﬁrst losing 64 oﬂi-
cers and 1862 men; the second 71 ofﬁcers and 1770
men; while the third lost 62 ofﬁcers and 1771 men.
The Northumbrian Division was also very hard hit,
losing 102 oﬂicers and 2423 men, just half of the cas-


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
73,
ualties coming from the Northumberland Infantry
Brigade. The Lahore Division had about the same
losses as the Northern Territorials, while the Twen-
ty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Divisions each lost
about 2000. General Hasler, of the 11th Brigade,
General Riddell, of the Northumberlands, Colonel
Geddes, of the Buﬁs, Colonels Burchall, McHaig,
and Boyle, of the 4th, 7th, and 10th Canadians, Colo-
nel Martin, of the 1st King’s Own Lancasters, Colo-
nel Hicks, of the 1st Hants, with many senior regi-
mental ofﬁcers, were among the dead. No British
or Canadian guns were lost save the four heavy
pieces, which were exposed through the exceptional
circumstance of the gas attack. The saving of all
the Canadian guns was an especially ﬁne achieve-
ment, as two-thirds of the horses were killed, and
it was necessary to use the same teams again and
again to get away pieces which were in close con-
tact with the enemy.
The airmen, too, did great work during this en-
gagement, bombarding Steenstraate, Langemarck,
Poelcapelle, and Paschendaale. In so short an ac-
count of so huge an operation it is difﬁcult to descend
to the individual, but no ﬁner deed could be chroni-
cled in the whole war than that of Lieutenant Rhodes-
Moorhouse, who, having been mortally wounded in
the execution of his duty, none the less steered his
machine home, delivered her at the hangar, and made
his report before losing consciousness for ever.
As to the German losses, they were very consider-
able. The Twenty-sixth Corps returned a casualty
list of 10,572, and the Twenty-seventh of 6101.
These are great ﬁgures when one considers that it
was almost entirely to their riﬂes that the British
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


74 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
had to trust. There were many other units engaged,
and the total could not have been less than 25,000
killed, wounded, or taken.
In this hard-fought battle the British, if one
includes the whole area of contest, had seven divi-
sions engaged—the Fourth, Fifth, Twenty-seventh,
Twenty-eighth, Fiftieth, Canadian, and Lahore.
Nearly half of these were immobile, however, being
ﬁxed to the long line of eastern trenches. Forty
thousand men would be a fair estimate of those avail-
able from ﬁrst to last to stop the German advance.
It would be absurd to deny that the advantage rested
with the Germans, but still more absurd to talk of
the honours of war in such a connection. By a foul
trick they gained a trumpery advantage at the cost
of an eternal slur upon their military reputation. It
was recognised from this time onwards that there
was absolutely nothing at which these people would
stick, and that the idea of military and naval honour
or the immemorial customs of warfare had no mean-
ing for them whatever. The result was to infuse an
extraordinary bitterness into our soldiers, who had
seen their comrades borne past them in the agonies
of asphyxiation. The ﬁghting became sterner and
more relentless, whilst the same feeling was reﬂected
in Great Britain, hardening the resolution with which
the people faced those numerous problems of re-
cruiting, food supply, and munitions which had to be
solved. Truly honesty is the better policy in war
as in peace, for no means could have been con-
trived by the wit of man to bring out the full,
slow, ponderous strength of the British Empire so
effectively as the long series of German outrages,
each adding a fresh stimulus before the effect of the


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 75
last was outworn. Belgium, Louvain, Rheims, Zep-
pelin raids, Scarborough, poison-gas, the Lusitania,
Edith Cavell, Captain Fryatt—these were the stages
which led us on to victory. Had Germany never
violated the Belgian frontier, and had she fought
an honest, manly ﬁght from ﬁrst to last, the prospect
would have been an appalling one for the Allies.
There may have been more criminal wars in history,
and there may have been more foolish policies, but
the historian may search the past in vain for any
such combination of crime and folly as the methods
of “frightfulness” by which the Germans endeav-
oured to carry out the schemes of aggression which
they had planned so long.
The gain of ground by the Germans from north to
south in this engagement necessitated a drawing-in
of the line from east to west over a front of nearly
eight miles in order to avoid a dangerous projecting
salient at Zonnebeke. It was hard in cold blood to
give up ground which had been successfully held for
so many months, and which was soaked with the
blood of our bravest and best. On the other hand, if
it were not done now, while the Germans were still
stunned by the heavy losses which they had sus-
CHAPTER
ll [.

Tho Second
Ba ttle of
Ypres.
Reorgani-
nation.
tained and wearied out by their exertions, it might be ~
exposed to an attack by fresh troops, and lead to an
indefensible strategic position.
Upon Sunday, May 2, they made a fresh attack
on the north of Ypres along the front held by the
French to the immediate south of Pilken and along
the British left to the east of St. Julien, where the
newly-arrived 12th Brigade (Anley) and the re-_
mains of the 10th and 11th were stationed. The 12th
Brigade, which came up on May 1, consisted at that
May 2.


78 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
Loss of
Hill 60.
loss of a man or a gun. The retirement was upon the
right of the British line, and mainly affected the
Twenty-seventh, and to a less degree the Twenty-
eighth, Divisions. The Fourth Division upon the
left or north did not retire, but was the hinge upon
which the others swung. During the whole of these
and subsequent operations the Fourth Division was
splendidly supported by the French artillery, which
continually played upon the attacking Germans.
Before closing this chapter, dealing with the
gas attacks to the north of Ypres, and beginning the
next one, which details the furious German assault
upon the contracted lines of the Fifth Army Corps,
it would be well to interpolate some account of the
new development at Hill 60. This position was a
typical one for the German use of gas, just as the
Dardanelles lines would have been for the Allies, had
they condescended to such an atrocity upon a foe
who did not themselves use such a weapon. Where
there is room for ﬂexibility of manoeuvre, and a
temporary loss of ground is immaterial, the gas is
at a discount; but where there is a ﬁxed and limited
position it is without respirators practically impos-
sible to hold it against such an agency. Up to now
the ﬁghting at Hill 60 had furnished on both sides a
ﬁne epic of manliness, in which man breasted man
in honest virile combat. Alas, that such a brave
story should have so cowardly an ending! Upon
the evening of May 1 the poisoners got to work, and
the familiar greenish gas came stealing out from
the German trenches, eddied and swirled round the
base of the hill, and ﬁnally submerged the summit,
where the brave men of the Dorsets in the trenches
were strangled by the chlorine as they lay motionless


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 79
and silent, examples of a discipline as stern as that
of the Roman sentry at Herculaneum. So dense were
the fumes that the Germans could not take posses-
sion, and it was a reinforcement of Devons and Bed-
fords of the 15th Brigade who were the ﬁrst to
reach the trenches, where they found the bodies
of their murdered comrades, either ﬁxed already in
death or writhing in the agonies of choking. It is
said that the instructions of the relieving force were
to carry up munitions and to carry down the Dor-
sets. One ofﬁcer and 50 men had been killed at once,
while 4 ofﬁcers and '150 men were badly injured,
many of them being permanently incapacitated.
The 59th Company of Royal Engineers were also
overwhelmed by the fumes, three ofﬁcers and many
men being poisoned.
The gas attack upon Hill 60 on May 1 may have
been a mere experiment upon the part of the Ger-
mans to see how far they could submerge it, for it
was not followed up by an infantry advance. A more
sustained and more successful attack was made by
the same foul means upon May 5. Early in the morn-
ing the familiar cloud appeared once more, and
within a few minutes the British position was cov-
ered by it. Not only the hill itself, but a long trench
to the north of it was rendered untenable, and so
was another trench two thousand yards north of
Westhoek.
The 2nd West Ridings were holding the front
trench at the time, and suffered horribly from the
poison. Mr. Valentine Williams, in his admirable
account of the episode, says: “There appeared stag-
gering towards the dug-out of the commanding oiﬁ-
cer of the Duke’s in the rear two ﬁgures, an ofﬁcer
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


80 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
III.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
and an orderly. The ofﬁcer was as pale as death, and
when he spoke his voice came hoarsely from his
throat. Beside him his orderly, with unbuttoned
coat, his riﬂe clasped in his hand, swayed as he stood.
The ofﬁcer said slowly, in his gasping voice, ‘They
have gassed the Duke’s. I believe I was the last
man to leave the hill. The men are all up there
dead. They were splendid. I thought I ought to
come and report.’ That ofﬁcer was Captain Robins.
. . . They took him and‘ his faithful orderly to hos-
pital, but the gallant ofﬁcer died that night.” His
two subalterns, Lieut. Miller and another, both re-
mained in the front trench until they died.
Such was the upshot of the ﬁghting at Hill 60.
What with the shells and what with the mines, very
little of the original eminence was left. The British
still held the trenches upon the side while the Ger-
mans held the summit, if such a name could be ap-
plied. Te British losses, nearly all from poison, had
been considerable in the affair, and amounted to the
greater part of a thousand men, the Dorsets, Devons,
Bedfords, and West Ridings being the regiments
which suffered most heavily. When the historian
of the future sums up the deeds of the war it is prob-
able that he will ﬁnd nothing more remarkable than
the patient endurance with which the troops faced a
death of torture from the murderous gas in the days
when no protection had yet been afforded them.
One incident of this period may be quoted as
showing the peculiar happenings of modern warfare.
The village of Poperinghe was at this time the chief
depot for stores and resting-place for wounded, be-
ing ten miles to the rear of the line. Great surprise
and confusion were caused, therefore, by a sudden


CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
Stage IL—The Bellewaarde Lines
The second phass—Attack on the Fourth Division—Great stand of
the Princess Pats—Breaking of the line—Desperate attacks——
The cavalry save the situation—The ordeal of the 11th Bri-
gade—The German failure—Terrible strain on the British—
The last effort of May 24-Result of the battle—Sequence of
events.
Cnum IT was upon the evening of May 4 that the diﬂicult
IV' operations were ﬁnished by which the lines of the
Thesecond British Army on the north-east of Ypres were
33:21:01 brought closer to the city. The trenches which faced
north, including those which looked towards Pilken
and St. J ulien, were hardly aﬁected at all by this re-
arrangement. The section which was chieﬂy modi-
ﬁed was the long curved line which was held from
Zonnebeke southwards by the Twenty-seventh and
Twenty-eighth Divisions. Instead of averaging ﬁve
miles from Ypres, these troops were now not more
than three from that centre, and the curve of their
line was from Wieltje and Frezenberg to past the
Bellewaarde wood and lake, and so through Hooge
and on to Hill 60.
The The second phase of this great battle, which began
223’s? with the poisoning of Langemarck, is dated from the
time that the British line was readjusted. The Ger-
mans were naturally much encouraged by so general
a withdrawal, and it seemed to them that, with a
. 82‘


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 83
further effort, they would be able to burst their way
through and take possession at last of this town
which faced them, still inviolate, after nearly eight
months of incessant attack. Their guns, aided by
their aeroplanes, after wasting a day in bombard-
ing the empty trenches, hastened to register upon
the new line of defences.
During the 5th, 6th, and 7th the enemy were per-
fecting their new arrangements, but no peace or rest
was given to that northern portion of the line which
was still in its old trenches. The bombardment was
turned on to this or that battalion in turn. On the
evening of the 5th it was the 5th South Lancashires,
on the right of the 12th Brigade, who were torn to
pieces by jets of steel from the terrible hose. The
battalion was relieved by the 2nd Monmouths, who
heat off an attack next morning. All day upon the
7th the Germans were massing for an attack, but
were held back by the steady ﬁre of the French and
British batteries. On the 8th, however, the new
preparations were complete, and a terrible storm,
destined to last for six unbroken days—days never
to be forgotten by those who endured them—broke
along the whole cast, north-east, and north of the
British line.
It has been shown in the last chapter that during
the long and bitter ﬁght which had raged from the
22nd to the 28th of April the two British divisions
which together formed the Fifth Army Corps had
not only been closely engaged in their own trenches,
but had lent battalions freely to the Canadians, so
that they had at one time only a single battalion in
their own reserve. During the period of the read-
justment of the line nearly all these troops returned,
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle 0!
Ypres.


84 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER.
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
but they came back grievously weakened and wearied
by the desperate struggle in which they had been in-
volved. None the less, they got to work at once in
forming and strengthening the new dyke which was
to keep the German ﬂood out of Ypres. Day and
night they toiled at their lines, helped by working
parties from the Fifth Division, the 50th Northum-
brian Division, and two ﬁeld companies of sappers
from the Fourth Division. All was ready when the
German attack broke upon the line. The left of this
attack was borne by the Fourth Division, the centre,
in the Frezenberg sector, was held by the Twenty-
eighth Division, and the right by the Twenty-seventh
Division, who joined up with the Fifth Division in
the south. This was at ﬁrst almost entirely an artil-
lery attack, and was of a most destructive character.
Such an attack probably represents the ﬁxed type of
the future, where the guns will make an area of coun-
try impossible for human life, and the function of
the infantry will simply be to move forward after-
wards and to occupy. Along the whole line of the
three divisions for hour after hour an inexhaustible
rain of huge projectiles fell with relentless precision
into the trenches, smashing them to pieces and bury-
ing the occupants in the graves which they had pre-
pared for themselves. It was with joy that the
wearied troops saw the occasional head of an infan-
try assault and blew it to pieces with their riﬂes.
For the greater part it was not a contest between
men and men, but rather one between men and metal,
in which our battalions were faced by a deserted and
motionless landscape, from which came the ceaseless
downpour of shells and occasional drifting clouds of
chlorine. At one point, near Frezenberg, the


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 85
trenches had been sited some 70 yards down the for-
ward slope of a hill, with disastrous results, as the
3rd Monmouths and part of the 2nd Royal Lan-
casters who held this section were almost destroyed.
When the 3rd Monmouths were eventually recalled
the Battalion HQ. and some orderlies and signallers
were all who appeared in answer to the summons.
About seven o’clock the German infantry attack
developed against that part of the line—the northern
or left wing—which was held by the Fourth Division.
The advance was pushed with great resolution and
driven back with heavy losses, after getting within a
hundred yards of the trenches. “Company after
company came swinging forward steadily in one
long, never-ending line,” says an observer of the
11th Brigade, describing the attack as it appeared
from the front of the 1st East Lancashires and of the
5th London Riﬂe Brigade. “Here and there their
attack slackened, but the check was only temporary.
On they came again, and the sight was one that al-
most mesmerised us. They were near enough for us
to hear the short, sharp cries of the ofﬁcers, and the
rain of bullets became more deadly than ever. It
was simple murder.” The barbed wire in front of
the defences was choked and heaped with dead and
wounded men. This desperate German attack had
more success farther to the south.
At this part of the line the Germans had pushed
through a gap and had seized the village of Wieltje,
thus getting behind the right rear of the 12th Bri-
gade. It was essential to regain the village, for it
was a vital point in the line. The 1st Royal Irish,
which had been attached to this brigade, together
with two companies of the 5th South Lancashire,
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
Attack
on the
Fourth
Division.
May 8.


86 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May 8.
were ordered to advance, while two reserve battal-
ions of the 1st Irish Fusiliers and the 7th Argyll
and Sutherlands, all under General Anley, supported
the attack. It is no light matter with an inferior
artillery to attack a village held by German troops,
but the assault was brilliantly successful and the
village was regained, while the dangerous gap was
closed in the British line. That night there was
some desperate ﬁghting round Wieltje, which oc-
casionally got down to bayonet work. The 1st Hants
and 1st East Lancashire from the 11th Brigade had
come up and helped in the ﬁerce defence, which
ended where it began, with the British line still in-
tact.
So much for the ﬁghting on May 8 in front of the
Fourth Division. Farther down the line to the south
the situation was more serious. A terriﬁc bombard-
ment had demolished the trenches of the Fifth Corps,
and a very heavy infantry advance had followed,
which broke the line in several places.
The weight of this attack fell upon the Twenty-
eighth Division in front of Frezenberg, and very
particularly upon the 83rd Brigade, which formed
the unit on the right ﬂank. The German rush was
stemmed for a time by the staunch North of England
battalions which made up this brigade—the 1st York-
shire Light Infantry on the extreme right, and their
neighbours of the 5th Royal Lancasters, the 2nd
Royal Lancasters, and the 2nd East Yorkshires.
Great drifts of gas came over, and the gasping sol-
diers, with their hands to their throats and the tears
running down their cheeks, were at the same time cut
to pieces by every kind of shell beating upon them in
an endless stream. Yet they made head against this


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88 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May‘s.
Great
stand
of the
Princess
PatS.
accumulation of horrors. The East Yorkshires were
particularly badly cut up, and the Monmouths,
who were in support, endured a terrible and glorious
baptism of ﬁre while advancing in splendid fashion
to their support. But the losses from the shell-ﬁre
had been very heavy, and the line was too weak to
hold. Of 2500 men in the Frezenberg trenches only
600 men were left standing. The brigade had to fall
back. The left ﬂank of the 80th Brigade of the Twen-
ty-seventh Division upon the right was consequently
exposed and in the air. A glance at the accompany-
ing diagram will show the situation created by the
retirement of any unit.
The ﬂank trench was held by the Princess Patricia
Canadians, and their grand defence of it showed once
more the splendid stuff which the Dominion had
sent us. Major Gault and all the other senior oﬁicers
were killed or wounded, and the command devolved
upon Lieutenant Niven, who rose greatly to the oc-
casion. Besides the heavy shelling and the gas, the
trenches were raked by machine-guns in neighbour-
ing buildings. So accurate was the German artillery
that the machine-guns of the Canadians were buried
again and again, but were dug up and spat out their
deﬁance once more. Corporal Dover worked one of
these guns till both his leg and his arm had been shot
away. When the trenches were absolutely oblit-
erated the Canadians manned the communication
trench and continued the desperate resistance. The
4th Riﬂe Brigade sent up a reinforcement and the
ﬁght went on. Later a party of the 2nd Shropshires
pushed their way also into the ﬁre-swept trenches,
bringing with them a welcome supply of cartridges.
It was at this hour that the 83rd Brigade upon the


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 89
right of the Twenty-eighth Division had to fall back,
increasing the difﬁculty of holding the position. The
enemy charged once more and got possession of the
trench at a point where all the defenders had been
killed. There was a rush, however, by the survivors
in the other sections, and the Germans were driven
out again. From then until late at night the shell-
ﬁre continued, but there was no further infantry
advance. Late that night, when relieved by the
Riﬂes, the Canadian regiment, which had numbered
nearly 700 in the morning, could only muster 150
men. Having read the service over their comrades,
many of whom had already been buried by the Ger-
man shells, they were led back by Lieutenants Niven,
Clark, Vandenburg, and Papineau after a day of
great stress and loss, but of permanent glory. “N o
regiment could have fought with greater determina-
tion or endurance,” said an experienced British gen-
eral. “Many would have failed where they suc-
ceeded.”
It has already been described how the 83rd Bri-
gade had been driven back by the extreme weight of
the German advance. Their fellow brigade upon the
left, the 84th (Bowes), had a similar experience.
They also held their line under heavy losses, and
were ﬁnally, shortly after mid-day, compelled to
retire. The ﬂank regiment on the right, the 1st Suf-
folk, were cut OE and destroyed even as their second
battalion had been at Le Cateau.
At this time the 1st Suffolk was so reduced by the
losses sustained when it had formed part of Wal-
lace ’s detachment, as described in the last chapter,
that there were fewer than 300 men with the Colours.
When the Germans broke through the left ﬂank of
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May 8.
Breaking
of the line.


90 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
I .

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May 8.
the 83rd Brigade they got partly to the rear of the
Suffolk trenches. The survivors of the Suﬁolks were
crowded down the trench and mixed up with the
2nd Cheshires, who were their immediate neighbours.
The parapets were wrecked, the trenches full of
debris, the air polluted with gas, and the Germans
pushing forward on the ﬂank, holding before them
the prisoners that they had just taken from the 83rd
Brigade. It is little wonder that in these circum-
stances this most gallant battalion was overwhelmed.
Colonel Wallace and 130 men were taken. The 2nd
Northumberland Fusiliers and the 1st Monmouths
sustained also very heavy losses, as did the 12th
London Rangers. The shattered remains of the bri-
gade were compelled to fall back in conformity with
the 83rd upon the right, sustaining fresh losses as
they were swept with artillery ﬁre on emerging from
the trenches. This was about 11.30 in the morning.
The 1st Monmouths upon the left of the line seem,
however, to have kept up their resistance till a con-
siderably later hour, and to have behaved with ex-
traordinary gallantry. Outﬂanked and attacked in
the rear after the Germans had taken the trenches
on the right, they still, under their gallant Colonel
Robinson, persevered in what was really a hopeless
resistance. The Germans trained a machine-gun
upon them from a house which overlooked their
trench, but nothing could shift the gallant miners
who formed the greater part of the regiment. Colo-
nel Robinson was shot dead while passing his men
down the trench one by one in the hope of forming a
new front. Half the ofﬁcers and men were already
on the ground. The German stormers were on the
top of them with cries of “Surrender! Surrender!”


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 91
“Surrender be damned!” shouted Captain Ed-
wards, and died still ﬁring his revolver into the grey
of them. It was a ﬁne feat of arms, but only 120
men out of 750 reassembled that night.
After this severe blow battalions held back in
reserve were formed up for a counter-attack, which
was launched about half-past three. The attack ad-
vanced from the point where the Fourth and Twen-
ty-eighth Divisions adjoined, and two battalions of
the Fourth Division—the 1st Warwicks and the 2nd
Dublin Fusiliers—together with the 2nd East Sur-
reys, 1st York and Lancasters, and 3rd Middlesex,
of the 85th Brigade, took part in it, pushing for-
wards towards the hamlet of Frezenberg, which they
succeeded in occupying. On their left the 12th Lon-
don Regiment (the Rangers) won their way back to
the line which their brigade, the 84th, had held in
the morning, but they lost very heavily in their gal-
lant attack. Two other reserve battalions, the 1st
East Lancashires, of the 11th Brigade, and the 7th
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, of the 10th,
fought their way up as already mentioned on the ex-
treme left in the neighbourhood of Wieltje, and
spliced the line at the weak point of the junction of
divisions. All these attacks were made against in-
cessant drifts of poison-gas, as well as heavy riﬂe
and shell ﬁre. It was a day of desperate and inces-
sant ﬁghting, where all General Plumer’s skill and
resolution were needed to restore and to hold his
line. The Germans claimed to have taken 500 pris-
oners, mostly of the 84th Brigade.
The net result of the ﬁghting upon May 8 was
that the area held in the northeast of Ypres was
further diminished. Early upon the 9th the Ger-
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May 8.


92 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAP'rm
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
Desperate
attacks.
May 9.
mans, encouraged by their partial success, continued '
their attack, still relying upon their massive artil-
lery, which far exceeded anything which the British
could put against it. The attack on this morning
came down the Menin road, and the trenches on
either side of it were heavily bombarded. At ten
o’clock there was an infantry advance upon the line
of the 81st Brigade (Croker), which was driven back
by the 2nd Cameron Highlanders and the 2nd Glou-
cesters. The shell-ﬁre was continued upon the same
line until 4 P.M., when the trench was obliterated,
and a second advance of the German infantry got
possession of it. A counter-attack of the Gloucesters
was held up with considerable loss, the advance of
the regiment through the wood being greatly im-
peded by the number of trees cut down by shells and
forming abattis in every direction, like the windfalls
of a Canadian forest. This trench was the only cap-
ture made by the Germans during the day, and it
did not materially weaken the position. The Glou-
cesters lost Colonel Tulloh, ﬁve other ofﬁcers, and
150 men.
These attacks along the line of the Menin road
and to the north of Lake Bellewaarde were all di-
rected upon the Twenty-seventh Division, but the
Twenty-eighth Division immediately to the north,
which had been defending the sector which runs
through Frezenberg and Wieltje, had also been most
violently shelled, but had held its line, as had the
Fourth Division to the north. All these divisions
had considerable losses. The general result was a
further slight contraction of the British line. It
could not be broken, and it could not be driven in
upon Ypres, but the desperate and (apart from the


94 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May 11.
The
cavalry
save the
situation.
The Twenty-seventh Division was strongly pressed
in the morning. The 80th Brigade was to the north
and somewhat to the west of the 81st, which caused
the latter to form a salient. With their usual quick—
ness in taking advantage of such things, the Ger-
mans instantly directed their ﬁre upon this point.
After several hours of heavy shelling, an infantry
attack about 11 A.M. got into the trenches, but was
driven out again by the rush of the 9th Royal Scots.
The bombardment was then renewed, and the attack
was more successful at 4 P.M.—an almost exact repe-
tition of the events upon the day before, save that
the stress fell upon the 81st instead of the 80th Bri-
gade. During the night the Leinsters of the 82nd
Brigade drove the Germans out again, but found
that the trench was untenable on account of the shell-
ﬁre. It was abandoned, therefore, and the line was
drawn back into the better cover afforded by a wood.
Afterwards the trench was partly reoccupied by a
company of the 2nd Gloucestershires under Captain
Fane.
By this date many of the defending troops had
been ﬁghting with hardly a break from April 22. It
was an ordeal which had lasted by day and by night,
and had only been interrupted by the labour of com-
pleting the new lines. The losses had been very
heavy, and reinforcements were most urgently
needed. Some idea of the stress may be gathered
from the fact that at the time the six battalions of
the 83rd Brigade had been formed into one com-
posite battalion under Colonel Worsley Gough. At
the same time it was impossible to take any troops
from the northern sector, which was already hardly
strong enough to hold a violent German attack. In


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 95
the south the Army had, as will be shown, become
involved in the very serious and expensive opera-
tions which began at Richebourg on May 9. In
these difﬁcult circumstances it was to the never-fail-
ing cavalry that General Plumer had to turn. It is
sinful extravagance to expend these highly-trained
horsemen, who cannot be afterwards improvised, on
work that is not their own, but there have been many
times in this war when it was absolutely necessary
that the last man, be he who he might, should be put
forward. So it was now, and the First and Third
Cavalry Divisions, under General de Lisle, were put
into the ﬁring line to the north of Lake Bellewaarde,
taking the place of the Twenty-eighth Division,
which at that time had hardly a senior regimental
oﬁicer left standing. The First Cavalry Division
took the line from Wieltj e to Verlorenhoek, while the
Third carried it on to Hooge, where it touched the
Twenty-seventh Division. Their presence in the
front ﬁring line was a sign of British weakness, but
on the other hand, it was certain that the Germans
had lost enormously, that they were becoming ex-
hausted, and that they were likely to wear out the
riﬂing of their cannon before they broke the line of
the defence. A few more days would save the situa-
tion, and it was hoped that the inclusion of the cav-
alry would win them.
They took over the lines just in time to meet the
brunt of what may have been the most severe attack
of all. The shelling upon May 12 can only be de-
scribed as terriﬁc. The Germans appeared to have
an inexhaustible supply of munitions, and from
morning to night they blew to pieces the trenches in
CHAPTER.
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May 12.


96 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
front and the shelters behind which might screen the
supports.
It was a day of tempestuous weather, and the
howling wind, the driving rain, and the pitiless ﬁre
made a Dantesque nightmare of the combat. The
attack on the right fell upon the Third Cavalry
Division. This force had been reorganised since the
days in October when it had done so splendidly with
the Seventh Infantry Division in the ﬁghting before
Ypres. It consisted now of the 6th Brigade (1st
Royals, 3rd Dragoon Guards, North Somerset Yeo-
manry), the 7th Brigade (1st and 2nd Life Guards
and Leicestershire Yeomanry), and the 8th Brigade
(Blues, 10th Hussars, and Essex Yeomanry). This
Division was exposed all morning to a perfectly hell-
ish ﬁre, which was especially murderous to the north
of the Ypres—Roulers road. At this point the 1st
Royals, 3rd Dragoon Guards, and Somerset Yeo-
manry were stationed, and were blown, with their
trenches, into the air by a bombardment which con-
tinued for fourteen hours. A single sentence may
be extracted. from the report of the Commander-in-
Chief, which the Somersets should have printed in
gold round the walls of their headquarters. “The
North Somerset Yeomanry on the right of the bri-
gade,” says the General, “although also suffering
severely, hung on to their trenches throughout the
day and actually advanced and attacked the enemy
with the bayonet.” The Royals came up in support,
and the brigade held its own. On one occasion the
enemy actually got round the left of the 3rd Dragoon
Guards, who were the ﬂank regiment, upon which
Captain Neville, who was killed later upon the same
day, gave the order, “Even numbers deal with the


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 97
enemy in the rear, odd numbers carry on!” which
was calmly obeyed with complete success. On the
right the ﬂank of the Twenty-seventh Division had
been exposed, but the 2nd Irish Fusiliers were
echeloned back so as to cover it. So with des-
perate devices a sagging line was still drawn between
Ypres and the ever-pressing invaders. The strain
was heavy, not only upon the cavalry, but upon the
Twenty-seventh Division to the south of them.
There was a time when the pressure upon the 4th
Riﬂe Brigade, a battalion which had endured enor-
mous losses, was so great that help was urgently
needed. The Princess Patricia’s had been taken out
of the line, as only 100 men remained effective, and
the 4th Riﬂes were in hardly a better position, but
the two maimed battalions were formed into one
composite body, which pushed up with a good heart
into the ﬁghting line and took the place of the 3rd
Riﬂes, who in turn relieved the exhausted Riﬂe Bri-
gade.
On the left of the cavalry line, where the First
Cavalry Division joined on to the Fourth Infantry
Division, near Wieltje, the artillery storm had burst
also with appalling violence. The 18th Hussars lost
150 men out of their already scanty ranks. The
Essex Regiment on their left helped them to ﬁll the
gap until the 4th Dragoon Guards came up in sup-
port. This ﬁne regiment and their comrades of the
9th Lancers were heavily punished, but bore it with
grim stoicism. To their right Briggs’ 1st Brigade
held splendidly, though all of them, and especially
the Bays, were terribly knocked about. In the after-
noon the 5th Dragoon Guards were momentarily
0mm
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


98 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER driven in by the blasts of shell, but the 11th Hussars
“’- held the line ﬁrm.
52:52?!“ The situation as the day wore on became some-
Ypres. what more reassuring. The British line had been
The ordeal badly dented in the middle, where the cavalry had
Egg?“ been driven back or annihilated, but it held ﬁrm at
each end. South of the Menin road the Twenty-
seventh Division, much exhausted, were still holding
on, ofﬁcers and men praying in their weary souls
that the enemy might be more weary still. These
buttressed the right of the line, while three miles to
the north the Fourth Division, equally worn and
ragged, was holding the left. The 10th Brigade had
sustained such losses in'the gas battle that it was
held, as far as possible, in reserve, but the 11th and
12th were hard pressed during the long, bitter day,
in which they were choked by gas, lashed with
artillery ﬁre, and attacked time after time by col-
umns of infantry. The 11th Brigade in that dark
hour showed to a supreme degree the historic quali-
ties of British infantry, their courage hardening as
the times grew worse. The 1st East Lancashires
had their trenches destroyed, lost Major Rutter and
many of their ofﬁcers, but still, under their gallant
Colonel Lawrence, held on to their shattered lines.
Every point gained by the stubborn Germans was
wrenched from them again by men more stubborn
still. They carried a farmhouse near Wieltje, but
were turned out again by the indomitable East Lan-
cashires after desperate ﬁghting at close quarters.
It is said to have been the fourth time that this bat-
talion mended a broken line. Severe attacks were
made upon the trenches of the 1st Hampshires and
the 5th London Riﬂe Brigade, but in each case the


100 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
ﬁnal and supreme eﬁort to break the line. On the
other hand, the advance to the north of the Belle-
waarde Lake necessitated a. further spreading and
weakening of the other forces, so that it may truly be
said that the prospects never looked worse than at
the very moment when the Germans had spent their
strength and could do no more. From May 13 the
ﬁghting died down, and for some time the harassed
and exhausted defenders were allowed to re-form
and to recuperate. The 80th Brigade, which had
suffered very heavily, was drawn out upon the 17th,
the Second Cavalry Division, under Kavanagh, tak-
ing its place. Next day the 81st Brigade, and on
May 22 the 82nd, were also drawn back to the west
of Ypres, their place being taken by fresh troops.
The various units of the Twenty-eighth Division
were also rested for a. time. For the gunners and
sappers there was no rest, however, but incessant
labour against overmastering force.
The second phase of this new Battle of Ypres may
be said to have lasted from May 4 to May 13. It
consisted of a violent German attack, pushed chieﬂy
by poison and by artillery, against the Twenty-
seventh and Twenty~eighth Divisions of the Fifth
British Corps and the Fourth Division to the north
of them. Its aim was, as ever, the capture of Ypres.
In this aim it failed, nor did it from ﬁrst to last
occupy any village or post which gave it any return
for its exertions. It inﬂicted upon the British a loss
of from 12,000 to 15,000 men, but endured itself at
the very least an equal slaughter without any com-
pensating advantage. The whole operation can only
be described, therefore, as being a costly failure.
Throughout these operations the British infantry


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 101
were provided with respirators soaked in alkalis,
while many wore specially-constructed helmets to
save them from being poisoned. To such grotesque
expedients had Germany brought the warfare of
the twentieth century.
There is no doubt that the three British regular
divisions and the cavalry were worn to a shadow at
the end of these operations. Since the enemy ceased
to attack, it is to be presumed that they were in no
better case. The British infantry had been ﬁghting
almost day and night for three weeks, under the
most desperate conditions. Their superiority to the
infantry of the Germans was incontestable, but there
was no comparison at all between the number of
heavy guns available, which were at least six to one
in favour of the enemy. Shells were poured down
with a profusion, and also with an accuracy, never
before seen in warfare, and though the British in-
fantry continually regained trenches which had been
occupied by the German infantry, it was only to be
shelled out of them again by a ﬁre against which
they could make no adequate answer. An aerial
observer has described that plain simply ﬂaming
and smoking from end to end with the incessant heat
of the shells, and has expressed his wonder that
human life should have been possible under such a
ﬁre. And yet the road to Ypres was ever barred.
All the infantry losses, heavy as they were, are
eclipsed by those of the Third Cavalry Division,
which bore the full blast of the ﬁnal whirlwind, and
was practically destroyed in holding it back from
Ypres. This splendid division, to whom, from ﬁrst
to last, the country owes as much as to any body of
troops in the ﬁeld, was only engaged in the ﬁghting
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
Terrible
strain on
the British.


102 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
1V.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
for one clear day, and yet lost nearly as heavily in
proportion as either of the infantry divisions which
had been in the ﬁring line for a week. Their casual-
ties were 91 oiﬁcers and 1050 men. This will give
some idea of the concentrated force of the storm
which broke upon them on May 12. It was a most
murderous affair, and they were only driven from
their trenches when the trenches themselves had been
blasted to pieces. It is doubtful whether any regi-
ments have endured more in so short a time. These
three brigades were formed of corps d’élites, and
they showed that day that the blue blood of the land
was not yet losing its iron. The casualty lists in
this and the succeeding action of the 24th read like a
society function. Colonel Ferguson, of the Blues,
Colonel the Hon. Evans-Freke, Lord Chesham, Cap-
tain the Hon. J. Grenfell, Lord Leveson-Gower, Sir
Robert Sutton, Lord Compton, Major the Hon. C. B.
Mitford, the Hon. C. E. A. Phillips, Viscount Wen-
dover—so runs the sombre and yet glorious list. The
sternest of Radicals may well admit that the aristo-
crats of Britain have counted their lives cheap when
the enemy was at the gate. Colonel Smith-Bingham,
of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, Colonel Steele, of the
1st Royals, Colonel Freke, of the Leicestershire Yeo-
manry, and many other senior ofﬁcers were among
the dead or wounded. The Leicester Yeomanry suf-
fered very severely, but their comrades of Essex and
of Somerset, the Blues and the 1st Royals, were also
hard hit. The losses of the First Cavalry Division
were not so desperately heavy as those of the Third,
but were none the less very serious, amounting to 54
ofﬁcers and 650 men.
It is possible that the German attack desisted


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 103
because the infantry were exhausted, but more prob-
able that the great head of shells accumulated had
been brought down to a minimum level, and that the
gas cylinders were empty. For ten days, while the
British strengthened their battered line, there was a
lull in the ﬁghting.
There was no change, however, in the German
plan of campaign, and the ﬁght which broke out
again upon May 24 may be taken as the continuation
of the battle which had died down upon the 13th.
Fresh reservoirs of poison had been accumulated,
and early in the morning in the ﬁrst light of dawn
the infernal stuff was drifting down wind in a solid
bank some three miles in length and forty feet in
depth, bleaching the grass, blighting the trees, and
leaving a broad scar of destruction behind it. A
roaring torrent of shells came pouring into the
trenches at the instant that the men, hastily aroused
from sleep, were desperately fumbling in the dark-
ness to ﬁnd their respirators and shield their lungs
from the strangling poison. The front of this attack
was from a farm called “Shell-trap,” between the
Poelcapelle and Langemarck roads on the north, to
Bellewaarde Lake on the south. The surprise of the
poison in that weird hour was very effective, and it
was immediately followed by a terriﬁc and accurate
bombardment, which brought showers of asphyxiat-
ing shells into the trenches. The main force of the
chlorine seems to have struck the extreme right of
the Fourth Division and the whole front of the
Twenty-eighth Division, but the Twenty-seventh and
the cavalry were alSo involved in a lesser degree.
Anley’s 12th Brigade was on the left of the British
line, with Hull’s 10th Brigade upon its right, the
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
The
last effort
of May 24th


106 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
but a few sentences may be devoted to one isolated
combat which showed the qualities of the disci-
plined British soldier. Two platoons of the 7th
Durhams, under two 19-year-old lieutenants, Arthur
Rhodes and Pickersgill, were by chance overlooked
when the front line was withdrawn 200 yards. They
were well aware that a mistake had been made, but
with a heroic if perhaps Quixotic regard for duty
they remained waist-deep in water in their lonely
trench waiting for their certain fate, without peri-
scopes or machine guns, and under ﬁre from their
own guns as well as those of the enemy. Both wings
were of course in the air. In the early morning they
heat back three German attacks but were eventually
nearly all killed or taken. Rhodes was shot again
and again but his ultimate fate is unknown. Pickers-
gill was wounded, and the survivors of his platoon
got him to the rear. The loss of such men is to be
deplored, but the tradition of two platoons in cold
blood facing an army is worth many such losses.
The Durham Territorial Artillery did excellent
work in supporting the cavalry, though they were
handicapped by their weapons, which were the an-
cient ﬁfteen-pounders of the South African type.
These various movements were all in the early morn-
ing under the stress of the ﬁrst attack. The pressure
continued to be very severe on the line of the Royal
Fusiliers and Buffs, who were covering the ground
between the railway line on the north and Belle-
waarde Lake on the south, so the remaining company.
of the Buffs was thrown into the ﬁght. At the same
time, the 3rd Middlesex, with part of the 6th and 8th
Durham Light Infantry, advanced to the north of
the railway line. The German pressure still in-


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 107
creased, however, and at mid-day the Buﬂ’s and
Fusiliers, having lost nearly all their ofﬁcers and a
large proportion of their ranks, fell back into the
wood to the south of the railway.
A determined attempt was at once made to re-
capture the line of trenches from which they had
been forced. The 84th Brigade (Bowes), hitherto
in reserve, was ordered to move along the south
of the line, while the whole artillery of the Fifth
Corps supported the advance. Meanwhile, the 80th
Brigade (Fortescue) was pushed forward on the
right of the 84th, with orders to advance upon Hooge
and restore the situation there. It was evening be-
fore all arrangements were completed. About seven
o’clock the 84th advanced with the 2nd Cheshires
upon the left and the 2nd Northumberland Fusiliers
upon the right, supported by the 1st Welsh, the Mon~
mouths, and the feeble remains of the 1st Suffolks.
Darkness had fallen before the lines came into con-
tact, and a long and obstinate ﬁght followed, which
swayed back and forwards under the light of ﬂares
and the sudden red glare of bursting shells. So
murderous was the engagement that the 84th Bri-
gade came out of it without a senior oﬁ‘icer left
standing out of six battalions, and with a loss of 75
per cent of the numbers with which it began. The
machine-gun ﬁre of the Germans was extremely in-
tense, and was responsible for most of the heavy
losses. At one time men of the Welsh, the Suffolks,
and the Northumberland Fusiliers were actually in
the German trenches, but at dawn they were com-
pelled to retire. Late in the evening the 3rd and 4th
Brigades of Cavalry were pushed into the trenches
on the extreme right of the British position, near
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


108 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
Hooge, to relieve the 1st and 2nd Brigades, who had
sustained heavy losses for the second time within
ten days.
The general result of the attack of May 24 was
that this, the most profuse emission of poison, had
no more solid effect than the other recent ones, since
the troops had learned how to meet it. The result
seems to have convinced the Germans that this ﬁlthy
ally which they had called in was not destined to
serve them as well as they had hoped, for from this
day onwards there was no further attempt to use it
upon a large scale in this quarter. In this action,
which may be known in history as the Battle of Belle-
waarde, since it centred round the lake of that name,
the British endured a loss of some thousands of men
killed, wounded, or poisoned, but their line, though
forced back at several points, was as ﬁrm as ever.
In all the ﬁghting which forms the second half of
this great battle one is so absorbed by the desperate
efforts of regimental ofﬁcers and men to hold on to
their trenches that one is inclined to do less than
justice to the leaders who bore the strain day after
day of that uphill ﬁght. Plumer, of the Second
Army; Ferguson, of the Fifth Army Corps; Wilson,
Snow, and Bulﬁn, of the Fourth, Twenty-seventh,
and Twenty-eighth Divisions, De Lisle of the Cav-
alry—~these were the men who held the line in those
weeks of deadly danger.
On May 25 the line was consolidated and straight-
ened out, joining the French at the same point as
before, passing through Wieltje, and so past the
west end of Lake Bellewaarde to Hooge. At this
latter village there broke out between May 31 and
June 3 what may be regarded as an aftermath of the
I


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 109
battle which has just been described. The chateau at
this place, now a shattered ruin, was the same build-
ing in which General Lomax was wounded and Gen-
eral Monro struck senseless in that desperate ﬁght
on October 31. Such was the equilibrium of the two
great forces that here in May the ﬁght was still
raging. Chateau and village were attacked very
strongly by the German artillery, and later by the
German infantry, between May 30 and June 3, but
no impression was made. The post was held by the
survivors of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, and the action,
though a local one, was as ﬁne an exhibition of
tenacious courage as has been seen in the war. The
building was destroyed, so to a large extent was the
regiment, but the post remained with the British.
This narrative is a brief outline of the series of
events which make up the second phase of that battle
which, beginning in the north of the Allied lines upon
April 22, was continued upon the north-eastern
salient, and ended, as shown, at Hooge at the end of
May. In this ﬁghting at least 100,000 men of the
three nations were killed or wounded. The advan-
tage with which the Germans began was to some
extent neutralised before the end, for our gallant
Allies had never rested during this time, and had
been gradually re-establishing their position, clear-
ing the west of the canal, recapturing Steenstraate
and Het Sas, and only stopping short of Pilken. On
the other hand, the British had been compelled to
draw in for two miles, and Ypres had become more
vulnerable to the guns of the enemy. If any advan-
tage could be claimed the balance lay certainly with
the Germans, but as part of a campaign of attrition
nothing could be devised which would be more help-
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
Result of
the battle.


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 111
be a considerable ordeal to any troops. It is difﬁcult
to realise the cumulative eﬁect when such blows fell
day after day and week after week upon the same
body of men. The more one considers this action
the more remarkable do the facts appear.
April 22.—Furious attack upon the French and
Canadians. Germans gain several miles of ground,
eight batteries of French guns, and four heavy Brit-
ish guns by the use of poison-gas. The Canadians
stand ﬁrm.
April 23.——Canadians hold the line. Furious ﬁght-
ing. French begin to re-form. Reserves from the
Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth British Divi-
sions, 13th Brigade, and cavalry buttress up the line.
April 24.—Desperate ﬁghting. Line pushed
farther back, and Germans took about a thousand
prisoners. Line never broken.
April 25.—Battle at its height. 50th Northern
Territorial Division come into the ﬁght. 10th Regu-
lar Brigade come up. Canadians drawn out. The
French advancing.
April 26.——11th Regular Brigade thrown into
the ﬁght. Also the Lahore Division of Indians.
Trenches of Twenty-eighth Division attacked.
April 27.-—The French made some advance on the
left. There was equilibrium on the rest of the line.
Hard ﬁghting everywhere.
April 28.——The enemy still held, and his attack
exhausted for the moment. French made some
progress.
May 1.-—British 12th Brigade came into line.
May 2.—Renewed German assault on French and
British, chieﬂy by gas. Advance held back with
difficulty by the Fourth Division.
CHAPTER.
1V.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


112 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.
May 3 and 4.-—Contraction of the British position,
eﬁected without ﬁghting, but involving the abandon-
ment of two miles of ground at the north-eastern
salient. =
May 5.—German attack upon Fourth Division.
May 6.—Attack still continued.
May 7.—Artillery preparation for general German
attack. '
May 8.—Furious attack upon Fourth, Twenty-
eighth, and Twenty-seventh British Divisions.
Desperate ﬁghting and heavy losses. The British
repulsed the attack on their left wing (Fourth Divi-
sion), but sustain heavy loss on centre and right.
May 9.—Very severe battle continued. British
left held its ground, but right and centre tended to
contract.
May 10.—Fighting of a desperate character, fall-
ing especially upon the Twenty-seventh Division.
May 11.—Again very severe ﬁghting fell upon the
Twenty~seventh Division on the right of the British
line. Losses were heavy, and there was a slight
contraction.
May 12.-Readjustment of British line. Two di-
visions of cavalry put in place of Twenty-eighth
Division. Furious artillery attack, followed by
infantry advance. Cavalry and Twenty-seventh Di-
vision terribly punished. Very heavy losses, but
the line held. Fourth Division ﬁercely engaged and
held its line.
May 13.—The Germans exhausted. The attack
ceased. Ten days of mutual recuperation.
May 24.—Great gas attack. Fourth Division on
left had full force of it, lost heavily, but could not
be shifted. In the evening had to retire ﬁve hundred


THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 113
yards for the ﬁrst time since the ﬁghting began.
General result of a long day of furious ﬁghting was
some contraction of the British line along its whole
length, but no gap for the passage of the enemy.
This may be looked upon as a last despairing effort
of the Germans, as no serious attempt was after-
wards made that year to force the road to Ypres.
Such, in a condensed form, was the record of the
second Battle of Ypres, which for obstinacy in at-
tack and inﬂexibility in defence can only be com-
pared with the ﬁrst battle in the same section six
months before. Taking these two great battles
together, their result may be summed up in the
words that the Germans, with an enormous prepon-
derance of men in the ﬁrst and of guns in the second,
had expended several hundred thousand of their
men with absolutely no military advantage what-
ever.
CHAPTER
IV.

The second
Battle of
Ypres.


CHAPTER V
THE BATTLE OF BICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT
(May 9-24)
The New Attack—Ordeal of the 25th Brigade—Attack of the 1st
Division—Fateful days—A difﬁcult situation—Attack of the 2nd
Division—Attack of the 7th Division—British success—Good
work of Canadians—Advance of the 47th London Division—Lull
before the storm.
CHAPTEB WHILST this desperate ﬁghting was going on in the
‘7' north a very extensive and costly operation had been
The Battle begun in the south, a great attack being made by the
3132;? First Army, with the main purpose of engaging the
Femben German troops and preventing them from sending
help to their comrades, who were hard pressed by the
French near Arras. In this the movement was
entirely successful, but the direct gain of ground was
not commensurate with the great exertions and
losses of the Army. For some days the results were
entirely barren, but the patient determination of Sir
John French and of Sir Douglas Haig had their ﬁnal
reward, and by May 25, when the movement had been
brought to a close, there had been a general advance
of 600 yards over a front of four miles, with a cap-
ture of 10 machine guns and some 800 prisoners.
These meagre trophies of victory may, however,
hardly be said to compensate us for the severe and
unavoidable losses which must always in the case of
the attack be heavier than those of the defence.
This important attack was made upon May 9, over

114


mocemmwz wowéoz om waomswocgmﬁmacwﬁﬁ Owﬂgﬁozm.


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT 117
latter regiment was given a special task, which was
to seize and hold a considerable mine-crater upon the
left of the line. The rest of the brigade were ordered
at 5.30 to charge the German trenches, which was
done with the greatest dash and gallantry. Through
a terriﬁc ﬁre of riﬂes and machine-guns the wave of
men rolled forward, and poured into the trench, the
1st Irish Riﬂes and the 2nd Riﬂe Brigade leading the
assault. It was found, however, that further progress
could not be made. As the men sprang over the
parapets they were mowed down in an instant. Long
swathes of our dead marked the sweep of the mur-
derous machine-guns. The Brigadier himself with
his Brigade-major at his heels, sprang forward to
lead the troops, but both were shot down in an in-
stant, Lowry-Cole being killed and Major Dill badly
wounded. It was simply impossible to get forward.
No bravery, no perseverance, no human quality
whatever could avail against the relentless sleet of
lead. The 1st Londons coming up in support d-e-
ployed and advanced over 400 yards of open with the
steadiness of veterans,but lost nearly half their num-
bers. The Kensingtons in their crater had a similar
experience, and could only hold on and endure a
most pitiless pelting. For a long day, until the fore-
noon of the 10th, the ground which had been won was
held. Then at last the bitter moment came when the
enfeebled survivors, weakened by thirty-six hours of
ﬁghting, and ﬁercely attacked on all sides, were
compelled to fall back upon their original lines. The
retirement was conducted with a steadiness which
verged upon bravado. “These God-like fools!”
was the striking phrase of a generous German who
observed the thin ranks sauntering back under a
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


118 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.
crushing ﬁre, with occasional halts to gather up their
wounded. The casualty ﬁgures show how terriﬁc
was the ordeal to which the men had been exposed.
The Irish Riﬂes lost the very heavy numbers of
9 ofﬁcers killed, 13 wounded, and 465 men out
of action. The total of the 2nd Riﬂe Brigade was
even more terrible, working out as 21 oﬂicers and
526 men dead or wounded. The ﬁgures of the 2nd
Berkshires and of the 2nd Lincolns were heavy, but
less disastrous than those already quoted. The
former lost 20 ofﬁcers and 263 men, the latter 8 ofﬁ-
cers and 258 men. The 24th Brigade (Oxley) which
had supported the 25th, and had also reached the
ﬁrst trenches, endured losses which were almost as
disastrous. The 2nd East Lancashires lost 19 ofﬁ-
cers and 435 men; the 1st Sherwood Foresters, 17
ofﬁcers and 342 men; the 2nd Northamptons, 12 ofﬁ-
cers and 414 men; the 5th Black Watch, 8 oﬂicers and
140 men. The losses of the 23rd Brigade, which re-
mained in support, were by no means light, for the
Scottish Riﬂes lost 12 ofﬁcers and 156 men; while
the 2nd Devons lost 7 ofﬁcers and 234 men. Alto-
gether the Eighth Division lost 4500 men, a single
brigade (the 25th), accounting for 2232 of these
casualties. Deplorable as they are, these ﬁgures
must at least show that ofﬁcers and men had done
all that could be attempted to achieve the victory.
When it is remembered that these were the same bat-
talions which had lost so terribly at Neuve Chapelle
just two months before, one can but marvel at the
iron nerve which enabled them once again to endure
so searching a test.
It has been stated that the Kensingtons were given
a separate mission of their own in the capture and


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT 119
defence of a mine-crater upon the left of the British
line. They actually carried not only the crater, but
a considerable section of the hostile trenches, pene_
trating at one time as deep as the third line; but
reinforcements could not reach them, their ﬂanks
were bare, and they were at last forced to retire.
“It was bitter and damnablel” cries one of them
out of his full heart. It was with the greatest difﬁ-
culty that the remains of the gallant band were able
to make their way back again to the British line of
trenches. Nine ofﬁcers were killed, 4 wounded, and
420 men were hit out of about 700 who went into
action.
Such was the attack and bloody repulse which
began the Battle of Richebourg. At the same hour
the Indians and the First Corps had advanced upon
the German lines to the north of Givenchy with the
same undaunted courage, the same heavy losses, and
the same barren result. The events of May 9 will
always stand in military history as among the most
honourable, but also the most arduous, of the many
hard experiences of the British soldiers in France.
In the case of the Indians, the attack was checked
early, and could make no headway against the ter-
ribly arduous conditions. Their advance was upon
' the right of that already described of the Fourth
Corps. Farther still to the right or to the south in
the region of Richebourg L’Avoué was the front of
the First Division, which was fated to be even more
heavily punished than the Eighth had been in the
north. In this case also there was a prelude of forty
minutes’ concentrated ﬁre—a period which, as the
result showed, was entirely inadequate to neutralise
the many obstacles with which the stormers were
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT 121
On the left, the 3rd Brigade had kept pace with
the 2nd, and had shared its trials and its losses. The
van of the charging brigade was formed by the 2nd
Munsters and the 2nd Welsh. The 1st Gloucesters,
1st South Wales Borderers, and 4th Welsh Fusiliers
were in close support. Their attack was on the Ger-
man line at the Rue des Bois, 300 yards away. They
reached the trenches, though Colonel Richard of the
Munsters and very many of his men were killed.
This was the third Munster Colonel—Charrier, Bent,
Richard—to be killed or disabled in the war. The
men surged over the parapet, Captain Campbell-
Dick standing on the crest of it, and whooping them
on with his cap as if they were a pack of hounds.
He fell dead even as they passed him. The trenches
were taken, but could not be held, as there were no
supports and the assault had failed on either side.
Under cover of a renewed artillery ﬁre the survivors
came slowly and sullenly back. Once more, and for
the third time, the 2nd Munsters were reduced to 200
rank and ﬁle. Three oﬂicers emerged unhurt from
the action.
A second attack was ordered for mid-day, the
regiments being shifted round so as to bring the
supports into the front line. It was soon found,
however, that the losses had already been so heavy
that it was impossible, especially in the 2nd Brigade,
to muster sufﬁcient force for a successful advance.
The 1st Guards Brigade (Lowther) was therefore
brought to the front, and after a renewed bombard-
ment at 4 o’clock the two leading battalions—the 1st
Black Watch and the 1st Cameron Highlanders—-
rushed to the assault over the bodies of their fallen
comrades. It is on record that as the Highlanders
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


122 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bou rg—
Festubert.
dashed forward, a number of the wounded who had
been lying in the open since morning, staggered to
their feet and joined in the charge. It was a des-
perate effort, and the khaki wave rolled up to the
trenches, and even lapped over them in places; but
the losses were too heavy, and the advance had lost
all weight before it reached the German line. At
one point a handful of Black Watch got over the line,
but it was impossible to reinforce them, and they
were compelled to fall back. The 3rd Brigade on
their ﬂank had pushed forward the 1st Gloucesters
and 1st South Wales Borderers. They found the
enemy “standing 3 and 4 deep in their breastworks
and ﬁghting like demons. ” The British threw them-
selves down, and their guns showered shrapnel on
the crowded German trenches. The enemy losses
were great but the machine-guns were intact and
no advance was possible. At 6 o’clock the sur-
vivors of both Brigades were back in their trenches
once more. Late the same night the 5th Brigade
of the Second Division was brought up to take over
the line, and the remains of the First Division were
withdrawn to the rear.
The losses of the 2nd Brigade were 70 ofﬁcers and
1793 men, which might have been cited as possibly
the highest number incurred in the same length of
time up to that time, had it not been for the terrible
ﬁgures of the 25th Brigade upon the same fatal day.
The other two brigades of the Division were hard
hit, the total losses of the Division amounting to
nearly 5000 men. If the loss of the Indian Corps be
included, the number of casualties in this assault
cannot have been less than from 12,000 to 13,000
men; while the losses to the enemy inﬂicted by the


124 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER position on May 10 was precarious. The only rein-
V' forcements they could hope for in case of disaster
Ganglia?“ were from the south. And yet the south had itself
hourg— received a severe rebuff. Was it best to abandon the
“SM” attack there, and reassume the defensive, so as to
have the men available in case there should come an
urgent call from the north“! A weaker general would
have said so, and accepted his check at Festubert.
Sir John, however, was not so easily to be deﬂected
from his plans. He steadied himself by a day or
two of rest, during which he not only prepared fresh
forces for striking, but got the measure of the en-
emy’s power at Ypres. Then it was determined that
the action should proceed, but that it should be
directed to the more southerly area of the British
position, where it would be in closer touch with the
French, and receive some support from their admir-
able artillery.
The centre of the British movement was still at
Richebourg l’Avoué, but the direction of the advance
was to the south and west. It had already been
shown that the passage of open spaces under ma-
chine-gun ﬁre was difﬁcult and deadly by daylight,
so it was determined that night should be used for
the advance. Several successive nights were un-
favourable, but the days were spent in a deliberate
artillery preparation until the action was recom-
menced upon May 15. In the interval, the Second
Division had taken the place of the First in the
Givenchy sector, and the Seventh Division of the
Fourth Corps had been brought round from the
Laventie district, and was now upon the right of
their comrades of the First Corps. The Canadian
Division was brought up in support, while the Indian


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT 125
Corps still preserved its position upon the left. The
general line of attack was from Richebourg by the
Rue des Bois, and so south in front of Festubert.
The advance was made by the Indians upon the
left, and the Second Division upon the right at 11.30
on the night of May 15. The Indians were held up,
and maintained from that time onwards a defensive
position. When it is remembered that the Meerut
Division had suffered heavily at Neuve Chapelle,
that the Lahore Division had been very hard hit at
Ypres, and that there was only a limited facility for
replacing the losses of the native regiments, it is not
to be wondered at that the Corps had weakened.
The Second Division, however, would take no denial.
The attack was in the hands of the 5th and 6th
Brigades, with the 4th Guards Brigade in support.
It was to sweep over the ground, which had been the
scene of the repulse of the 9th, but it was to be
screened by darkness. Soon after ten o’clock the
men passed silently over the front trench, and lay
down in four lines in the open waiting for the signal.
At 11.30 the word was passed, and they advanced at
a walk. The front line of the 5th Brigade was com-
posed of the 2nd Worcesters upon the left, and the
Inniskilling Fusiliers (taken from the 12th Brigade)!
upon the right. The leading battalions of the 6th
Brigade were the 1st Riﬂes, the 1st King’s Liver-
pools, 1st Berkshires, and upon the extreme right
two companies (A and B) of the 7th King’s Liver-
pools. Flares were suddenly discharged from the
German trenches, and a ghostly ﬂickering radiance
illuminated the long lines of crouching men. There
were numerous ditches in front, but the sappers had
stolen forward and spanned them with rude bridges.
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


126 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of niche
bourg—
Festubert.
The German ﬁre was terriﬁc, but the uncertain quiv-
ering light made it less deadly than it had been dur-
ing the daytime, though very many fell. It was
insufﬁcient to stop the determined rush of the British
infantry. The riﬂes could not hold them back, and
sweeping jets from machine-guns could not kill them
fast enough: nothing but Death could hold that furi-
ous line. In three minutes they had swarmed across
the open, and poured into the trenches, killing or
taking all the Germans who were in the front line.
The 2nd Worcesters on the left were held up by
unbroken barbed wire, and were unable to get for-
ward; but all the other battalions reached the trench,
and cleared it for a considerable distance on either
ﬂank, the bombers rushing along it and hurling their
deadly weapons in front of them. The remainder
rushed down the communication trench, and seized
the second line of defences some hundreds of yards
behind the ﬁrst. On the morning of Sunday, May 16,
the Second Division had gained and ﬁrmly held
about half a mile in breadth and a quarter of a mile
in depth of the German trenches. There was still
an open plain in the rear between the advanced
troops and their supports, which as the light grew
clearer was so swept by German ﬁre that it was
nearly impossible to get across it. About 8.30 in the
morning, the remainder of the 7 th King’s Liverpools
with some of their comrades of the 5th King’s Liv-
erpools endeavoured to join the others in front, but
were shot to pieces in the venture. During the whole
of the morning, however, single volunteers kept run-
ning forward carrying fresh supplies of bombs and
bandoliers of cartridges for the men in front. The
names of most of these brave men are to be found in


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG-FESTUBERT 127
the casualty lists, and their memory in the hearts of
their comrades.
Four hours after this successful attack by the
Second Division, at 3.30 on the morning of Sunday
May 16, another assault was made some miles to the
south, just to the north of Festubert. The attack
was made by the 20th Brigade (Heyworth) upon the
left and the 22nd (Lawford) upon the right. The
2nd Borders and 2nd Scots Guards led the rush of
the 20th, supported later by the 1st Grenadiers and
2nd Gordons; while the 1st Welsh Fusiliers and
2nd Queen’s Surrey were in the van of the 22nd
with the 2nd Warwicks, 8th Royal Scots, and 1st
South Staffords behind them. The famous Seventh
Division has never yet found its master in this cam-
paign, and the Seventh Prussian Corps in the south
could make no more of it than the Fifteenth had done
in the north.
In the case of the 20th Brigade the Borders upon
the left were held up for a time, but the Scots Guards
advanced with a fury which took them far beyond
the immediate objective, and was carried to such an
extent that one company outdistanced all their com-
rades, and being isolated in the German position,
were nearly all cut off. The rest of the Guards,
however, having crossed the trench line, swung
across, so that they were in the rear of the Germans
who were holding up the Borders, so that the defend-
ers were compelled to surrender. The 1st Grena-
diers came up in support and the ground was made
good. Meanwhile the 22nd Brigade upon the right
had some desperate ﬁghting. The 2nd Queen’s Sur-
rey had been temporarily stopped by heavy machine
gun ﬁre, but two companies of the Welsh Fusiliers
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


128 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER rushed the trenches opposite them and were quickly
V' joined by the rest of the battalion. The Queen’s
gaggle Surrey refused to be rebuffed, and with the support
bourg— of the 1st Staffords they again came forward, and
F““‘"""' dashing through a sleet of bullets got to the German
line. Colonel Gabbett of the Fusiliers and Major
Bottomley of the Queen’s, one of the heroes of
Gheluvelt, both met their death in this ﬁne attack.
On reaching the trenches the South Staifords sent
their bombers under Lieutenant Hassell down the
alleys of the Germans, gathering in many prisoners.
A surprising feat was performed by Sergeant-
Major Barter of the Welsh Fusiliers, while en-
gaged in. similar work, for he and seven men
brought back 94 Germans, including 3 oﬂicers. The
leading companies of the South Staﬁords under
Major Lord and Captain Bearman got well forward
into the enemy’s ground, and held on there for three
days under a terrible shell-fall, until they handed the
position over to the 21st Brigade. Meanwhile, upon
the left a mixed lot of men from the Welsh Fusiliers,
Scots Guards, and Warwicks, all under Captain
Stockwell, struggled along, actually swimming one
ditch which was too deep to wade, and got into the
Orchard which had been assigned as their objective.
These men were afterwards withdrawn to the Ger-
man front line trenches in order to escape from the
very severe bombardment on the Orchard. Great
difﬁculty was experienced in bringing in the
wounded, owing to the space covered and to the in-
cessant and extreme shelling. It is on record that
the men of the ﬁeld ambulance, under Lieutenant
Greenlees of the Royal Medical Corps, were at work
for thirty-six hours with three hours’ break, always


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT 129
in the open and always under ﬁre. These are the
men who have all the dangers of war without its
thrills, working and dying for the need of their com-
rades and the honour of their corps.
In this ﬁne day’s work, in which the Seventh
Division lived up to its own reputation, Colonel
Wood of the Borders and Colonel Brook of the 8th
Royal Scots were killed, making four losses in one
day among commanding ofﬁcers of battalions.
On the night of May 16 the Germans made a
counter-attack, which pushed back the extreme apex
of the ground gained by the Seventh Division. All
other points were held. The British had now out
two holes in the German front over a distance of
about three miles; but between the two holes into
which the heads of the Second and Seventh Divisions
had buried themselves, there lay one portion of a
thousand yards inviolate, strongly defended by intri-
cate works and machine-guns. Desperate endeav-
ours had been made upon the 16th to get round the
north of this position by the Second Division, but
the ﬁre was too murderous, and all were repulsed.
At half-past nine in the morning of the 17th the
attempt was renewed from both sides with a strong
artillery support. On the north the Highland Light
Infantry and the 2nd Oxford and Bucks made a
strong attack, while on the south the 21st Brigade
pushed to the front. The 4th Camerons, a Gaelic-
speaking battalion of shepherds and gillies, kept fair
pace with the veteran regular battalions of the Bri-
gade, but lost their gallant colonel, Fraser. The ﬁery
valour of the Camerons is shown by the fact that
afterwards bodies of the fallen were found far ahead
of any point reached that day by the main advance.
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


130 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche~
bourg—
Festubert.
Gradually the valiant defenders were driven from
post to post, and crushed under the cross ﬁre. About
mid-day the position was in the hands of the British,
300 survivors having been captured. After this
consolidation of their front, the two attacking divi-
sions drove on together to the eastward, winning
ground all the day, but meeting everywhere the
same stark resistance. Farmhouse after farmhouse
was carried. At one point a considerable body of
Germans rushed out from an untenable position; but
on their putting up their hands and advancing
towards the British, they were mowed down to the
number of some hundreds by the riﬂes and cannon of
their comrades in the rear. South of Festubert the
thick spray of bombers and bayonet men thrown out
by the Seventh Division into the German trenches
were also making ground all day, and the enemy’s
loss in this quarter was exceedingly heavy. The
57th Prussian Regiment of Infantry, among others,
is said to have lost more than two-thirds of their
numbers during these operations.
By the evening of Monday, May 17, the hostile
front had been crushed in for a space of over two
miles, and the British army had regained the as-
cendancy which had been momentarily checked upon
May 9. If a larger tale of prisoners was not forth-
coming as a proof of victory, the explanation lay
in the desperate nature of the encounter. The sink-
ing of the Lusitania, and the murders by poison-gas,
were in the thoughts and on the lips of the assaulting
infantry, and many a German made a vicarious
atonement. At the same time the little mobs of men
who rushed forward with white ﬂags in one hand,
and in many cases their purses outstretched in the


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG—FESTUBERT 131
other, were given quarter and led to the rear, safe
from all violence save from their own artillery.
There were many ﬁerce threats of no quarter before
the engagement, but with victory the traditional
kindliness of the British soldier asserted itself once
more.
On the evening of the 17th the men in the front
line were relieved, Lord Cavan’s 4th Guards Brigade
taking over the advanced trenches in which the 1st
King’s Liverpools and other battalions of the 5th
and 6th Brigades were lying. The Guards had to
advance a considerable distance under very heavy
ﬁre to reach their objective, and there is a touch of
other days in the fact that the Bishop of Khartoum
stood by the trenches and blessed them as they
passed. They lost many men from the terrible artil-
lery ﬁre, but in spite of this they at once advanced'
in a most gallant attack which won several hundred
yards of ground. The Irish and 2nd Grenadiers
were the attacking battalions with the Herts terri-
torials in close support. The Irish Guards were
especially forward and held the ground gained, but
lost 17 officers and several hundred men. All day of
the 18th the Guards held the advanced front line
until relieved at midnight of that date by the ad-
vance of another Division.
The 18th saw the general advance renewed, but
it was hampered by the fact that the heavy weather
made it difﬁcult to obtain the artillery support which
is so needful where buildings have to be carried. The
Indians upon the left sustained a heavy attack upon
this day, the losses falling chieﬂy upon the Sirhind
Brigade, and especially on the 1st Highland Light
Infantry and the 15th Sikhs. It was in this action
CHAPTER.
V.
The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


132 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg--
Festubert.
that Lieutenant Smyth and Private Lal Singh of the
latter regiment saved the ﬁght at a critical moment
by bringing up a fresh supply of bombs. Ten men
started on the venture, and only the two won home.
The 19th was wet and misty. It was upon this
date that the two hard-working and Victorious Divi-
sions, the Second and the Seventh, were relieved
respectively by the Fifty-ﬁrst Highland Territorial
Division and by the Canadians, the guns of the two
regular Divisions being retained. The operations
which had hitherto been under Monro of the First
Corps, were now conﬁded to Alderson of the Cana-
dians. At this time, the general level of the advance
was the road which extends from La Quinque to
Bethune.
The change of troops did not entail any alteration
in strategy, and the slow advance went forward.
Upon the night of May 20-21 the Canadians con-
tinued the work of the Seventh Division, and added
several fresh German trenches to the area already
secured. From Richebourg to the south and east
there was now a considerable erosion in the German
position. The ﬁrst objective of the Canadians was
an orchard in the Quinque Rue position, which was
assaulted by the 14th Montreal Regiment (Meighen)
and the 16th Canadian Scottish (Leckie), after a
gallant reconnaissance by Major Leckie of the latter
regiment. The Canadians were thrust in between
the 3rd Coldstream Guards of the Second Division
upon their left, and the 2nd Wiltshires of the Seventh
Division upon their right. The orchard was cleared
in most gallant fashion, and a trench upon the ﬂank
of it was taken, but the Canadian loss was consider-
able in the battalions named and in the 13th Royal


BATTLE OF RICHEBOURG-FESTUBERT 137
cases which they had turned and ﬁnished in their
hours of night shift. Truly it had become a Na-
tional War. Of all its strange memories none will
be stranger than those of the peaceful middle-aged
civilians who were seen eagerly reading books upon
elementary drill in order to prepare themselves to
face the most famous soldiers in Europe, or of the
schoolgirls and matrons who donned blue blouses
and by their united work surpassed the output of
the great death factories of Essen.
CHAPTER
V.

The Battle
of Riche-
bourg—
Festubert.


CHAPTER VI
THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE
The British line in June 1915—Canadians at Givenchy—Attack of
the 154th Brigade—8th Liverpool Irish—Third Division at Hooge
——11th Brigade near Ypres—Flame attack on the Fourteenth
Light Division—Victory of the Sixth Division at Hooge.
CHAPTER THE spring campaign may be said to have ended at
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.
the beginning of June. It had consisted, so far as
the British were concerned, in three great battles.
The ﬁrst was that of Neuve Chapelle. The second,
and incomparably the greatest, was the second Bat-
tle of Ypres, extending from April 22 to the end of
May, in which both sides fought themselves to a
standstill, but the Germans, while gaining some
ground, failed to reach their ﬁnal objective. The
third was the Battle of Richebourg, from May 9 to
May 18, which began with a check and ended by a
deﬁnite but limited advance for the British. The
net result of the whole operations of these three
months was a gain of ground to the Germans in the
Ypres section and a gain of ground to the Allies in
the region of Festubert and Arras. Neither gain
can be said to have been of extreme strategic impor-
tance, and it is doubtful if there was any great dis-
crepancy between the losses of the two sides. There
now followed a prolonged lull, during which the Ger-
mans were content to remain upon the defensive
upon the west while they vigorously and successfully
138


140 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER was the neighbour of the British Army. The British
VI.
The
trenches of
Hooge.
line had been extended northwards as far as the
village of Boesinghe. If now the reader could for
a moment imagine himself in an aeroplane, ﬂying
from north to south down the Imperial battle-line,
he would see beneath him ﬁrst Keir’s Sixth Army
Corps, which was composed of the Fourth Division
(Wilson) and of the Sixth Division (Congreve). To
the south of these lay the Forty-ninth West Rid-
ing Division of Territorials (Baldock). These
three divisions, the Fourth, the Sixth, and the For-
ty-ninth, formed Keir’s Sixth Army Corps, lying to
the north of Hooge. Upon their right, in the neigh-
bourhood of Hooge, holding the ground which had
been the recent scene of such furious ﬁghting, and
was destined to be the most active section of the line
in the immediate future, was Allenby’s Fifth Corps.
General Allenby had been taken from the command
of the cavalry, which had passed to General Byng,
and had ﬁlled Plumer’s place when the latter took
over Smith-Dorrien’s Army at the end of April. Al-
lenby’s Corps consisted of the veteran Third Divi-
sion (Haldane’s) on the north. Then came, defend-
ing the lines of Hooge, the new Fourteenth Light Di-
vision (Couper). Upon its right was the Forty-
sixth North Midland Division (Stuart-Wortley).
These three divisions, the Third Regular, Fourteenth
New, and Forty-sixth Territorial, made up the Fifth
Corps.
The Second Army Corps (Ferguson) lay to the
south of Hooge. Their northern unit was the old
Regular Fifth Division (Morland). To its south
was a second Regular division—Bulﬁn’s Twenty-
eighth, of Ypres renown. On its right was the Fif-


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 141
tieth Northumbrian Division (Lindsay), consisting
of those three gallant Territorial brigades which
had done so splendidly in the crisis of the gas batle.
The Third Army Corps (Pulteney’s) came next in
the line. This was the strongest corps in the whole
force, containing no fewer than four divisions.
These were, counting as ever from the north, the
Canadian Division (Alderson), the Twelfth New Di-
vision (Wing), the Twenty-seventh Division of Reg-
ulars (Snow), and the Eighth Division of Regulars
(Davies). All these troops, the Sixth, Fifth, Second,
and Third Corps, made up Plumer’s Second Army,
which contained no fewer than thirteen divisions, or.
approximately, 260,000 men.
The First Army, under Haig, which occupied the
southern section of the British line, consisted of
three Army Corps. To the north, in the Festubert
region, was the hard-worked and depleted Indian
Corps, which had fought under such extraordinary
difﬁculties and shown such ﬁne military qualities.
Attached to them was the Fifty-ﬁrst Highland Ter-
ritorial Division (Bannatine-Allason). The ﬁrst
two brigades of this were pure Scottish, but the third
contained three battalions from that nursery of
British regiments, Lancashire. South of the Indians
came the glorious old First Corps, and south of it
the equally glorious Seventh Division (Capper),
forming part of Rawlinson’s Fourth Corps. Next
to the Seventh Division was the new Ninth Division
(Landon), composed of Scottish regiments—a very
ﬁne unit. South of these, carrying the British line
over the Bethune—La Bassée Canal, and six miles
towards Arras, were the Forty-seventh London Di-
vision (Barter) and the Forty-eighth South Mid-
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.


142 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER land Division (Fanshawe), drawn mostly from War-
2 wick, Worcester, Gloucester, and Bucks. Altogether,
32301188 or Haig’s First Army at the end of June contained nine
Hooge. divisions, or, roughly, 180,000 men. The whole great
Army, then, which extended from north of Ypres to
north of Arras, may have mustered in the line about
440,000 men, backed by an efﬁcient ﬁeld service,
which may easily have numbered 120,000 more.
When one contemplates this magniﬁcent force and
remembers that ten months earlier the whole British
Army at Mons had been four divisions, that at the
Aisne there were six, that in the days of the ﬁrst
Ypres battle there were eight, and that now there
were twenty-two, one marvels at the extraordinary
powers of creation and organisation which had cre-
ated so efﬁcient and powerful a machine. It was
rapidly made, and yet in no way was it crude or
feeble. Particularly pleasing was it to note the
names of the divisional commanders, and to see how
many of the heroic leaders of brigades in those early
classical conﬂicts—Landon, Snow, Bulﬁn, Davies,
Morland, Wing, Haldane, Wilson, and Congreve—
were now at the head of small armies of their own.
Of the quality of this great force it is superﬂuous to
speak. The whole of this chronicle is a record of it.
One observation, however, should in justice be made.
With that breadth and generosity of mind which
make them the truly imperial people of the world,
the English and the English press have continually
extolled the valour of the Scots, Irish, Welsh, or
men of the Overseas Dominions. There has hardly
ever been a mention of the English as such, and the
fact has given rise to some very false impressions.
It is for the reader to bear in mind, none the less,


144 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAIPTER nuity by bringing up two eighteen-pounder ﬁeld-

The
trenches 0
Hooge.
pieces into their front trench, and suddenly opening
I ﬁre point-blank at the German defences only seven-
ty-ﬁve yards away. Captain Stockwell, with Lieu-
tenants Craig and Kelly and their men, obviously
took their lives in their hands, as their guns became
the immediate mark of the German artillery, with
the result that one was destroyed by a direct hit, and
the crew of the other were put out of action by a
shrapnel-burst. But before they were silenced the
two guns did great damage to the German front-line
defence, knocking out several machine-guns and cut-
ting the barbed wire to pieces. After a quarter of
an hour of glorious activity they were out of action;
but they had smoothed the path for the infantry, who
at six in the evening were over the parapet and into
the trench opposite. The attack was made by the 1st
Ontario Battalion (Hill), supported by the rest of
the 1st Canadian Brigade. The storming-party was
checked for a moment by the explosion of their own
mine, which threw back with disastrous results, kill-
ing Lieutenant-Colonel Beecher and burying the
bomb-store of the front line. Having seized the
German trench, some remained to reverse the para-
pet, whilc others rushed on to the second trench,
which they also carried. The supply of bombs ran
short, however, and could not be replenished. Four
messengers in succession rushing back for more were
shot dead by the enemy’s ﬁre. A fort upon the left
had not been taken, and the machine-guns from its
loopholes swept down the captured trench and made
it untenable. Slowly the Canadians were forced
back, and before ten o’clock what was left of the On-
tarios were back in their own trench once more.


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 145
When it is stated that of 23 ofﬁcers who took part
in the advance 20 were killed or wounded, no fur-
ther proof is needed of the stern insistence of the
attack.
This gallant though fruitless attack of the Cana-
dians at Givenchy was, as it appears, intended to
coincide with an advance by the Seventh Division
on their left, and of the Fifty-ﬁrst upon the right of
them. In the case of the Seventh Division there
were two advances, one by day and one by night, in
which single battalions were employed and no re-
sult achieved. In the second of these the 2nd Gor-
dons lost heavily, having occupied a deserted trench
which proved to be so commanded as to be untenable.
Before regaining their own lines D Company was
cut OE and destroyed. On the right the Fifty-ﬁrst
Highland Territorial Division had an experience
which was equally unsatisfactory. Hibbert’s 154th
Brigade made an advance which was bravely urged
and bloodily repelled. The preparatory bombard-
ment was answered by a very intense German
ﬁre, which was so heavy and accurate that it buried
a number of men in the advance trenches, destroyed
the bomb-stores, and made all communication nearly
.impossible. The secret of this extreme readiness of
the Germans was divulged by a deserter who came
over into the British trenches at the last moment,
and said that they all knew that the attack was for
six o’clock that day. It was at that very hour
that the 6th Scottish Riﬂes and the 4th North
Lancashires, of the Brigade, rushed the German
position. Each battalion lost its commanding
oﬂicer and its adjutant in the ﬁrst few minutes, but
the line of trenches was carried at one tiger-spring.
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.


146 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER The enemy’s shell-ﬁre was exceedingly heavy, and
VI“ the losses were considerable. Having cleared the
games of trench, the attacking line, especially the Scottish
Hooge. Riﬂes upon the left, came on unbroken wire, so they
dug themselves in in the open and awaited supports.
These for some reason were slow in coming up, and
as the Germans were in force on either side, and the
North Lancashires were also held up by wire, there
was a danger lest the forward line might be cut off.
It fell back, therefore, closely followed by the enemy,
until an advance of the 4th Royal Lancasters helped
them to form a line. The whole night was spent in
a prolonged riﬂe duel, the two sides being at very
close quarters, and the action resolving itself into a
series of stubborn encounters by little groups of men
holding shell-craters or fragments of trenches, and
oﬁering a sullen resistance to the considerable forces
which were now pressing upon them. All order had
been lost, the three battalions were hopelessly mixed
together, and the command of each little group fell
into the hands of any natural leader who won the
conﬁdence of the comrades round him. Slowly the
ragged line retired, until they found themselves in
the early morning back in the position from which
they had started, having suffered and inﬂicted griev-
ous losses, but with no gain of ground to justify
them.
It might well have seemed that the attack had
failed, or at least that another brigade would be
needed to put matters right; but a reserve battalion
had not yet gone into action, and to this unit
was given the hard task of putting the Germans out
once more from the trench which they had re-occu-
pied. There have been days when the Liverpool


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 147
Irish have proved themselves to be pugnacious in
riotous times at home, but now they were to efface
all such memories by their splendid bearing at this
critical hour. It was 4 P.M. upon June 16, when,
with a true Celtic yell, the 8th King’s Liverpool, led
by Major Johnson, dashed over the parapet and
stormed through a hellish sleet of shrapnel to the
German trenches. “It was pattering like hail upon
a window-pane.” Ofﬁcers and men went down in
heaps, but nothing could stop the glorious impetuos-
ity of the charge, delivered in the full light of a sum-
mer afternoon. “It’s sure death, but remember we
are Irish!” yelled a sergeant as he bounded on to
the sand-bags. Next instant he had been blown to
pieces. Captain Finegan, leading the rush, was shot
down, as were the greater number of the regimental
oﬂicers. Finegan’s body was found afterwards at
CHAPTER
VI

The
trenches of
Hooge.
the extreme point of the advance, with twelve of his -
men lying round him. The Germans were swept
out of the front trenches once more, and the Irish-
men held desperately on to it for a long time
against all the shell-ﬁre of the enemy. It was a
great day for Liverpool, July 16, when two of their
citizen regiments, the 8th in the south and the 10th
in the north, helped to stem the tide of two separate
battles. The 8th King’s lost nearly 500 men,
and gained a reputation which will not easily die.
The survivors were too few, however, to permanently
hold the shell-raked trench which they had gained.
The 153rd Brigade (Campbell), consisting of Gor-
dons and Black Watch, relieved them in the front
line, and the exhausted and decimated battalion was
drawn off. In the meantime the 152nd Brigade,
upon the left, had been unable to make progress.


148 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER Of the attackers of the Fifty-ﬁrst Division some
_V_I'_ 1500 men had fallen, and there was no permanent
Quiche! of gain of ground.
Hooge. On Wednesday, June 16, there occurred a brisk
action to the immediate north of Hooge, at a point
to the west and south-west of the Chateau, where the
German line formed somewhat of a salient. This it
was determined to straighten out in the familiar
fashion, and a considerable force of artillery was.
secretly concentrated. The assault was assigned
to the Third Division, and was carried out by
Bowes’ 8th Brigade on the left, and on the right by
the 9th Brigade, which consisted of the three Fusilier
battalions and the Lincolns, together with the 10th
Liverpool Scottish. The latter battalion had been
seven months at the Front, doing every sort of
hard work, but never getting an opportunity for‘
distinction in action. The 9th Brigade, now com-
manded by General Douglas Smith, was in re-
serve near Poperinghe, but it was brought forward
through Ypres for the assault. They marched
through the shattered town on the Tuesday evening.
“The sight of the ruined beauties of that once glori-
ous old town did lots to make us just long to get at
the Vandals who had done this wanton act of de-
struction.” It was a longing which was soon to be
appeased. By midnight the troops were in position,
and at three in the morning of June 16 the bombard-
ment began. It lasted with terriﬁc intensity for
about an hour, and was helped by the guns of the
French Thirty-sixth Corps ﬁring towards Pilken,
whence the supports might come. Black and yellow
clouds covered the whole line of the front German
trench, which lay at the fringe of a wood, and out


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 149
of this mist of death trees, sand-bags, and shattered
human bodies ﬂew high in the air. The barbed
wire was shattered to pieces and the front parapets
knocked to atoms. Then, in an instant, the guns
lifted on to the more distant support trenches, and
the infantry, swarming over the low barricades,
dashed in perfect order over the two hundred yards
which separated them from the Germans.
It was an admirable advance, and could not have
been better carried out. The front of the assault
was about a quarter of a mile. The three Fusilier
battalions in one long line, Northumberland Fusiliers
on the left, Royals in the centre, and Scots on the
right, rushed forward with terriﬁc impetus, the ris-
ing sun glinting upon their lines of bayonets. They
were over the lip of the front trench without a check,
and rushed on for the second one. The supports,
who were the Lincolns on the right and the Liver-
pool Scots on the left, followed closely after them,
and seizing the German survivors, sent them to the
rear, while they did what they could to reverse the
parapet and prepare for a counter-attack. As they
charged forward, it had been observed that one Ger-
man trench upon the left was at right angles to the
line of advance, and that it had been untouched by
the bombardment. It was only about forty yards
in length, but the ﬁre from it was very murderous
as it swept across the open ground. With quick de-
cision the rear company of the Liverpool Scottish
turned aside, and in spite of unbroken barbed wire
carried the trench, capturing all the occupants.
Meanwhile the German artillery had opened with
an intensity which was hardly inferior to that of
the British, and they shelled with great accuracy the
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 153
able to dominate that of the enemy, it was difﬁcult to
see how the ground could be gained without this
grievous after-price to be paid. On this occasion it
was paid to the full, but the ground was permanently
occupied, and a heavy blow was struck at the Bava-
rians and Prussians who held that portion of the
line. ,
Part of the 12th Brigade (Anley) took over some
of the captured trenches from the 11th, and came
in for some of the German anger in consequence.
The 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers were very heavily
shelled, losing their commanding ofﬁcer, Colonel
Grifﬁn, the machine-gun ofﬁcer, and the adjutant
on the morning of July 7. A sap ran up to the
trench, and this was the scene of desperate bomb-
ﬁghting, the Fusiliers expending eight thousand
bombs in two days. So great was the pressure that
part of the 1st Warwicks came up in support. There
were several infantry advances of the enemy, which
were all crushed by the British ﬁre. No dervishes
could have shown more devoted courage than some
of the Germans. In one rush of sixty men all were
shot down, which did not prevent another forty from
emerging later from the same trench. Gradually
they learned that their task was impossible, and the
position remained with the British. Altogether the
Lancashire Fusiliers lost 8 oﬂicers and 400 men in
this action. '
The succession of British successes which have
been recorded in their order was broken at this point
by a temporary reverse, which involved no perma-
nent loss of ground, but cost many valuable lives.
It is a deplorable thing that, when ﬁghting against
men who are usually brave and- sometimes heroic,
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.


154 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.
we are obliged continually to associate any success
which they may obtain with some foul breach of the
ancient customs of war. With the Germans no
trick was too blackguardly or unsoldierly for them
to attempt. At the end of April, as already shown,
they nearly snatched an important victory by the
wholesale use of poison. Now, at the end of July,
they gained an important local success by employing
the cruel expedient of burning petrol. These differ-
ent foul devices were hailed by the German Press
at the time as various exhibitions of superior chem-
ical methods; whereas in fact they were exhibitions
of utter want of military chivalry and of that self-
restrain which even in the ﬁercest contest prevents
a civilised nation from sinking to such expedients.
It is the most pressing objection to such methods
that if they are once adopted the other side has no
choice but to adopt them also. In the use of gas de-
vices, both aggressive and offensive, the British en-
gineers soon acquired an ascendency, but even if
the Germans learned to rue the day that they had
stooped to such methods the responsibility for this
unchivalrous warfare must still rest with them.
The attack fell upon that section of trench which
had been taken by the British in the Hooge district
on June 16. It was held now by a brigade of the
Fourteenth Light Infantry Division (Couper),
which had the distinction of being the ﬁrst unit of
the New Army to be seriously engaged. Nothing
could have been more severe—indeed, terriﬁc—than
the ordeal to which they were subjected, nor more
heroic than the way in which it was borne. Under
very desperate conditions, all the famous traditions
of the British riﬂe regiments were gloriously up-


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 155
held. They were destined for defeat—but such a de-
feat as shows the true ﬁbre of a unit as clearly as
any victory.
Nugent’s 41st Brigade, which held this section of
trench, consisted of the 7th and 8th King’s Royal
Riﬂes, with the 7th and 8th Riﬂe Brigade. The po-
sition was a dangerous little salient, projecting right
up to the German line.
It is clear that the Germans mustered great forces,
both human and mechanical, before letting go their
attack. For ten days before the onset they kept
up a continuous ﬁre, which blew down the parapets
and caused great losses to the defenders. On July
29 the 7th King’s Royal Riﬂes and the 8th Riﬂe
Brigade manned the front and supporting trenches,
taking the place of their exhausted comrades. They
were just in time for the fatal assault. At 3.20 in
the morning of July 30 a mine exploded under the
British parapet, and a moment afterwards huge jets
of ﬂame, sprayed from their diabolical machines,
rose suddenly from the line of German trenches and
fell in a sheet of ﬁre into the front British position.
The distance was only twenty yards, and the effect
was complete and appalling. Only one man is known
to have escaped from this section of trench. The
ﬁre was accompanied by a shower of aerial torpe-
does from the minenwerfer, which were in them-
selves sufﬁcient to destroy the garrison. The Ger-
mans instantly assaulted and occupied the defence-
less trench, but were held up for a time by the re-
serve companies in the supporting trenches. Finally
these were driven out by the weight of the German
attack, and fell back about two hundred yards, throw—
ing themselves down along the edges of Zouave and
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 157
They were the 8th King’s Royal Riﬂes and the 7 th
Riﬂe Brigade. These two battalions had been eight
days under incessant ﬁre in the trenches, with insufﬁ-
cient food, water, and sleep. They were now hur-
ried back into a hellish ﬁre, jaded and weary, but
full of zeal at the thought that they were taking some
of the pressure off their comrades. An order for an
instant counter-attack had been given, but it was
recognised that two brigades at least were necessary
for such a task, and that even then, without a very
thorough artillery preparation, the affair was des-
perate, since the Germans had already consolidated
the position, and their artillery, large and small,
was very masterful. For some reason, however, in-
stead of a brigade, only two fresh battalions could
be spared. These were the 9th King’s Royal Riﬂes,
of the 42nd Brigade, and the 6th Cornwalls, of the
43rd. Of these the 9th King’s Royal Riﬂes attacked,
not from the wood, but from the Menin road upon
the left. '
There had been three-quarters of an hour of in-
tense bombardment before the attack, but it was not
successful in breaking down the German resistance.
At 2.45 PM. the infantry advance began from the
wood, all four units of the 4lst Brigade taking
part in it. It is diﬂicult to imagine any greater trial
for troops, since half of them had already been griev-
ously reduced and the other half were greatly ex-
hausted, while they were now asked to advance sev-
eral hundred yards without a shadow of cover, in the
face of a ﬁre which was shaving the very grass from
the ground. “The men behaved very well,” says an
observer, “and the oﬂicers with a gallantry no words
can adequately describe. As they came out of the
I CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches 0t
Hooge.


158 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER- woods the German machine-gun ﬁre met them and
VI.
The
trenches of
Hooge.
literally swept them away, line after line. The men
struggled forward, only to fall in heaps along the
edge of the woods.” The Riﬁemen did all that men
could do, but there comes a time when perseverance
means annihilation. The remains of the four bat-
talions were compelled to take shelter once more at
the edge of the wood. Fifty oﬁicers out of 90 had
fallen. By 4 P.M. the counter-attack had deﬁnitely
failed.
The attack of the 9th King’s Royal Riﬂes, along
the Menin road, led by Colonel Chaplin, had rather
better success, and was pushed home with great
valour and corresponding loss. At one time the
stormers reached the original line of trenches and
took possession of one section of it. Colonel Chaplin
was killed, with many of his ofﬁcers and men, by a
deadly machine-gun ﬁre from the village of Hooge.
A gallant lad, Lieutenant Geen, with a handful of
men, charged into this village, but never emerged.
The attack was not altogether unproductive, for,
though the advanced position was not held, the 9th
retained trenches which linked up the Menin road
with the left of the Zouave Wood. With the dark-
ness, the wearied and thinned ranks of the 41st
Brigade were withdrawn into reserve.
It was not destined, however, that Nugent’s hard-
worked brigade should enjoy the rest that they
needed so badly. They had left the 10th Durham
Light Infantry and the 6th Cornwall Light Infantry
to defend the wood, but at 2.20 in the morning the
Germans renewed their diabolical tactics with .
liquid ﬁre, which blazed over the trenches and
scorched the branches overhead. This time the


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 159
range was farther and the effect less deadly. An
attack was evidently impending, and the Riﬂemen
were hurried back to reinforce the two battalions left
in possession. There was a night of alarms, of shell-
ﬁre, and of losses, but the German infantry advance
was not serious, and those who reached the woods
were driven out again. For some days afterwards
there was no change in the general situation. Sixty
ofﬁcers and 2000 men were the terrible losses of the
41st Brigade during this action. The 9th battalion,
in its ﬂank attack, lost 17 ofﬁcers and 333 of the
ranks. The 43rd Brigade (Cockbum) endured con-
siderable losses whilst in support of the 41st, espe-
cially the 6th Cornwalls, who bore the brunt of the
ﬁghting. This battalion had only seven oﬂicers left
when it returned to Ypres, and by the unfortunate
mischance of the fall of a ruined house, they lost
immediately afterwards four more, including Major
Barnett, the temporary chief, and the adjutant Bla-
grove. These oﬁ’icers perished whilst endeavouring
to save their men who were buried among the ruins.
This difﬁcult and trying action was fought under
the immediate supervision of General Nugent, of
the 41st Brigade, who was with the ﬁring-line in the
woods during the greater part of it. When the
brigade, or the shattered remains of it, were with-
drawn upon August 1, General Nugent remained be-
hind, and consulted with General Cockburn, of the
43rd Brigade, as to the feasibility of a near attack.
The consultation took the form of a reconnaissance
conducted on hands and knees up to a point close
to the enemy line. After this inspection it was de-
termined that the position was far too formidable
for any merely local attempt. It was determined that
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 161
and the Westminsters, who lay in the woods to the
rear, the East Yorks being speedily engaged. The
wave of infantry were over the German parapet in
an instant. All resistance was vain, and those
who stood were bayoneted, while the fugitives
were pelted with bombs from traverse to traverse
wherever they attempted to make head against their
pursuers. So sudden had been the British rush that
many of the Germans were found in the dug-outs and
in the old mine-crater, from which they had not time
to emerge and to meet the assault for which they
were waiting. Over a hundred of these were taken
prisoners. The whole place was a perfect charnel-
house, for there were 200 German dead in the crater,
300 in front of the line, and a great number also of
the Riﬂemen who had been killed nine days before.
On the left of the line a no less dashing attack
had been made by the 16th Brigade (Nicholson), and
the trenches were carried in line with those now held
by the 18th. This successful advance was carried
out by the 1st Shropshires, the 1st Buffs, and the 2nd
York and Lancasters, with the 1st Leicesters in sup-
port. The distance between the lines at this point
was very much less than on the right, which partly
accounts for the smaller casualties.
When the trenches had been taken, the sappers,
with their usual cool disregard of danger, sprang
forward into the open and erected barbed wire. The
gains were rapidly consolidated, men were sent back
to avoid overcrowding, and protective cover raised
against the heavy shelling which always follows
swiftly upon the ﬂight of the German infantry. It
came in due course, and was succeed-ed by an at-
tempt at a counter-attack. “At about 10 o’clock the
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches ct
Hooge.


162 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER enemy was observed creeping in four parties to-
VI.
The
trenches of
Hooge. '
wards us. They were very near us, and came for-
ward on their hands and knees, laden with bombs
and hand-grenades. We opened ﬁre with riﬂes and
machine-guns. Our bomb-throwers worked like ma-
chines, and splendid work they did. The Germans
were all mowed down and blown to atoms, or else
ran for their lives.” Many of our prisoners were
killed by German shells before they could be re-
moved. In spite of the failure of the German in-
fantry, the artillery ﬁre was very deadly, both the
Durhams and the Sherwood Foresters being hard
put to it to hold on to their trenches. At 4.30 in the
afternoon the Sherwood Foresters fell back to the
edge of the wood, some of their trenches having
entirely ceased to exist.
There were several German infantry attempts
during the day, but all of them met the same
fate as the ﬁrst. The loss of the enemy, both in the
attack and in the subsequent attempts at recapture,
was very heavy, running certainly into some thou-
sands of dead or wounded; while the British losses
in the actual attack, owing to the admirable artil-
lery arrangements, were very moderate. Some hun-
dreds of prisoners were taken, sixty of whom by
a strange freak surrendered to an unarmed obser-
vation ofﬁcer named Booth. It was a fair revenge
for the setback of July 30, and it was won in hon-
est, virile fashion by the use of the legitimate
weapons of civilised warfare.
During the long day the Germans strove hard,
by an infernal shell-ﬁre, raking all the trenches
from the direction of Hill 60, to drive the infantry
from the captured position. They clung desperately


164 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER General Monro, an ofﬁcer whose rapid rise was one
2; of the phenomena of the war. This army consisted
The of the Seventh Corps (Snow) and the Tenth Corps
s or (Morland). The rearrangement would be of lit-
tle importance, since most of the units have already
been mentioned, but it was accompanied by a large
extension of the British line. Up to this date it had
joined the French about six miles south of the La
Bassée Canal. Now the Tenth French Army (Foch)
was left in position before Lens, and the British
took up the line again upon the farther side of them,
carrying it from the south of Arras to the neighbour-
hood of Albert, thus adding a dozen miles or so to
the British region, and bringing the total to about
ﬁfty—a small proportion, it is true, but a very vital
sector, and the one most free from any natural fea-
ture of protection. There was at this time an ever-
thickening ﬂow of reinforcements, as well as of mu-
nitions, from across the Channel, but the new move-
ments of Germany in the Near East made it very evi-
dent that their use would not be conﬁned to the lines
of Flanders.
It was towards the end of this summer that
the length of the war and the increasing pres-
sure of the blockade began to interfere with the food-
supplies of the German people. It had been pre-
tended that this was so before, but this was an at-
tempt by the German Government to excite sym-
pathy in neutrals. There is no doubt, however, that
it was now a fact, and that it continued to slowly
tighten from month to month, until it ﬁnally became
extreme. There are few Britons who feel satisfac-
tion at such a method of warfare, but so long as
armies represent the whole manhood of a nation, it is _


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 165
impossible to make any provision by which food shall
reach the civilian and not the soldier. It is always
to be borne in mind that the British, with an almost
exaggerated chivalry, considering the many provoca-
tions which they had received, did not exert their full
power of blockade for many months. It was only
when Germany declared the British Islands to be
blockaded as from February 18, 1915, and that food-
ships would be destroyed, that the British in retalia-
tion, by an Order of Council in March of the same
year, placed German food upon the index. Thus by
one more miscalculation the Germans called down
trouble upon their own heads, for whereas their de-
cree proved to be worthless, that of Britain was ever
more effective. It is curious to remember that only
forty-ﬁve years before, the Germans, without one
word of protest from any of their people, had
starved the two millions of Paris, while Bismarck,
in his luxurious rooms at Versailles, had uttered his
brutal jest about roast babies. They are not so very
slow—those mills of God!
Before passing on to an account of the great Bat-
tle of Loos, which terminated the operations upon
the British front for this year, a few words may be
said of those happenings elsewhere which do not
come within the immediate scope of this narrative,
but which cannot be entirely omitted since every
failure or success had an indirect inﬂuence upon the
position in France. This is particularly true of the
naval campaign, for the very existence of our Army
depended upon our success in holding the command
of the sea. This was fully attained during the year
1915 by the wise provisions of Admiral J ellicoe, who
held back his Grand Fleet in such a manner that,
CHAPTER
VI.

Tho
trenches of
Hooge.


166 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER far from the attrition upon which the German war-
VI.
The
trenches of
Hooge.
prophets had conﬁdently counted, it was far stronger
at the end of the year than at the beginning, while
its inﬂuence had been such that the German High
Sea Fleet might as well have never existed for all
the eﬁect which it had upon the campaign. In spite
of the depredations of German submarines, which
were restrained by no bonds of law or humanity,
British commerce ﬂowed in its double tide, outwards
and inwards, with a volume which has seldom been
surpassed, and the Channel crossing was guarded
with such truly miraculous skill that not a transport
was lost. It was a task which the Navy should never
have been called upon to do, since the need of a
Channel tunnel had for years been obvious; but
granting that it had to be done, nothing could ex-
ceed the efﬁciency with which it was carried out.
The success, however, cannot blind us to the waste
of merchant tonnage or of convoying cruisers ab-
sorbed in this vital task, nor to the incessant delays
and constant expense due to the want of foresight
upon the part of those who opposed this necessary
extension of our railway system.
There was little naval ﬁghting during the year,
for the simple reason that our sailors had nothing
to ﬁght. Upon January 24 a German squadron of
battle-cruisers attempted a repetition of the Scar-
borough Raid, but was nearly intercepted by a Brit-
ish squadron of greater power under Admiral
Beatty. In a running ﬁght which only came to an
end when the Germans had gained the protection of
their mine-ﬁelds considerable punishment was in-
ﬂicted upon them, which included the loss of the
15,000-ton armoured cruiser Bliicher. There were


THE TRENCHES OF HOOGE 169
in the spring of 1916, when the starving survivors
were forced to surrender.
As to the aﬁairs of our Allies, some allusion will
be made later to the great French offensive in Cham-
pagne, which was simultaneous with our own ad-
vance at Loos. For the rest there was constant
ﬁghting along the line, with a general tendency for
the French to gain ground though usually at a heavy
cost. The year, on the other hand, had been a dis-
astrous one for the Russians who, half-armed and
suffering terrible losses, had been compelled to re-
linquish all their gains and to retreat for some hun-
dreds of miles. As is now clear, the difficulties in
the front were much increased by lamentable po-
litical conditions, including treachery in high places
in the rear. For a time even Petrograd seemed in
danger, but thanks to fresh supplies of the muni-
tions of war from Britain and from Japan they
were able at last to form a ﬁrm line from Riga in
the north to the eastern end of the Roumanian
frontier in the south.
The welcome accession of Italy upon May 23 and
the lamentable defection of Bulgaria on October 11
complete the more salient episodes of the year.
CHAPTER
VI.

The
trenches of
Hooge.


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, REDOUBT


RAILWAYS m:
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1.72 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER upon the German lines along the whole front, but
VH‘ especially in the sector to the immediate south of the
gale of La Bassée Canal, where the main thrust was to be
Loos. made. To this severe ﬁre the Germans made hardly
any reply, though whether from settled policy or
from a comparative lack of munitions is not clear.
On each of the days a feint attack was made upon
the German line so far as could be done without
actually exposing the men. The troops for the
assault were gradually brought into position, and
the gas-cylinders, which were to be used for the“
ﬁrst time, were sunk in the front parapets.
The assault in the main area was to extend from
the La Bassée Canal in the north to the village of
Grenay in the south, a front of about seven miles,
and it was to be supported and supplemented by
many subsidiary attacks along the whole line up to
the Ypres salient, and northwards still to where the
monitors upon the coast held the German coast-
guards to their sand-dunes. For the moment we will
deal only with the fortunes of the main attack. This
was to be delivered by two army corps, both belong-
ing to Haig’s First Army, that tempered blade
which has so often been the spear-head for the Brit-
ish thrust. The corps were the First (Hubert
Gough’s) and the Fourth (Rawlinson’s). It will be
remembered that a British army corps now consisted
of three divisions, so that the storming line was
composed of six divisions, or about seventy thou-
sand infantry.
The line of the advance was bisected by a high
road from Vermelles to Hulluch. This was made
the boundary line between the two attacking corps.
To the left, or north of this road, was the ground


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 173
of the First Corps; to the right, or south, of the
Fourth. The qualities of the Regular and Territorial
regiments had already been well attested. This was
the ﬁrst occasion, however, when, upon a large scale,
use was made of those new forces which now formed
so considerable a proportion of the whole. Let it be
said at once that they bore the test magniﬁcently,
and that they proved themselves to be worthy of
their comrades to the right and the left. It had al-
ways been expected that the new infantry would
be good, for they had in most cases been under in-
tense training for a year, but it was a surprise to
many British soldiers, and a blow to the prophets in
Berlin, to ﬁnd that the scientiﬁc branches, the gun-
ners and the sappers, had also reached a high level.
“Our enemy may have hoped,” said Sir John
French, “not perhaps without reason, that it would
be impossible for us, starting with such small begin-
nings, to build up an efﬁcient artillery to provide for
the very large expansion of the Army. If he enter-
tained such hopes he has now good reason to know
that they have not been justiﬁed by the result. The
eﬂiciency of the artillery of the new armies has ex—
ceeded all expectations.” These were the guns
which, in common with many others of every
calibre, worked furiously in the early dawn of Satur-
day, September 25, to prepare for the impending ad-
vance. The high explosives were known to have
largely broken down the German system of defences,
but it was also known that there were areas where
the damage had not been great and where the wire
entanglements were still intact. No further delay
could be admitted, however, if our advance was to be
on the same day as that of the French. The infan-
CHAPTER
VII

The
Battle of
Loos.


174 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
VII.

The
Ba ttie of
Loos.
try, chaﬁng with impatience, were swarming in the
ﬁre trenches. At 5.40 A.M. the gas-cylinders were
turned on. At 6.30 A.M. the guns ceased ﬁre, and
the ardent soldiers—Regulars, New, and Territo-
rials—dashed forward upon their desperate ven-
ture.
The rough diagram of the action on page 177 will
help the reader to understand the order in which the
six divisions attacked, and in a very rough way the
objectives in front of them.
It is impossible to describe simultaneously the
progress of so extended a line. It will be best, there-
fore, to take the various divisions from the northern
end, and to follow the fortunes of each until it
reached some deﬁnite limit. Afterwards an attempt
will be made to co-ordinate these results and show
their effects upon each other.
The second regular division (Horne), acting upon
the extreme left of the main attack, had two brigades
north of the La Bassée Canal and one to the south.
The most northern was the 5th (Cochrane’s), and its
operations really formed part of the subsidiary at-
tacks, and will be treated under that head. South
of it was the 6th (Daly’s), to the immediate north of
the canal. The gas, drifting slowly up the line be-
fore a slight southern breeze, had contaminated
the air in this quarter, and many of the men were
suffering from the effects. None the less, at half-
past six the advance was made in a most dashing
manner, but the barbed wire defences were found to
be only partially damaged and the trenches to be in-
tact, so no progress could be made. The 2nd South
Staffords and 1st King’s Liverpools on the left and
right reached the German position, but in face of a


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175


178 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
VII.

The
Battle of
Loos.
Continuing the plan of taking each unit from the
north, we will follow the tragic fortunes of the 28th
Brigade on the left. This brigade seems to have been
faced by the same unbroken obstacles which had
held up their neighbours of the Second Division up-
on the left, and they found it equally impossible to
get forward, though the attack was urged with all
the constancy of which human nature is capable, as
the casualty returns only too clearly show.
The mest veteran troops could not have endured
a more terrible ordeal or preserved a higher heart
than these young soldiers in their ﬁrst battle. The
leading regiments were the 6th Scottish Borderers
and the 11th Highland Light Infantry. Nineteen
officers led the Borderers over the parapet. With-
in a few minutes the whole nineteen, including Colo-
nel Maclean and Major Hosley, lay dead or wounded
upon the ground. Valour could no further go. Of
the rank and ﬁle of the Borderers some 500 out of
1000 were lying in the long grass which faced the
German trenches. The Highland Light Infantry
had suffered very little less. Ten ofﬁcers and 300
men fell in the ﬁrst rush before they were checked
by the barbed wire of the enemy. Every accumula-
tion of evil which can appal the stoutest heart was
heaped upon this brigade—not only the two leading
battalions, but their comrades of the 9th Seaforths
and 10th H.L.I. who supported them. The gas hung
thickly about the trenches, and all of the troops, but
especially the 10th H.L.I., suffered from it. Colonel
Graham of this regiment was found later incoherent
and half unconscious from poisoning, while Major
Graham and four lieutenants were incapacitated in
the same way. The chief cause of the slaughter, how-


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 179
ever, was the uncut wire, which held up the brigade
while the German riﬂe and machine-gun ﬁre shot
them down in heaps. It was observed that in this
part of the line the gas had so small an effect upon
the enemy that their infantry could be seen with
their heads and shoulders clustering thickly over
their parapets as they ﬁred down at the desperate
men who tugged and raved in front of the wire en-
tanglement. An additional horror was found in the
shape of a covered trench, invisible until one fell
into it, the bottom of which was studded with stakes
and laced with wire. Many of the Scottish Border-
ers lost their lives in this murderous ditch. In ad-
dition to all this, the fact that the Second Division
was held up exposed the 28th Brigade to ﬁre on the
ﬂank. In spite of every impediment, some of the
soldiers fought their way onwards and sprang
down into the German trenches; notably Major
Sparling of the Borderers and Lieutenant Sebold of
the H.L.I. with a handful of men broke through all
opposition. There was no support behind them,
however, and after a time the few survivors were
compelled to fall back to the trenches from which
they had started, both the ofﬁcers named having been
killed. The repulse on the left of the Ninth Division
was complete. The mangled remains of the 28th
Brigade, ﬂushed and furious but impotent, gathered
together to hold their line against a possible counter-
attack. Shortly after mid-day they made a second
attempt at a forward movement, but 50 per cent of
their number were down, all the battalions had lost
many of their ofﬁcers, and for the moment it was not
possible to sustain the offensive.
A very different fate had befallen the 26th Bri-
CHAPTER
VII.
The
Battle of
Loos.


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 181
but it reached and took Fosse Alley, to the imme-
diate west of the Lens—Hulluch road. This posi-
tion it held against bombing attacks upon each ﬂank
until the morning of Monday the 27th, as will be
described later. The Highlanders upon their left,
who had got nearly to Haisnes, dropped back when
they found themselves unsupported, and joined the
rest of their brigade in the neighbourhood of
Fosse 8.
It should be mentioned that the ﬁeld-guns of the
52nd Brigade R.F.A. pushed up in the immediate
rear of the ﬁring line of theNinth Division, and
gave effective support to the infantry. The fact
that they could do this across the open tends to
show that infantry supports could be pushed up
without being conﬁned unduly to the communication
trenches. The spirited action of these guns was
greatly appreciated by the infantry.
For the moment we will leave the Ninth Division,
its left held up in line with the Second Division, its
right ﬂung forward through the Hohenzollern Re-
doubt and Fosse 8 until the spray from the wave
had reached as far as Haisnes. Let us turn now to
the veterans of the Seventh Division, the inheritors
of the glories of Ypres, who ﬁlled the space between
the right of the Ninth Division and the road from
Vermelles to Hulluch which divided Gough’s First
and Rawlinson’s Fourth Corps. This division was
constituted as before, save that the 8th and 9th
Devons of the New Army had taken the place of
the two Guards battalions in the 20th Brigade. Upon
receiving the Word to advance, “Over the top and
the best of luck 1 ’ ’ the men swarmed on short ladders
out of the ﬁre trenches and advanced with cool,
CHAPTER
VII.

The
Battle of
Loos.


182 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER disciplined valour over the open ground. On reach-
VII' ing the German wire the leading brigades—the 22nd
giant on the left with the 2nd Warwicks and 1st South
Loos. Staifords in the lead, the 20th on the right with the
2nd Gordons and 8th Devons in the place of honour
—-lay down for a short breather, while each soldier
obeyed instructions by judging for himself the point
at which the broken, tangled mass of writhing
strands could most easily be penetrated. Then once
more the whistles blew, the men rushed forward, and,
clearing the wire, they threw themselves into the
front trench. The garrison of 200 men threw their
arms down and their hands up with the usual piteous
but insincere cry of “Kameraden!” Flooding over
the line of trenches, the division pushed rapidly on
without a check until they reached the Quarries, a
well-marked post in front of the village of Hulluch.
Here more prisoners and eight ﬁeld-guns were taken
by the 20th Brigade. From the Quarries to the vil-
lage is roughly half a mile of uphill ground, devoid
of cover. The impetus of the advance carried the
men on until they were at the very edge of the vil-
lage, where they were held up by the furious ﬁre and
by a line of barbed wire, which was bravely cut by
Private Vickers of the 2nd Warwicks and other de-
voted men. Another smaller village, Cité St. Elie,
to the north of Hulluch, was also reached, the 2nd
Queen’s Surrey making good the western edge of it.
At both these points the division had reached its
limit, but still farther to the north its left-hand bri-
gade was at the southern outskirts of Haisnes in
touch with the gallant men of the Ninth Division,
who were to the west of that important village.
These advanced lines could not be held without sup-


186 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
0mm arrived there some hours before the others, for the

VH' reason already stated. In spite of this a very ﬁne
gale of advance was made, which gained a considerable
Loos. stretch of ground and pierced more deeply than any
other into the German line. The 46th Brigade was
on the left, consisting of the 7th Scots Borderers
and 12th Highland Light Infantry in front, with
the 8th Borderers and 10th Scottish Riﬂes behind
them. It was upon the parapet in front of this bri-
gade that Piper Laidlaw marched up and down be-
fore the attack under a heavy ﬁre, warming the
blood of the crouching men with the maddening
scream of his war-pipes. Not until he was shot
down did this gallant man cease to urge forward his
comrades. The 46th Brigade dashed forward at the
signal, and with a ﬁne fury ﬂooded over the Ger-
man trenches, which they carried at a rush, storm-
ing onwards across the Lens road and up the long
slope of Hill 70, taking Fosse 14 upon the way, and
eventually reaching the summit of the incline. The
45th supporting Brigade came along after them,
detaching, as they passed, 100 bombers of the 6th
Camerons to help the First Division to get forward.
These brave Highlanders held the advanced line for
some hours under heavy ﬁre from the Lens batter-
ms.
The 44th Brigade upon the right of the 46th had
made an advance which was equally ﬁery and suc-
cessful. In this brigade the 9th Black Watch and
8th Seaforths were in the lead, with the 7th Camer-
ons and 10th Gordons behind. This brigade dashed
into the main street of Loos, where they met the
Londoners of Barter’s Forty-seventh Division.
They helped to consolidate this ﬂank and} to clear


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 187
the houses of Loos, while some of them pushed for-
ward towards Hill 70. When they reached the crest
of the hill they found the remains of the 46th Bri-
gade, consisting of remnants of the 12th H.L.I.,
7th Scots Borderers, and 10th Scottish Riﬂes, upon
their left. It is possible that they could have dug
in and held their own, but the objective as given in
the original orders had been the village of St. Au-
gustine, and with heroic perseverance these brave
men would be contented with nothing less than the
full performance or death in the attempt. Alas! for
many of them it was the latter. Gathering them-
selves together, they ﬂung themselves forward over
the crest. On the other side was a long, low slope
with isolated houses at the bottom, the suburbs of
the village of St. Laurent, which they mistook for
St. Augustine. These crackled at every window with
machine-gun ﬁre. Of the devoted band who rushed
forward none reached the houses. The few sur-
vivors fell back upon the crest, and then, falling
back about one hundred and ﬁfty yards, they dug in
upon the slope on the west side of it. Their position
was an extraordinarily dangerous one, for they had
no protection upon the left ﬂank, where lay a thick
wood—the Bois Hugo—through which a German at-
tack might come which would cut them oﬁ from the
Army. Colonel Purvis, of the Highland Light In-
fantry, with quick foresight, built up a thin line of
resistance upon this side from Fosse 14 in the south
to the advanced left point, manning it with a few
of his own men under Lieutenant M’Neil. A wel-
come reinforcement of the 6th Camerons and 7th
Scots Fusiliers from the 45th Brigade were thrown
in to strengthen this weak point. This was done
CHAPTER
VII

The
Battle of
Loos.


188 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
VII.

The
Battle of
Loos.
about 1 P.M. It was only just in time, for in the
afternoon the German infantry did begin to debouch
from the wood, but ﬁnding organised resistance they
dropped back, and their advance on this line was
not renewed until the next morning, when it fell
upon the Twenty-ﬁrst Division. For a time the pres-
sure was very great, but the men rallied splendidly
round a tattered ﬂag bearing the Cameron tartan,
and, although it was impossible to get forward, they
still, in a mixed and straggling line with hardly any
ofﬁcers, held ﬁrmly to their ground. Late in the
evening the 13th Royal Scots and the 11th Argyll
and Sutherlands came up to thicken the line.
Leaving the Fifteenth Division holding on desper-
ately to that advanced position where, as Captain
Beith has tersely said, a fringe of Jocks and Sandies
lie to mark the farthest point of advance, we turn
to the remaining division upon the right—the Forty-
seventh London, under General Barter. This di-
vision upheld splendidly upon this bloody day the
secular reputation of the Cockney as a soldier. With
a keen, quick brain, as well as a game heart, the Lon-
doner, like the Parisian, has proved that the arti-
ﬁcial life of a great city does not necessarily dull
the primitive qualities which make the warrior. The
cream of the London Territorial regiments had al-
ready been distributed among regular brigades, and
had made themselves an individual name, but this
was the ﬁrst occasion upon which a whole division
was engaged in a really serious operation.
The left of the division was formed by Thwaites’
141st Brigade with the 18th London Irish in the
front line and the 20th Blackheath Battalion in im-
mediate support. To their right was Cuthbert’s


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 189
140th Brigade, which formed the extreme right of
the whole attack, a position which caused them to
think as much of their ﬂank protection as of their
frontal advance. This brigade had the 6th and 7th
Londons in the van, with the 8th and 15th (Civil
Service) in support. The 142nd Brigade (Wil-
loughby) was in the second line.
The advance of the 141st Brigade was a splendid
one. At the whistle the 18th London Irish, with a
ﬁghting yell, ﬂood-ed over the parapet with their
regimental football kicked in front of them, and
Were into the German trench like a thunderbolt. A
few minutes later they were followed by the Black-
heath men, who passed the captured trench, rushed
on to the second, and ﬁnally won the third, which
opened for them the road to Loos. Into the south
end of Loos they streamed, while the 44th Brigade of
the Fifteenth Division rushed the north end, turning
out or capturing the 23rd Silesians, who held the
post. The 19th St. Pancras Battalion followed up
the attack, while the 17 th (Poplar) were in reserve.
Meanwhile, the 140th Brigade had done most useful
work by making a lodgment on the Double Crassier,
formidable twin slag-heaps which had become a
German fort. The ground to the immediate
south of Loos was rapidly seized and consolidated
by the Londoners, several guns being captured in
the chalk pits near the village. This operation was
of permanent importance, as the successful British
advance would inevitably form a salient projecting
into the hostile lines, which would be vulnerable if
there were not some good defensive position on the
ﬂank. The work of the Forty-seventh Division as-
sured such a line in the south.
CHAPTER
VII.

The
Battle of
Loos.


190 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
VII.
The
Battle of
Loos.
By mid-day, as has been shown, the British ad-
vance had spent its momentum, and had been brought
to a standstill at all points. The German lines had
been almost—but not quite—shattered. A map of
the photographed trenches shows that beyond the
point reached by the advanced troops there was only
the last line which held them up. To the east of that
was open country. But the German reserves were
hurrying up from all quarters in their rear, from
Roulers, from Thielt, from Courtrai and Menin
and Douai. At the latter place was a division of
Guards just brought across from the Russian front.
These also were hurried into the ﬁght. The ex-
treme British line was too thin for defence, and was
held by exhausted men. They were shelled and
bombed and worn down by attack after attack until
they were compelled to draw slowly back and re-
form on interior lines. The grand salient which had
been captured with such heroic dash and profuse
loss of life was pared down here and contracted
there. The portion to the south held by the Lou-
doners was ﬁrmly consolidated, including the im-
portant village of Loos and its environs. An enor-
mous mine crane, three hundred feet high, of latticed
iron, which had formed an extraordinarily good ob-
servation point, was one of the gains in this @irec-
tion. The Fifteenth Division had been driven back
to the western side of Hill 70, and to the line of the
Lens—Hulluch—La Bassée road. The Seventh and
Ninth Divisions had fallen back from Haisnes, but
they still held the western outskirts of Hulluch, the
edge of St. Elie, the Quarries, and Fosse 8. It was
at this end of the line that the situation was most
dangerous, for the failure of the Second Division


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 191
to get forward had left a weak ﬂank upon the north,
which was weaker because the heavily-gunned Ger-
man position of Auchy lay to the north-west of it in
a way that partially enﬁladed it.
The struggle was particularly desperate round
the slag-heaps which were known as Fosse 8. This
position was held all day by the 5th Camerons, the
8th Black Watch, and the 7th Seaforths of the 26th
Brigade, the remaining battalion of which, the 8th
Gordons, were with the bulk of the 27th Brigade in
the direction of Haisnes. These three battalions,
under a murderous ﬁre from the Auchy guns and
from the persistent bombers, held on most tena-
ciously till nightfall. When the welcome darkness
came, without bringing them the longed-for sup-
ports, the defenders had shrunk to 600 men, but
their grip of the position was not relaxed, and they
held it against all attacks during the night. About
ﬁve next morning the 73rd Brigade of the Twenty-
fourth Division—a unit straight from home—
pushed up to their help under circumstances to be
afterwards explained,.and shared their great dan-
gers and losses during the second day of the ﬁghting.
The battalions of the Ninth Division which had
got as far as the outskirts of Haisnes held on there
until evening. By that time no reinforcements had
reached them and they had lost very heavily. Both
their ﬂanks were turned, and at nightfall they were
driven back in the direction of the Quarries, which
was held by those men of the Seventh Division
(mostly of the 22nd Brigade) who had also been
compelled to fall back from Hulluch. During the
night this position was wired by the 54th Company
of Royal Engineers, but the Germans, by a sudden
CHAPTER
VII.

The
Battle of
Loos.


192 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915


CHAPTER
VII.

The
Battle of
Loos.
and furious attack, carried it, driving out the garri-
son and capturing some of them, among whom was
General Bruce, the Brigadier of the 27th Brigade.
After the capture of the Quarries, the ﬂanks of the
27th Brigade were again turned, and it was com-
pelled to return as far as the old German front line.
The 20th Brigade had fallen back to the same point.
These misfortunes all arose from the radically de~
fective position of the northern British line, com-
manded as it was by German guns from its own
left rear, and unprotected at the ﬂank.
Whilst this set-back had occurred upon the left of
the attack, the right had consolidated itself very
ﬁrmly. The position of the Forty-seventh Division
when darkness fell was that on their right the 140th
Brigade had a strong grip of part of the Double
Crassier. On their left the 19th Battalion (St. Pan-
cras), which had lost its Colonel, Collison-Morley,
and several senior ofﬁcers, was holding South-east
Loos in the rear of the right ﬂank of the Fifteenth
Division. The 20th was holding the Loos Chalk Pit,
while the 17th and 18th were in the German second-
line trenches.
There is reason to believe that the rapid dash of
the stormers accomplished results more quickly than
had been thought possible. The Twenty-ﬁrst and
Twenty-fourth Divisions were now brought up, as
Sir John French clearly states in his dispatch, for
a speciﬁc purpose: “To ensure the speedy and ef-
fective support of the First and Fourth Corps in the
case of their success, the Twenty-ﬁrst and Twenty-
fourth Divisions passed the night of the 24th and
25th on the line of Beuvry—Noeux-les-Mines.”
Leaving the front line holding hard to, or in some


THE BATTLE OF LOOS
193
cases recoiling from, the advanced positions which
they had won, we will turn back and follow the move-
ments of these two divisions. It is well to re-
member that these divisions had not only never
heard the whistle of a bullet, but they had never even
been inside a trench, save on some English down-
side. It is perhaps a pity that it could not be so
arranged that troops so unseasoned'in actual war-
fare should occupy some defensive line, while the
older troops whom they relieved could have marched
to battle. Apart, however, from this inexperience,
which was no fault of their own or of their command-
ers, there is no doubt at all that the men were well-
trained infantry and full of spirit. To bring them
to the front without exciting attention, three sepa-
rate night marches were undertaken, of no inordi-
nate length, but tiring on account of the constant
blockings of the road and the long waits which at—
tended them. Finally they reached the point at
which Sir John French reported them in his dis-
patch, but by ill-fortune their cookers came late, and
they were compelled in many cases to move on
again without a proper meal. After this point the
cookers never overtook them, and the men were
thrown back upon their iron rations. Providence is
not a strong point of the British soldier, and it is
probable that with more economy and foresight at
the beginning these troops would have been less ex-
hausted and hungry at the end. The want of food,
however, was not the fault of the supply services.
The troops moved forward with no orders for an
instant attack, but with the general idea that they
were to wait as a handy reserve and go forward
when called upon to do so. The 62nd Brigade of the
CHAPTER
VII.

The
Battle of
Loos.


194 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
VII.
The
Battle of
Loos.
Twenty-ﬁrst Division was sent on ﬁrst about eleven
o’clock, but the other brigades were not really on
the road till much later. The roads on which they
moved—those which lead through Vermelles to Hul-
luch or to Loos—were blocked with trafﬁc: guns ad-
vancing, ambulances returning, troops of all sorts
coming and going, Maltese carts with small-arm
ammunition hurrying forward to the ﬁghting-line.
The narrow channel was choked with the crowd.
The country on either side was intersected with
trenches and laced with barbed wire. It was pour-
ing with intermittent showers. The soldiers, cold,
wet, and hungry, made their way forward with
many stoppages towards the ﬁring, their general di-
rection being to the centre of the British line.
“As we got over this plain,” writes an ofﬁcer, “I
looked back, and there was a most extraordinary
sight; as far as you could see there were thousands
and thousands of our men coming up. You could
see them for miles and miles, and behind them a
most colossal thundercloud extending over the whole
sky, and the rain was pouring down. It was just
getting dark, and the noise of our guns and the
whole thing was simply extraordinary.”
Early on the march the leading brigade, the 7 3rd,
was met by a staff ofﬁcer of the First Army, who
gave the order that it should detach itself, together
with the 129th Field Company of Sappers, and has-
ten to the reinforcement of the Ninth Division at
Fosse 8. They went, and the Twenty-fourth Divi-
sion knew them no more. The other two brigades
found themselves between 9 and 10 P.M. in the front
German trenches. They had been able to deploy
after leaving Vermelles, and the front line were now


CHAPTER VIII
THE BATTLE OF LOOS
(The Second Day—September 26)
Death of General Capper—Retirement of the Fifteenth Division—
Advance of the Twenty-fourth Division—Heavy losses—Twenty-
ﬁrst Division before Bois Hugo—~Desperate struggle—General
retirement on the right—Rally round Loos—Position on the
evening of September 26.
onmm SUNDAY the 26th was a day of hard ﬁghting and of

VIII' heavy losses, the reserves streaming up from the
ghfﬂ t rear upon both sides, each working furiously to im-
a 80
1,00,, prove its position. From early in the day the ﬁght-
ing was peculiarly bitter round Fosse 8 in the sec-
tion carried and held by the Ninth Division. It
has been already mentioned that three battalions,
the 5th Camerons, 7th Seaforths, and 8th Black
Watch of the 26th Brigade, held this place all the
evening of the 25th and all night, until reduced to
less than the strength of a regiment. It has also
been stated that the 73rd Brigade had been de-
tached from the Twenty-fourth Division to their
aid. These men, with no preliminary hardening,
found themselves suddenly thrust into one of the
very hottest corners of a desperate ﬁght. Under
these circumstances it is all to the credit of these
troops that they were able to hold their position all
day, though naturally their presence was not of the
same value as that of a more veteran brigade.
196


198 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER Army. He was shot through the lungs, was car-
VIII.
The
Battle 01
L008.
The
Fifteenth
Division on
Hill 70.
ried t0 the rear, and died in hospital next day.
“We are here to do the impossible” was one of the
ﬁery aphorisms which he left to the Army.
On the southern front of the British there was
also an inclination to contract the line upon the
morning of the 26th. The fact that the French at-
tack upon the right on the day before had not had
much success rendered that wing very open to a
ﬂank attack.‘ The Fifteenth Scottish Division still
held on hard to the slopes of Hill 70, but early in
the day their line had been driven somewhat to
the westward. At nine o’clock they had renewed
their attack upon Hill 70, supported by some rein-
forcements. They were not strong enough, nor was
their artillery support sufficiently powerful to en-
able them to carry the crest of the hill. When their
advance was checked the Germans returned upon
them with a series of counter-attacks which gradu-
ally drove them down the hill. In the desperate
series of rallies in which they made head against
the Germans it is difficult to distinguish regiments,
since the men fought for the most part in a long,
scattered fringe of mixed units, each dour infantry-
man throwing up his own cover and ﬁghting his own
battle. The 6th Camerons preserved their cohesion,
however, and particularly distinguished themselves,
their gallant leader, Douglas Hamilton, falling at
their head in the thick of the ﬁght. “I must get
up! I must get up!” were his last words before he
expired. The ﬁnal effect of these episodes was to
drive the British off the greater part of the slope of
Hill 70, and down towards the village of Loos.
It will be remembered that the weary Twenty-


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 199
fourth Division (Ramsay), with its comrade the
Twenty-ﬁrst (Forestier-Walker) upon its right and
the Regular First Division upon its left, had received
its orders to advance at eleven o’clock. It had been
supposed that Hulluch was in British hands, but
this was found not to be so. The orders, however,
still held good. The Twenty-fourth Division had
already been stripped of the 73rd Brigade, and now
it was further denuded by two battalions of the
71st, the 9th Norfolks and 8th Bedfords, who were
told off to help to retake the Quarries. The Nor-
folks made an attack upon a strong position, and
lost 200 men and ofﬁcers in the attempt. The Bed-
fords, who were! in support, lost touch both with
their own division and with the one that they were
helping, so that they were not strongly engaged dur-
ing the day.
The hour had now come for the general advance.
General Mitford with the 72nd Brigade was leading,
with two battalions of the 71st Brigade behind, and
his pioneer battalion in support. On his left was
the 2nd Welsh, and, as he imagined, the whole of the
First Division. On his right was the 63rd Brigade
and the rest of the Twenty-ﬁrst Division, less the
62nd Brigade, as afterwards explained. It formed
a solid wall of 20,000 infantry which might well turn
the tide of a great battle.
We shall follow this advance of the Twenty-fourth
Division upon the left, who were compelled to go
forward with their ﬂank exposed on account of some
delay in the attack by the First Division. After-
wards we shall return to consider the movements
of the Twenty-ﬁrst Division on their right. The
leading brigade, the 72nd, moved forward with the
CHAPTER
VIII.

The
Battle of
Loos.
The
advance
of the
Twenty-
Fourth
Division.


200 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
0mm 8th West Kents upon the left, and the 9th East Sur-
Vm' reys upon the right. Behind them were the 8th
gamut Queen’s Surreys (left) and the 8th Buffs (right),
Loos. with the pioneer battalion, the 12th Sherwood For-
esters, in support. They were followed by the two
remaining battalions of the 71st Brigade, the 9th Suf-
folks and the 11th Essex. As the advance continued
the second line joined with the ﬁrst, and the 11th
Essex from behind also pushed its way abreast of
the foremost. The line of advance was to the south
of Hulluch, and this line was preserved. As mat-
ters turned out, the numerous guns in the south
of that village were all available for defence against
the advance of the Twenty-fourth Division. This
caused them very heavy losses, but in spite of them
they swept onwards with an unfaltering energy
which was a monument to those long months of prep-
aration during which Sir John Ramsay had brought
his men to a high state of efﬁciency. Under every
possible disadvantage of hunger, cold, exhaustion,
and concentrated ﬁre, they behaved with a steadi-
ness which made them worthy of the honoured
names which gleamed upon their shoulder-straps.
One platoon of the Essex diverged in to Hulluch in
a vain attempt to stop the machine-guns and so
shield their comrades. Hardly a man of this body
survived. The rest kept their eyes front, took their
punishment gamely, and pushed on for their objec-
tive. The breadth of the attack was such that it
nearly covered the space between Hulluch in the
north and the Bois Hugo in the south.
About mid-day the Twenty-fourth Division had
reached a point across the Lens—Hulluch road
which was ahead of anything attained in this quar-


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 201
ter the day before. They were up against unbroken CHAPTER
wire with an enﬁlade riﬂe and machine-gun ﬁre VIII“
from both ﬂanks and from Hulluch on their left rear, gale of
as well as a heavy shell-ﬁre of asphyxiating shells. Loos.
A gallant attempt was made to pierce the wires,
which were within ﬁfty yards of the German posi-
tion, but it was more than ﬂesh and blood could do.
They were driven back, and in the retirement across
the long slope which they had traversed their losses
were greatly increased. Their wounded had to be
left behind, and many of these fell afterwards into
the hands of the Germans, receiving honourable
treatment from them. The losses would have been
heavier still had it not been that the Suffolks in
support lined up in a sunken road three hundred
yards south of Hulluch, and kept down the ﬁre of
the machine-guns. Some of these raw battalions en-
dured losses which have never been exceeded in this
war before they could ﬁnally persuade themselves
that the task was an impossible one. The 8th West
Kents lost their Colonel, Vansittart, 24 officers, and
556 men; the 8th Buffs their Colonel, Romer, 24
officers, and 534 men; the other battalions were
nearly as hard hit. These ﬁgures speak for them-
selves. Mortal men could not have done more. The
whole brigade lost 78 ofﬁcers and 2000 men out of
about 3600 engaged in the attack. When these sol-
diers walked back—and there is testimony that their
retirement was in many cases at a walk—they had
earned the right to take their stand with any troops
in the world. The survivors resumed their place
about 1.30 in the German trenches, where for the
rest of the day they endured a very heavy shelling.
The movements of the Twenty-ﬁrst Division upon


202 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER.
VIII.

The
Battle of
Loos.
The Story
of the ~
Twenty-
ﬁrst
Division.
the right were of a very much more complex nature,
and there is a conﬂict of evidence about them which
makes the task of the historian a peculiarly difﬁcult
one. The great outstanding fact, however, which
presents itself in the case of each of the three bri-
gades is that the men in nearly every instance be-
haved with a steady gallantry under extraordinarily
difﬁcult circumstances which speaks volumes for
their soldierly qualities. Sir Edward Hutton, who
raised them, and General Forestier-Walker, who led
them, had equal cause to be contented with the per-
sonnel. “The men were perfectly magniﬁcent,
quite cool and collected, and would go anywhere,”
says one wounded oﬂicer. “The only consolation I
have is the memory of the magniﬁcent pluck and
bravery shown by our good men. Never shall I
forget it,” cries another. It is necessary to empha—
sise the fact, because rumours got about at the time
that all was not as it should be—rumours which
came from men who were either ignorant of all the
facts or were not aware of the tremendous strain
which was borne by this division during the action.
These rumours were cruel libels upon battalions
many of which sustained losses in this their ﬁrst ac-
tion which have seldom been matched during the
war. We will follow the fortunes of each brigade
in turn, holding the balance as far as possible amid
evidence which, as already stated, is complex and
conﬂicting.
The 62nd Brigade (Wilkinson), consisting of the
8th East Yorks, 10th Yorks, 12th and 13th North-
umberland Fusiliers, with the 14th Northumberland
Fusiliers as pioneer battalion, was hurried away
separately and taken to the south and east of Loos


204 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER on one ﬂank, as the 73rd of the TWenty-fourth Divi-

Vm' sion was upon the other.
gin“: The main attack of the division was carried out
Loos. by the 63rd and 64th Brigades, the only ones which
remained under the command of General Forestier-
Walker. A formidable line of obstacles faced them
as they formed up, including the Chalk Pit and the
Chalk Pit Wood, and on the other side of the Lens
—Hulluch road, upon their right front, Fosse 14
and the Bois Hugo, the latter a considerable plan-
tation full of machine-guns and entanglements.
The original plan had been that the advance should
be simultaneous with that upon the left, but the en-
emy were very active from an early hour upon this
front, and the action seems, therefore, to have been
accelerated. Indeed, the most reasonable view of
what occurred seems to be that the enemy had them-
selves planned a great attack at this point at that
hour, that the bickerings of the morning were their
preliminary bombardment, and that the British at-
tack became speedily a defensive action, in which the
63rd Brigade was shattered by the weight of the
enemy attack, but inﬂicted such loss upon it that it
could get no farther, and ceased to endanger the
continuity of our line. It is only on this supposition
of a double simultaneous attack that one can recon-
cile the various statements of men, some of whom
looked upon the movement as an attack and some as
a defence.
The 63rd Brigade (Nicholls) moved forward with
the 8th Lincolns upon the right and the 12th York-
shires upon the left. These regiments advanced to
a point just east of the Lens—Hulluch road. In
support, on the immediate west of the road, lining


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207


208 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
Cam ber of the Lincolns and some of the West Yorks, still
VIII.

The
Battle of
Loos.
holding the line upon the right, were entirely cut off.
Colonel Walter of the Lincolns, with Major Storer,
Captains Coates and Stronguist, and three lieuten-
ants, are known to have been killed, while almost all
the others were wounded. A number of our wounded
were left in the hands of the Germans. There is no
doubt that the strength of the German attack and
the resistance offered to it were underrated by the
public at the time, which led to the circulation of
cruel and unjust rumours.
The 64th Brigade (Gloster) was in support some
little distance to the right rear of the 63rd, covering
the ground between the Lens—Hulluch road and
Loos. About noon a message was received by them
to the eﬁect that the 63rd was being very strongly
pressed, and that help was urgently needed. The
14th Durham Light Infantry was moved forward in
support, and came at once under heavy ﬁre, losing
its Colonel (Hamilton), 17 oﬂicers, and about 200
men. The 15th Durham Light Infantry was then
thrown into the ﬁght, and sustained even heavier
losses. Colonel Logan, 18 oﬂicers, and 400 men were
killed or wounded. About one o’clock the two Dur-
ham battalions were in the thick of the ﬁght, while
Captain Liebenrood, machine-gun oﬁicer of the 64th
Brigade, did good work in keeping down the enemy
ﬁre. The two battalions of Yorkshire Light Infan~
try (9th and 10th) were held in reserve. About 2.30
the pressure upon the front of the 63rd Brigade had
become too great, and both it and the two Durham
battalions were driven back. Their resistance, how—
ever, seems to have taken the edge off the dangerous
counter-attack, for the Germans did not come on


210 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
VIII.

The
Battle of
Loos.
Reorgan-
isation.
fort and disadvantage, one feels that they have in-
deed worthily continued the traditions of the old
Army and founded those of the new. There were
isolated cases of unordered retirement, but in the
main the regiments showed the steadiness and cour-
age which one would expect from the good North-
country stock from which they came.
The divisional artillery of the Twenty-ﬁrst Divi-
sion had come into action in the open behind the ad-
vancing infantry, and paid the price for their gallant
temerity. The 94th Brigade R.F.A. lost especially
heavily, eight of its guns being temporarily put out
of action. Major Dobson of this brigade was among
the killed. It is to be feared that the guns did not
always realise the position of the infantry, and that
many of the 64th Brigade especially were hit by their
own shrapnel. Such painful incidents seem almost
inseparable from modern warfare. The artillery
kept its place, and afterwards rendered good service
by supporting the advance of the Guards.
Whilst this advance and check had taken place
in the centre and right centre of the British position,
the London Division, upon the extreme right, was
subjected rather to bombardment than to assault.
A heavy fall of asphyxiating shells was experienced
a little after 9 A.M., and many men were gassed be-
fore they were able to put on their helmets. The
second German line of captured trenches was held
very ﬁrmly by General Thwaites with the rest of the
141st Brigade, while the 140th retained a defensive
ﬂank, the whole forming a strong point d’appui for
a rally and reorganisation. Men of the Twenty-ﬁrst
Division re-formed upon this line, and the battle was
soon re-established. This re-establishment was ma~


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 211
terially helped by the action of the 9th and 10th
Yorkshire Light Infantry battalions previously men-
tioned of the Twenty-ﬁrst Division, who had become
a divisional reserve. These two battalions now ad-
vanced and gained some ground to the east of Loos
on the enemy’s left ﬂank. It may be mentioned that
one of these battalions was ordered to discard its
packs in order to ease the tired soldiers, and that
on advancing from their trenches these packs were
never regained. Their presence afterwards may
have given the idea that equipment had been aban-
doned, whereas an actual order had been obeyed.
The movement covered the reorganisation which was
going on behind them. One small detachment under
Captain Laskie of the 10th Y.L.I. did especially good
work. The Yorkshiremen were aided by men of the
N orthumberland Fusiliers of the 62nd Brigade, who
held on to the trenches to the east of Loos. A cav-
alry detachment from Campbell’s 6th Cavalry Bri-
gade, under Campbell himself, had also appeared
about 4 RM. as a mobile reserve and thrown itself
into Loos to strengthen the defence.
The evening of this day, September 26, found the
British lines contracted as compared with what they
had been in the morning. The Forty-seventh Divi-
sion had, if anything, broadened and strengthened
their hold upon the southern outskirts of Loos. The
western slope of Hill 70 was still held in part. Thence
the line bent back to the Loos—La Bassée road, fol-
lowed the line of that road for a thousand yards,
thence onwards to near the west end of the village
of Hulluch, and then as before. But the exchanges
would seem to have been in favour of the Germans,
since they had pushed the British back for a stretch
CHAPTER
VIII.

The
Battle of
Loos.


212 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915 .
onnrm of about a mile from the Lens—Hulluch road, thus
“11' making a dent in their front. On both sides reserves
gale at were still mustering. The Guards’ Division had been
Loos. brought up by Sir John French, and were ready for
operations upon the morning of the 27th, while the
Twenty-eighth Division was on its way. The Ger-
mans, who had been repeatedly assured that the
British Army extension was a bluﬁ, and that the
units existed only upon paper, must have found some
food for thought as the waves rolled up.


214 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER eluding most of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. The
1X' worn remains of the 26th Brigade were still holding

gale or the pit when morning dawned, and the units of the
Loos. 73rd Brigade (J elf) were in a semicircle to the east
and south of it. These battalions, young troops who
had never heard the whiz of a bullet before, had now
been in close action for thirty-six hours, and had
been cut off from all supplies of food and water for
two days. Partly on account of their diﬁicult tacti-
cal position, and partly because they were ignorant
of how communications are kept up in the trenches,
they had become entirely isolated. It was on these
exhausted troops that the storm now broke. The
northern unit consisted of the 7th Northamptons,
whose left wing seems to have been in the air. Next
to them were the 12th Royal Fusiliers. There had
been several infantry attacks, which were repulsed
during the night. Just at the dawn two red rockets
ascended from the German lines, and at the same
moment an intense bombardment opened upon Fosse
8, causing great loss among the occupants. It was at
this time that General Thesiger, Commander of the
Ninth Division, together with his Staff-Major, Bur-
ney, was killed by a shell. Colonel Livingstone, Di-
visional CD. of Engineers, and Colonel Wright, of
the 8th Gordons, were also hit. In the obstinate de-
fence of the post the 90th Company R.E. fought as
infantry, after they had done all that was possible
to strengthen the defences.
A strong infantry attack had immediately followed
the bombardment. They broke in, to the number of
about a thousand, between the Northamptons and
Fusiliers. By their position they were now able to
command Fosse 8, where the 9th Sussex had been,


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 217
Twenty-ﬁrst Division had covered the day before,
and had in their immediate front the same wood—
the Chalk Pit Wood—from which we had been
driven, and the Chalk Pit near the Lens—Hulluch
road, which we had also lost, while a little more to
the right was the strong post of Fosse 14 and the
long slope of Hill 70, the whole of which had passed
back into the hands of the enemy. These formida-
ble obstacles were the immediate objective of the
Guards. During the night of the 26th-27th many
stragglers from the Twenty-ﬁrst and Twenty-fourth
Divisions passed through the Guards, informing
them that their front was practically clear of British
troops, and that they were face to face with the
enemy.
At 2.30 P.M. the British renewed their heavy bom-
bardment in the hope of clearing the ground for the
advance. There is evidence that upon the 25th the
enemy had been so much alarmed by the rapid
advance that they had hurriedly removed a good deal
of their artillery upon the Lens side. This had now
been brought back, as‘we found to our cost. At four
o’clock the heavy guns eased oﬁ, and the two bri-
gades of Guards (2nd and 3rd) advanced, moving
forward in artillery formation—that is, in small
clumps of platoons, separated from each other.
The 2nd Irish were given their baptism of ﬁre by
being placed in the van of the 2nd Brigade with
orders to make good the wood in front. The 1st
Coldstream were to support them. Advancing in
splendid order, they reached the point without undue
loss, and dug themselves in according to orders. As
they lay there their comrades of the 1st Scots passed
on their right under very heavy ﬁre in salvos of
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.


218 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER high-explosive shells, and carried Fosse 14 by storm
IX' in the most admirable manner, while the Irish cov-
giﬂeof ered them with their riﬂe-ﬁre. Part of the right-
Loos. hand company of the Irish Guards got drawn into
this attack and rushed forward with the Scots. Hav-
ing taken Fosse 14, this body of men pushed
impetuously forward, met a heavy German counter-
attack, and were driven back. Their two young
leaders, Lieutenants Clifford and Kipling, were seen
no more. The German attack came with irresistible
strength, supported by a very heavy enﬁlade ﬁre.
The remains of the Scots Guards were driven with
heavy losses out of Fosse 14, and both they and the
Irish were thrown back as far as the line of the
Loos—Hulluch road.
The remains of the shaken battalions were joined
by two companies of the 2nd Coldstream and re-
formed for another eﬁort. In this attack of the 2nd
Brigade upon Fosse 14, the Scots were supported
by two companies of the 3rd Grenadiers, the other
two being in general reserve. These two companies,
coming up independently somewhat later than the
main advance, were terribly shelled, but reached
their objective, where they endured renewed losses.
The ofﬁcers were nearly all put out of action, and
eventually a handful of survivors were brought back
to the Chalk Pit Wood by Lieutenant Ritchie, him-
self severely wounded.
Captain Alexander, with some of the Irish, had
succeeded also in holding their ground in the Chalk
Pit Wood, though partly surrounded by the German
advance, and they now sent back urgently for help.
A fresh advance was made, in the course of which
the other two companies of Coldstreamers pushed

it.


220 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IX.
The
Battle 0!
Loos.
men, while the 1st Scots and 1st Coldstream had
suffered about as heavily. The 3rd Brigade had
been even more severely hit, and the total loss of the
division could have been little short of 3000. They
continued to hold the front line until September 30,
when the 35th and 36th Brigades of the Twelfth
Division relieved them for a short rest. The Fif-
teenth Division had also been withdrawn, after hav-
ing sustained losses which had probably never been
excelled up to that hour by any single division in
one action during the campaign. It is computed that
no fewer than 6000 of these gallant Scots had fallen,
the greater part upon the blood-stained slope and
crest of Hill 70. Of the 9th Black Watch little more
than 100 emerged safely, but an observer has re-
corded that their ﬁerce and martial bearing was
still that of victors.
The curve of the British position presented a
perimeter which was about double the length of the
are which marked the original trenches. Thus a
considerably larger force was needed to hold it,
which was the more diﬂicult to provide as so many
divisions had already suﬂ’ered heavy losses.
The French attack at Souchez having come to a
standstill, Sir John French asked General Foch, the
Commander of the Tenth Army, to take over the
defence of Loos, which was done from the morning
of the 28th by our old comrades of Ypres, the Ninth
Corps. During this day there was a general re-
arrangement of units, facilitated by the contraction
of the line brought about by the presence of our
Allies. The battle-worn divisions of the ﬁrst line
were withdrawn, while Bulﬁn’s Twenty-eighth
Division came up to take their place.


222 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle 0!
Loos.
were hung up for a time by the wounding both of
General Pereira and of his Brigade—Major, Flower,
but Colonel Roberts, of the 3rd Royal Fusiliers, car-
ried on. The Royal Fusiliers relieved the Buffs, and
the 2nd East Surrey took over the left of the line.
An attack was organised upon the powerful posi-
tion at Fosse 8, but it had to be postponed until the
morning of September 28. At 9 A.M.‘ the 2nd Buffs
delivered a very strong assault. The 3rd Middlesex
were to have supported them, but came under so
heavy a ﬁre in their trenches that they were unable
to get forward. The Buﬂ’s, in the face of desperate
opposition, scrambled up the difﬁcult sides of the
great dump—a perfect hill self-erected as a monu-
ment of generations of labour. They reached the
summit, but feund it swept by gusts of ﬁre which
made all life impossible. Colonel Worthington and
ﬁfteen of his ofﬁcers were killed or wounded in the
gallant venture. Finally, the remains of the battal-
ion took cover from the ﬁre in Dump Trench at the
bottom of the hill. It was in this trench that the Mid-
dlesex men had been held. Their Colonel, Neale, had
also been killed. From this time onwards Fosse 8
was left in the hands of the Germans, and the action
of the Twenty-eighth Division became more of a
defensive one to prevent any further whittling away
of the ground already gained.
As the pressure was still great from the direction
of Fosse 8, two battalions of the 83rd Brigade, the
1st York and Lancasters and 1st Yorkshire Light
Infantry, were sent up to reinforce the line. On the
29th they helped to repel two attacks all along the
front of the redoubt, one in the morning and one in
the afternoon, when the Germans came on to the sur-


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 225
Brigade taking its position a tthe section of the
Hohenzollern Redoubt which we held, while the 1st
was on their right, and the 2nd in reserve at Ver-
melles. At the same time the First Division moved
to the front on the right of the Guards, relieving the
Twelfth Division. All these troops were keenly alive
to the fact that the Germans were unlikely to sit
down under their defeat, and that the pause was only
the preliminary to a great counter-attack. All efforts
were therefore made to consolidate the ground.
The expectations were fulﬁlled, for upon October
8 the enemy brought up their reserves from far and
near, determined to have back the ground that they
had lost. The British and French were no less inex-
orable in their grip of that which had cost them so
much to win. It is the attacker in modern warfare
who pays the price. Sometimes he gets the value of
his blood, sometimes he pays it freely and gets noth-
ing whatever in exchange. So it was in this instance.
Along the whole long curve of the defence, from the
southern trenches of the Hohenzollern Redoubt in
the north to the French position in the south, the
roar of the battle went up. On the left of the French
was the First Division, on their left the Twelfth, on
theirs the Guards, on theirs the Seventh, stout ﬁght-
ers all. The Germans rushed on boldly, swarms of
bombers in front, lines of supporting infantry be-
hind. Everywhere they were cut down and brought
to a stand by the sleet of bullets. It was the British
machine-gunner who now crouched under cover and
spread death fanwise before him, while it was the
German infantryman who rushed and tripped and
rose and fell in the desperate effort to carry out the
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.
The great
counter-
attack.


226 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER plans of his chiefs. All honour to him for the valour

IX' of his attempt.
gin“: To appreciate the nature of a great deal of this
Loos, ﬁghting one must remember that the whole scene of
it was intersected by a perfect maze of trenches
which belonged to the original German third line of
defence, and were therefore familiar to them, while
they were strange to those British troops who now
occupied them. All along these zigzag lines the two
parties were only from thirty to ﬁfty yards apart, so
that the broad, deserted plain was really intersected
with narrow runways of desperately active life.
Attacks developed in an instant, bombing parties
sprang forward at any moment, riﬂes were used at
point-blank range, so that an exposed bayonet was
often snapped off by a bullet. “Close to the bomb-
ers’ keep ﬁfty small bayonet periscopes, four bay-
onets, and ﬁve foresights of riﬂes were shot off in an
hour and a half,” says an oﬁicer present. Over
traverses men pelted each other with anything that
was deadly, while above their heads the great shells
for ever screamed and rumbled.
A great effort was made against the trench called
“Big Willie,” running out from the Hohenzollern
Redoubt, which had been taken over by the Guards.
In the afternoon of the 8th, after a heavy bom-
bardment had ﬂailed the position for four hours,
there was a determined rush of bombers upon these
trenches, the Germans, our old friends of the Seventh
Westphalian Corps, coming on in three battalions,
each of them down a different communication trench.
The general direction of the attack was from the
north and east. The trenches assaulted were held
by the 1st and 2nd Brigades of Guards, both of which


228 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
Onarrm
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.
Gloucesters, 2nd Munster Fusiliers, 9th King’s Liv-
erpool, and other battalions in the First Division
ﬁring line. The French 75’s had been equally deadly
and successful. Between the position held by the
Guards near the Hohenzollern Redoubt on the left
and that of the First Division at the Chalk Pit on the
right, the ground was held by the Twelfth Division,
the 37th Brigade of which (Fowler) was briskly en-
gaged. The 6th Buffs of this brigade was immedi-
ately to the right of the Vermelles—Hulluch road,
with the 6th Royal West Kent continuing the line
northwards down to the Quarries. The 6th Queen’s
Surrey and 7th East Surrey were in support. Some-
what to the right front of this brigade was a position
one hundred and ﬁfty yards wide, called Gun Trench,
which was one of the scattered forts which the enemy
still held to the west of the Loos—Hulluch road. An
attack was organised upon this position by Colonel
Venables of the West Kents, who was badly wounded
in the venture. The British, led by Captain Mar-
getts, reached the trench in spite of terriﬁc ﬁre and
corresponding losses, including the whole crew of a
machine-gun of the East Surreys which had been
most gallantly rushed to the front by Lieutenant Gib-
son. Half the trench was cleared, but the Germans
had themselves been on the point of attacking, and
the communications leading eastwards were stuffed
with men—a prolongation, no doubt, of the same at-
tack which was breaking to the north upon the
Guards. The weak spray of British stormers could
make no progress against the masses in the support-
ing trenches, and were bombed back to their own
position. It was a brave but fruitless attempt, which
was destined to be renewed with greater success a
b


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 229
few days later, when Gun Trench passed completely
into the hands of the British. The West Kents lost
200 killed and wounded in this affair. At night the
whole line of the French and British defences was
inviolate, and though there was an acute controversy
between the oﬂicial accounts as to the number of Ger-
man casualties, it is certain that, whatever they may
have been, they had nothing to show in return, nor is
it a sign of military virtue to recoil from an enter-
prise with little loss. The German ﬁghter is a tougher
fellow than the cutters-down of his casualty lists will
allow. British losses were comparatively small.
Though the Germans had gained no ground upon
the 8th, the British were averse from allowing them
to remain in undisputed possession of that which
they had won upon the 3rd. It was especially upon
the Hohenzollern Redoubt that the British ﬁghting
line ﬁxed a menacing gaze, for it had long been a
centre of contention, and had now passed almost
completely into the possession of the enemy. It was
determined to make a vigorous attempt to win it
back. The Forty-sixth North Midland Territorial
Division (Stuart-Wortley), who were veterans of
nine months’ service at trench warfare, but had not
yet been heavily engaged, were brought up from the
rear, and upon October 12 they relieved the Guards
Division on the left of the front line. At the same
time it was planned that there should be an attack of
the First Division to the west of Hulluch, and of the
Twelfth Division in the region of the Quarries. Of
these we shall ﬁrst describe the attack of the Terri-
torials upon the Hohenzollern Redoubt.
On October 13, at noon, a severe bombardment
was opened which concentrated upon the enclosure
CHAPTER
IX.
The
Battle 0!
L008.

Attack of
the Forty-
sixth
Division


230 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
01mm of the redoubt, and the space between that and Fosse
IX' 8. This bombardment for some reason does not seem

gin“: to have been effective, and even while it went on the
Loos. sniping and machine-guns were active in the enemy
line. An hour later there was an emission of gas,
borne by a brisk breeze towards the German trenches,
and later still a smoke-cloud was sent out to cover
the advance. At two o’clock the troops dashed over
the parapet, the 138th Brigade, consisting of men of
Lincoln and Leicester, upon the left, while the 137th,
the men of Staﬂ’ord, were on the right. In imme-
diate support was the 139th, a Sherwood Forester
Brigade. The line upon the left was headed by the
4th Leicesters and 5th Lincolns, the men, with that
light-hearted courage which is so intolerable to the
heavier German spirit, singing, “Here we are, here
we are, here we are again!” as they vaulted out of
their trenches. The attack upon the right was led
by the 5th North and 5th South Staffords. The ad-
vance was splendidly executed, and won the critical
admiration of some of the Guards who were privi-
leged to see it. In the face of a murderous ﬁre the
attacking line swept, in an order which was only
broken by the fall of stricken men, up to the front-
line trench, two hundred yards in front.
Here, however, the attack was held up by an over-
whelming ﬁre. The 5th North Staﬂ’ords, whose
objective was “Big Willie,” were exterminated for
all immediate military purposes, their losses being
19 ofﬁcers and 488 men. The gallant survivors suc-
ceeded in getting as far as a communication trench
which led to “Big Willie,” and held on there. The
advance of the 5th South Staffords upon the right
was conditional upon the success of their comrades


232 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.
“Big Willie,” those on the left to clear Fosse Trench.
The parties upon the right, drawn from the various
Staﬁord regiments, got into “Big Willie,” and stuck
to their work until they were all destroyed, ofﬁcers
and men. The enemy bombers then counter-attacked,
but were met by Lieutenant Hawkes with a party of
the 5th South Staﬁords, who drove them back again.
The pressure was very severe, however, until about
four in the afternoon, when the action upon the right
died down into a duel of heavy guns upon either side.
On the left, however, where the gallant Territorial
infantry held hard to its gains, the action was very
severe. The bombing attacks went on with varied
fortunes, a company of the 5th Leicesters bombing
its way for more than two hundred yards up “Little
Willie” Trench before its supplies ran out and it had
to retire. At three o’clock there was a fresh infan-
try advance, the 7th Sherwood Foresters of the re-
serve 139th Brigade endeavouring to get forward,
but losing so many in crossing the redoubt that they
were unable to sally out from the farther side. The
redoubt was now so crowded with mixed units all
under heavy ﬁre that there might have been a Spion
Kop but for the steadiness of all concerned. At one
time the men, ﬁnding themselves practically without
o'ﬂicers, began to fall back, but were splendidly ral-
lied by Colonel Evill of the 1st Monmouths and a few
other survivors. The advent of two companies of
the 5th Leicesters retaining their disciplined or-
der helped to avert the danger, and the line was
formed once again along the western face of the re-
doubt. During this movement the 7th Sherwood
Foresters who remained in the north-east of the
redoubt Were cut oﬂ, but with splendid pertinacity


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 233
they held their ground, and made their way back
when darkness fell. In the early morning of the 14th,
Captain Checkland, with a company of the 5th Sher-
wood Foresters, pushed an advance up to the place
where their comrades of the 7th Battalion had been,
and found Captain Vickars of that regiment, who,
with a bravery which deserves to be classical, de-
fended almost single-handed a barrier, while he
ordered a second one to be built behind him, cutting
him off from all succour. He was desperately
wounded, but was brought back by his comrades.
The 8th Sherwood Foresters had also come to
the front, and made a spirited attack in the early
morning of the 14th, driving the enemy from the
western side of the redoubt and ﬁrmly establishing
the British gains in that quarter. This gain was
permanent, though it proved to be rather a visible‘
prize for valour than a useful strategic addition to
the line. So long as the sinister, low-lying dump of
Fosse 8 overlooked it and was itself untaken, it was
impossible to make much use of the redoubt. For
forty-eight hours the advanced line was held by the
139th Brigade against several brisk counter-attacks.
At the end of that time the position was handed over
to the safe custody of the Guards, while the Forty-
sixth North Midland Division withdrew from that
front line which was of their own creation. Colonel
Martin of the 4th Leicesters, who was shot through
the knee, but refused to move until he saw the result
of the attack, Colonel Fowler of the 8th Sherwoods,
Colonel Sandal] of the 5th Lincolns, Major Cooper
of the 4th Lincolns, and nearly 4000 oﬁicers and men,
were among the casualties during the forty-eight
hours of exposure.
Cm'rm
The
Battle of
Loos.


234 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IX.
The
Battle of
Loos.
The action was a very desperate one, and nothing
could have been ﬁner than the conduct of all engaged.
“It was not the actual advance, but the holding of
the position afterwards, that was dreaded, as the
Germans are so quick at counter-attacking.” So
wrote one of the combatants. The dread was well
founded, for the Germans proved to be very numer-
ous and aggressive, and there can be little doubt
that at this period their bombers had a technical
proﬁciency which was superior to our own, whether
their opponents were Guards or Territorials. It is
characteristic of the unique warfare now prevailing
that the contending parties had practically aban-
doned riﬂes, save as so many pikes, and that each
man carried a pouch full of projectiles, the size of a
duck’s egg, and capable of disabling a dozen in a
single burst. It may be added that both sides wore
leathern helmets, sometimes with the visors up and
sometimes with the face entirely concealed, so that
it appeared to be a murderous strife of the strange,
goggle-eyed, mask-faced creatures of a nightmare.
Such were the extraordinary products of modern
European warfare.
Could all the ground taken have been permanently
held, this would have been a ﬁne little victory. So
constant has been the phenomenon that the extreme
point cannot be held that it could now be stated as
an axiom for either side, and seemed to suggest that
the methods of attack should be in some way modi-
ﬁed. Each successive line of resistance has decreased
the momentum of the stormers and has helped to
lessen their store of bombs, while the farther they
have advanced the more difﬁcult it is for fresh men
or supplies to reach them. Then, again, their di-


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 235
minished numbers have caused a contraction and
bunching of the line, so enabling the counter-attack
to get round their ﬂanks. Add to this the physical
exhaustion caused by extreme exertions while carry-
ing a considerable weight, and one has the factors
which always produce the same result, and which led
eventually to the more fruitful tactics of the limited
objective.
When the Forty-sixth Midland Division advanced
upon the Hohenzollern Redoubt on October 13, there
was a brisk attack also by the Twelfth Division upon
their right, and by the First Division on the right of
the Twelfth. In the case of the Twelfth Division,
now commanded by General Scott, the 37th Brigade
(Fowler) was heavily engaged. The 7th East Sur-
reys of this brigade carried and permanently held
the Gun Trench, a position which had cost them the
lives of many ofﬁcers and men upon the 8th. Attack-
ing the same line of trenches to the left, the 6th
Buﬂ’s lost heavily under oblique ﬁre, without any
appreciable gain. Of three companies who went out,
11 oﬂicers and 400 men were left upon the ground,
and a photograph has revealed the perfect alignment
of the dead. The 35th Brigade (Straubensee) had a
similar experience to the left near the Quarries, the
losses falling most heavily upon the 5th Berkshires
and the 7th Norfolks.
At the same hour the First Division, with a smoke
and gas screen before them, had broken in upon the
German lines to the south-west of Hulluch, near the
Hulluch—Lens road. About a thousand yards of
trenches were taken, but the shell—ﬁre was so murder-
ous that it was found to be impossible to retain them.
On the whole, it must be admitted that, although
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 237
Glasgow Highlanders advanced upon their right.
The attack was unable to make any further progress,
but the ﬁght was sustained for several hours, and had
the desired effect of occupying the local forces of the
enemy and preventing them from detaching rein-
forcements to the south.
The same remark would apply to the forward
movement of the 58th Brigade of the Nineteenth
Division to the immediate north of Givenchy. This
division of the New Army is mainly English in com-
position, but on this their ﬁrst serious engagement
the work fell chieﬂy upon two Welsh battalions, the
9th Welsh and the 9th Welsh Fusiliers. Both these
corps sustained heavy losses, but sacriﬁced them-
selves, as so many others were obliged to do, in keep-
ing up the appearance of an attack which was never
seriously intended.
Taking the subsidiary attacks from the south up-
wards, we come next to that of the Indians in the
vicinity of Neuve Chapelle. This was a very brilliant
aﬂ’air, carried out with the true Indian tiger spring.
Had it been possible to support by adequate reserves
of men and an unrestricted gun-ﬁre, it had in it the
possibility of a ﬁne victory. The attack was carried
out by the Meerut Division, with the Garhwali
Brigade on the right and the Bareilly upon the left,
the Dehra Dun being in reserve. On the right the
Garhwalis were partly held up by wire, but the
Bareillys came through everything and swept into
the front-line trenches, taking 200 unwounded pris-
oners of the Seventh Westphalian Corps. Two bat-
talions of the Black Watch, the 2nd and 4th, with the
69th Sikhs, were in the lead, a combination which has
broken many a battle line before. The 58th Riﬂes
CHAPTER
IX.
The
Battle of
Loos.


238 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTEE
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.
(Vaughan’s) and a second Sikh regiment, the 33rd,
thickened the attack, and they swept forward into
the second-line trenches, which they also cleared.
They were now half a mile within the enemy’s posi-
tion, and both their ﬂanks were open to attack. The
reserve brigade was hurried up, but the trenches
were blocked with wounded and prisoners, so that
progress was very difﬁcult. The German counter-
attack was delivered with great energy and valour.
It took the form of strong bombing parties acting
upon each exposed ﬂank. The 8th Gurkhas, who had
been the only battalion which succeeded in breaking
through on the right, linked up with the 4th Black
Watch, holding back the ﬂank advance to the south,
but to the north the Germans got so far forward that
the advanced Indians were practically cut off. The
immediate neighbours of the Indians to the north
were the 60th Brigade of the Twentieth Division,
another English division of the New Army. Two
battalions of this brigade, the 12th Riﬂe Brigade and
the 6th Shropshires, were thrown into the ﬁght, and
covered the threatened ﬂank until their supply of
bombs—more and more an essential of modern war-
fare—was exhausted. It was clearly necessary that
the advanced troops should be drawn back, since the
reserves could not be got up to support them, and
the need was becoming very great. In a little they
might be attacked on front and rear with the chance
of disaster. The Sikhs and Highlanders fell back,
therefore, with great steadiness, but enduring heavy
losses. In the end no ground was gained, but con-
siderable punishment was inﬂicted as well as suf-
fered, the German trenches being full of their dead.
The primary purpose of holding them to their


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 239
ground was amply fulﬁlled. It cannot be denied,
however, that in this, as in so many other episodes of
the Battle of Loos, the German showed himself to be
a stubborn ﬁghter, who rises superior to temporary
defeat and struggles on while there is still a chance
of victory. His superior supply of bombs had also
a good deal to do with the success of his counter-
attack.
Whilst this very sharp conﬂict had been raging
on the Indian line, the Eighth Division to the north
was engaged in a very similar operation in the region
of Bois-Grenier. The course of events was almost
exactly the same in each instance. The attack of the
Eighth Division was carried out by the 25th Brigade
(Stephens). The 2nd Riﬂe Brigade were on the
right, the 2nd Berks in the centre, and the 2nd Lin-
coln upon the left. The front trench was carried,
and 120 men of the Sixth Bavarian Reserve Division
fell into the hands of the stormers. Part of the
second line was also captured. The positions were
held for the greater part of the day, and it was not
until four in the afternoon that the increasing pres-
sure of the counter-attack drove the British back to
their original line. Here again the object of deten-
' tion had been fully achieved.
The most important, however, of all the subsidiary
attacks was that which was carried out to the
extreme north of the line in the district of Hooge.
This attack was made by the Fifth Corps, which had
changed both its general and its divisions since the
days of its long agony in May. It was now com-
manded by General Allenby, and it consisted of the
Third Regular Division (Haldane), the Fourteenth
Light Infantry Division of the New Army (Couper),
CHAPTER

The
Battle of
Loos.


240 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1918
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.
and the Forty-sixth Division of Midland Territorials
(Stuart-Wortley), the ﬁne work of which at a later
stage of the operations has already been described.
The ﬁrst two of these units bore the brunt upon Sep-
tember 25. The advance, which was across the old
bloody ground of Bellewaarde, was signalled by the
explosion of a large mine under the German posi-
tion in the trenches immediately south of that Via
Dolorosa, the Ypres—Menin road.
The attack upon the left was made by the 42nd
Brigade (Markham), all four battalions, the 5th
Oxford and Bucks, 5th Shropshires, 9th Riﬂe Bri-
gade, and 9th Riﬂes being strongly engaged. The
German trenches were reached and occupied, but
after some hours the counter-attack proved to be too
strong, and the brigade fell back to its original line.
Two brigades of the Third Division attacked in
the centre in the direction of Bellewaarde Lake. The
7th Brigade upon the left ran into unbroken wire,
before which the leading regiments, the 2nd Irish
Riﬂes and the 2nd South Lancashire, sustained heavy
losses while making no progress. The 8th Brigade to
the south of them had better fortune, however. This
brigade, strengthened by the 1st Scots Fusiliers,
made a ﬁne advance immediately after the great
mine explosion. Some 200 prisoners and a consider~
able stretch of trench were captured. A redoubt had
been taken by the 4th Gordons, and was held by them
and by the 4th Middlesex, but the bombardment in
the afternoon was so terriﬁc that it had to be aban-
doned. By evening the original line had been reoc-
cupied, the division having certainly held the Ger-
mans to their ground, but at very heavy cost to
themselves. As these various attacks from the 5th


242 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.
bourhood would bring the valuable French coal-
ﬁelds back to their rightful owners. The most sub-
stantial proofs of victory were 3000 prisoners,
including 57 officers, 26 ﬁeld-guns, and 40 machine-
guns. On the other hand, in the mixed ﬁghting of
the 26th we lost not fewer than 1000 prisoners, in-
cluding a brigadier-general. Altogether the losses
to the Army during the three weeks of ﬁghting were
not less than 50,000 men and 2000 ofﬁcers. A large
proportion of these were wounded.
There are some consolations for our limited suc-
cess in this venture. Having started to endeavour
to break the German line in one movement, it was
natural to persevere, but now that we can see from
how strong a hand our enemy played, we may well
ask ourselves whether a more successful advance
upon the 26th and 27 th might not have led to grave
troubles. The French had been held on the right;
the Second Division was stationary upon the left.
Therefore we were advancing from a contracted
base, and the farther the advance went the more it
resembled a long, thin tongue protruded between the
jaws of the enemy. There was considerable danger
that the enemy, closing in on either ﬂank while hold-
ing the advance in front, might have bitten it off, for
we know for certain that we had none of those suc~
cessive rolling waves of reinforcement coming up
which would turn an ebb to a ﬂood. However, as it
was we had much for which to be thankful. When
one thinks of the almost superstitious reverence with
which the German army used to be regarded—an
army which had never once been really beaten dur-
ing three European campaigns—it is surely a just
cause for sober satisfaction that a British force, half


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 243
of which consisted of new formations, should have
driven such an enemy with loss of prisoners and
guns out of a triple line of fortiﬁcations, strength-
ened by every device of modern art, and should
afterwards have permanently held the greater part
of the ﬁeld against every effort at reconquest.
The account of this great battle, a battle in which
from ﬁrst to last no fewer than twelve British divi-
sions were engaged in the Loos area alone, cannot be
concluded without a word as to the splendid French
success won in Champagne during the same period.
There is a great similarity between the two opera-
tions, but the French attacked with at least three
times as many men upon a threefold broader front.
As in our own case, their best results were gained in.-
the ﬁrst spring, and they were able to continue their
gains for several days, until, like ourselves, they
found that the consolidating defence was too strong
for the weakening attack. Their victory was none
the less a very great one, yielding 25,000 prisoners
and 125 captured cannon. It is impossible to doubt
that both French and British if they duly learned
their lessons, and if they continued to accumulate
their resources, were now on the path which would
lead them to ﬁnal victory.
Before settling down into the inactivity enforced
by the Flemish mud, there was one further brisk
skirmish upon October 20 in that old battle-ground,
the Hohenzollern Redoubt. This was a bombing
attack, organised by the 2nd Irish Guards and led
by Captain Hubbard. The Irishmen were new to the
game, and somewhat outclassed at ﬁrst by the more
experienced Germans, but under the gallant encour-
agement of Lieutenant Tallents, who rallied them
Cum
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.


244 THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN, 1915
CHAPTER
IX.
The
Battle of
Loos.
Coming of
winter.
after being himself badly wounded, they turned the
tide, and, aided by the Coldstream, made good the
section attacked. Lieutenant Hamilton was killed
and 60 men killed or wounded in this brisk en-
counter.
So, for a second time, wet, foggy winter settled
down upon the water-logged, clay-bottomed trenches.
Little did those who had manned them at Christmas
of 1914 imagine that Christmas of 1915 would ﬁnd
them in the same position. Even their brave hearts
would have sunk at the thought. And yet a move
back of a couple of miles at Ypres, and a move for-
ward of the same extent in the south, were all that
either side could show for a year’s hard work and the
loss of so many thousand lives. Bloch, the military
prophet of 1898, had indeed been justiﬁed of his
wisdom. Far off, where armies could move, the year
had seen great ﬂuctuations. The Russians had been
pushed out of Poland and far over their own borders.
Serbia had been overrun. Montenegro was on the
verge of utter destruction. The great attempt upon
the Dardanelles had been made and had failed, after
an epic of heroism which will surely live for ever in
our history and in that of our brave Australian and
New Zealand brothers. We had advanced in Meso-
potamia to within sight of the minarets of Bagdad,
and yet again we had been compelled to leave our
task unﬁnished and our little force was besieged at
Kut. The one new gleam of light in the whole year
had been the adhesion of Italy to the cause of Free-
dom. And yet, though nearly every detail had been
adverse to us, our deepest instincts told us that the
stream did in truth move with us, however great and
confusing might be the surface current. Here on the


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 245
long western line, motionless, but not passive, locked
in a vast strain which grew ever more tense, was the
real war. All others were subsidiary. And here in
this real war, the one theatre where decisive results
could be looked for, our position was very different
in the opening of 1916 to that which 1915 had shown
us. In the year our actual Army in France had
grown three- and fourfold. The munitions had in-
creased in far greater proportions. The days had
gone for ever when a serious action meant three
months of shell economy before the ﬁght and three
months of recuperation after it. To the gunners it
was like an evil dream to look back to the days when
three shots per day was the allowance, and never
save on a deﬁnite target. Now, thanks to the driving
power of Lloyd George and his admirable band of
assistants, there would never again be a dearth, and
no attack should ever languish for want of the means
7 to follow it up. Our guns, too, were clustering ever
more thickly and looming ever larger. Machine-
guns were pouring forth, though there, perhaps, we
had not yet overtaken our enemy. Above all, our
Fleet still held the seas, cries of distress or at least
of discomfort from within Germany rose ever more
clearly, and it was certain that the sufferings which
she had so wantonly and wickedly inﬂicted upon
others were beginning to be repaid to her. “Gott”
does indeed “strafe,” and needs no invocation, but
now, as always, it is on the guilty that the rod falls.
The close of 1915 found the Empire somewhat dis-
appointed at the past, but full of grim resolution for
the future.
One event had occurred in the latter end of the
year which cannot be allowed to pass without com—
CHAPTER
IX'.
The
Battle of
Loos.
Change 0!
command.


THE BATTLE OF LOOS 247
Sir Douglas Haig, who succeeded to the chief
command, was the leader who would undoubtedly
have been called to the vacant post by both Army
and public had leaders been chosen in the old Pre-
torian fashion. From the beginning he and Smith-
Dorrien had been the right and left hands of the
Chief, and now that ill-health had unhappily elimi-
nated the latter, Haig’s claim was paramount.
Again and again he had borne the heaviest part in
the ﬁghting, and had saved the situation when it
seemed desperate. He was a man of the type which
the British love, who shines the brighter against a
dark background. Youthful for so high a command,
and with a frame and spirit which were even younger
than his years, with the caution of a Scotchman and
the calculated dash of a leader of cavalry, he was
indeed the ideal man for a great military crisis. No
task might seem impossible to the man who had held
back the German tide at Ypres. With Haig in com-
mand and with an Army which was ever growing in
numbers, in quality, and in equipment, the British
waited with quiet conﬁdence for the campaign of
1916. '
CHAPTER
IX.

The
Battle of
Loos.


250
INDEX
Clark, Lieutenant, 89
Cliﬁord, Lieutenant, 218
Coates, Captain, 208
Cochrane, General, 174, 236
Cockburn, General, 159
Collison-Morley, Colonel, 192
Compton, Lord, 102
Congreve, General, V.C., 140, 142
Cooper, Major, 233
Couper, General, 140, 154, 239
Crabb, Lieutenant, 9
Craig, Lieutenant, 144
Croker, General, 92
Cuinchy, action of, 3
Curry, General, 59
Cuthbert, General, 134, 188
Daly, General, 174
Dardanelles, attempt to force the,
167, 168, 244
Davies, General, 141, 142
De Ligne, General, 66
De Lisle, General, 52, 66, 95, 108
Dent, Major, 203
Dering, Captain, 37
Dickens, General, 177
Dill, Major, 117
Dobson, Major, 210
D’Urbal, General, 6
Edgar, Major, 133
Edwards, Captain, 91
Egerton, Staff-Captain, 38
Elton, Lieutenant, 31
Evans-Freke, Colonel the Hon.,
102
Evil], Colonel, 232
Fane, Captain, 94
Fanshawe, General, 23, 142
Farquhar, Colonel, 34
Ferguson, General, 7, 42, 108,
140

Ferguson, Colonel, 102
Ferrers, Captain, 17
Festubert, battle of, 114
Feveran, Captain, 24
Field, Lieutenant Hamilton, 49
Fielding, General, 216
Finegan, Captain, 147
Flower, Brigade-Major, 222
Foch, General, 164, 170, 220
Follett, Captain, 31
Forbes, Colonel, 32
Forestier-Walker, General, 199,
202, 204
Fortescue, General. 8, 10, 31, 107
Fowkes, Major, 6
Fowler, General, 228, 235
Fowler, Colonel, 233
Fraser, Colonel, 129
Freke, Colonel, 102
French, General Sir John, 12, 13,
42, 43, 96, 114, 123, 173, 192,
193, 212, 220, 246
Fry, Lieutenant, 31
Gabbett, Colonel, 128
Gardner, Major, 11
Gault, Major, 88
Geddes, Colonel, 55, 73
Geen, Lieutenant, 158
George, Right Hon. David Lloyd,
135, 245
Gibson, Lieutenant, 228
Givenchy, actions at, 3, 143, 145
Gloster, General, 55, 208
Gough, General, killed, 8, 34
Gough, General Hubert, 172, 181
Gough, Colonel Worsley, 95
Graham, Colonel, 178
Graham, Major, 178
Graham, Lieutenant, 5
Green, Lieutenant, 4
Greenlees, Lieutenant, 128
Grenfell, Captain the Hon. 5., 102


%2
INDEX
McGee, Colonel, 59
McHaig, Colonel, 73
MacIvor, Captain, 215
Maclean, Colonel, 178
McLean, Colonel, 26, 28
MacNaughton, Major, 4
M’Neil, Lieutenant, 187, 209
Mallandain, Lieutenant, 64
Margetts, Captain, 228
Markham, General, 240
Martin, Colonel (Lancaster), 73
Martin, Colonel (Leicester), 233
Mathieson, Lieutenant, 20
Maude, General, 35
Mercer, General, 53, 56
Mesopotamia, campaign in, 168
Miller, Lieutenant, 80
Mitford, General, 199, 209
Mitford, Major the Hon. C. B.,
102
Monro, General, 109, 132, 164
Moriarty, Colonel, 104
Morland, General, 36, 42, 140,
142, 164
Morrison-Bell, Major, M.P., 2
Neale, Colonel, 222
Neuve Chapelle, battle of, 12-28
Neville, Captain, 96
Nicholls, General, 204
Nicholson, General, 161
Niven, Lieutenant, 88, 89
Norsworthy, Major, 59
Northey, General, 39, 42
Noyes, Major, 203
Nugent, General, 155, 158, 159
O’Gowan, General Wanless, 7, 36,
3am
Oldham, Major Leslie, 35
O’Leary, Private Michael, V.C.,
5
Oxley, General, 118

Papineau, Lieutenant, 9, 89
Paterson, Major, 41
Paynter, Colonel, 28
Pereira, General, 221, 222
Phillips, Hon. C. E. A., 102
Pickersgill, Lieutenant, 106
Pinney, General, 16, 18
Plumer, General, 7, 8, 10, 30, 48,
91, 95, 108, 140, 141
Ponsonby, General, 216, 227
Prowse, General, 77, 152
Prowse, Colonel, 31
Pryce, Captain Mostyn, 32
Pulman, Captain, 20
Pulteney, General, 7, 141
Purvis, Colonel, 187
Putz, General, 46
Ramsay, General Sir John, 199,
200
Ramsay, Colonel, 185 _
Rawlinon, General Sir Henry,
7, 14, 116, 172, 181
Rees, Captain, 4
Regiments:
Artillery-—
Durham Territorial Artillery,
106
Hon. Artillery Company, 150
R.F.A., 40th Brigade, 5; 52nd
Brigade, 181; 94th Brigade,
210
Cavalry—
lst Life Guards, 96
2nd Life Guards, 96
Royal Horse Guards (Blues),
96, 102
1st Dragoons (Royals), 96, 102
3rd Dragoon Guards, 96, 109
4th Dragoon Guards, 97
5th Dragoon Guards, 97
10th Hussars, 96
11th Hussars, 8, 98


INDEX 253
Regiments:
Cavalry—
18th Hussars, 97, 105
9th Lancers, 97, 105
16th Lancers, 8
Essex Yeomanry, 96, 102
Leicestershire Yeomanry, 96,
102
North Somerset Yeomanry, 96,
102
Guards—-
Coldstream, 2, 4, 5, 6, 132,
216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 227,
244
Grenadier, 26, 28, 127, 131,
216, 218, 219, 227
Irish, 5, 6, 131, 216, 217, 218,
219, 227, 243
Scots, 2, 4, 26, 28, 127, 128,
216, 217, 218, 220
Welsh, 216, 219
Infantry—
Argyll and Sutherland High-
landers, 72, 76, 86, 91, 93,
104, 176, 180, 188
Artists’ Riﬂes (28th London),
134
Bedford, 37, 39, 79, 80, 199
Berkshire, 16, 28, 116, 118,
125, 176, 184, 235, 239
Black Watch, 3, 4, 118, 121,
122, 147, 180, 186, 191, 196,
220, 237, 238
Border, 26, 28, 127
Buffs (East Kent), 55, 77,
105, 106, 161, 163, 200, 201,
221, 222, 224, 228, 235
Cambridge, 31
Cameron Highlanders, 3, 42,
92, 93, 121, 129, 180, 186,
187, 188, 196, 198
Cameronians (Scottish Riﬂes),
17, 28, 118, 145, 146, 187

Regiments:
Infantry—
Cheshire, 90, 108
Connaught Rangers, 68
Devon, 17, 41, 79, 80, 118,
181, 182
Dorset, 79, 80
Dublin Fusiliers, 72, 91, 104
Duke of Cornwall ’s, 8, 30, 31,
55, 71, 157, 158, 159
Durham Light Infantry, 60,
62, 63, 69, 105, 106, 158,
160, 162, 163, 208
East Lancashire, 19, 65, 85,
86, 91, 98, 105, 118
East Surrey, 39, 40, 64, 91,
105, 200, 222, 235
East Yorkshire, 52, 58, 77, 86,
88, 160, 163, 202, 203
Essex, 76, 97, 99, 104, 200
Gloucester, 3, 4, 92, 94, 122,
184, 228
Gordon Highlanders, 26, 28,
127, 145, 147, 182, 183, 186,
191, 240
Hampshire, 34, 65, 70, 86, 98
Herts, 131
Highland Light Infantry, 129,
131, 178, 186, 187, 236
Inniskilling Fusiliers, 125
Irish Fusiliers, 97
King’s Liverpool, 23, 125, 126,
131, 147, 174, 183, 185, 228
King’s Own Royal Lancaster,
71, 76, 77
King’s Own Scottish Border-
ers, 36, 43, 178, 179, 186,
187
King’s Royal Riﬂes, 24, 155,
157, 158
Lancashire Fusiliers, 76, 153
Leicester, 19, 28, 161, 230,
231, 232, 233


INDEX
255
Regiments:
Infantry—-
Seaforth Highlanders, 22, 28,
63, 72, 178, 180, 186, 191,
196
Sherwood Foresters, 19, 25,
28, 118, 160, 162, 163, 200,
230, 232, 233
Shropshire, 32, 55, 70, 88, 161,
163, 238, 240
Somerset Light Infantry, 77,
152, 205
South Lancashire, 76, 83, 86,
240
South Staﬂordshire, 24, 127,
128, 174, 182, 230, 232
South Wales Borderers, 4, 121,
122
Suﬁ'olk, 60, 89, 90, 107, 200,
201, 224
Sussex, 3, 5, 120, 184, 197, 215
Warwick, 72, 91, 127, 128, 153,
182
Welsh, 4, 107, 122, 185, 195,
199, 224, 237
Welsh Fusiliers, 121, 127, 128,
176, 237
West Riding, 37, 71, 79, 80
West Yorkshire, 17, 18, 25, 205
Wiltshire, 29, 132, 150
Worcester, 19, 26, 28, 29, 125,
126, 150, 197
York and Lancaster, 55, 71,
77, 91, 161, 163, 205, 222
Yorkshire, 202, 203, 204, 205
Yorkshire Light Infantry, 37,
86, 208, 211, 222

Royal Engineers, 11, 35, 38,
43, 79, 191, 214
Canadian—
Ist Canadians (Ontario), 53,
144

Regiments:
Canadian—
2nd Canadians, 53
3rd Canadians (Toronto), 53,
133
4th Canadians, 53
5th Canadians, 50, 133
7th Canadians (British Colum-
bia), 133
8th Canadians (Winnipeg Ri-
ﬂes), 50, 65
10th Canadians, 51, 133
13th Canadians (Royal High-
landers), 50, 53, 57, 58, 59,
132
14th Canadians
59, 132
15th Canadians (48th High-
landers), 50, 57, 58
16th Canadian Scottish, 51,
132
Princess Pat-ricia’s, 9, 32, 88,
97
King Edward’s Horse, 135
Seely’s Mounted Brigade, 135
Strathcona’s Horse, 135
Indian Army—
129th Baluchis, 68
39th Garhwalis, 19, 28
1st Gurkhas, 71
3rd Gurkhas, 19, 20, 22,
28
4th Gurkhas, 22, 28, 71
8th Gurkhas, 19, 238
58th Indian Riﬂes
an ’s) , 237
3rd Indian Sappers and Min-
ers, 68
Jats, 22
34th Pioneers, 68
15th Sikhs, 131
33rd Sikhs, 238
69th Sikhs, 237
(Montreal),
(Vaugh-


INDEX 257
Willoughby, General, 134, 189 Wiirtemberg, Duke of, 48
Wilson, General, 108, 140, 142 Wynyard, Captain, 41
Wing, General, 141, 142, 223
Wood, Colonel, 129 Ypres, second battle of, 46-113;
Woolley, Lieutenant, V.C., 40 result of the battle, 108;
Worthington, Colonel, 222 sequence of events, 110-113
Wright, Colonel, 214
Wright, Lieutenant, 18 Zeppelin raids on Britain, 167


ll