Allen L. Churchill

THE BRITISH FRONT IN ARTOIS

Ever since August 16, 1915, a persistent and almost continuous bombardment of the German lines had been carried out by the French and, to a less extent, by the British and Belgian artillery. The allied gunners appear to have distributed their favors quite impartially. There was nothing in the action taken to direct attention to one sector more than to another. The Vosges, the Meurthe and Moselle, Lorraine and the Woevre, the Argonne, Champagne, the Aisne, the Somme, the Arras sector, Ypres and the Yser, and the Belgian coast where the British navy had joined in, all were subjected to a heavy, deliberate and effective fire from guns of all calibers. As in Champagne, the rate of fire quickened up on September 22, 1915. Great concentrations of guns had been made at various points, and enormous quantities of shells had been collected in readiness for the attack. But the artillery preparation which immediately preceded that attack in the west was of a most terrific description. Shortly after midnight and in the early hours of Saturday morning, September 25, 1915, the German positions were treated to a bombardment that had rarely been equaled in violence. From the Yser Canal down to the end of the French line the Allies' guns took up the note, and soon the whole of the allied line was thundering and reechoing with the infernal racket. The German lines became smothered in dust and smoke, their parapets simply melted away, their barbed-wire entanglements disappeared. Those sleeping thirty or forty miles away were awakened in the night by the dull rumbling. The whole atmosphere was choked with the noise, and so it continued throughout the day with hardly an interval. As if in anticipation of the coming onslaught the German artillery had also raised the key of its fire to a higher pitch several days before.

Simultaneously with the attack in Champagne, Sir John French assumed the offensive on the British front. The main British attack was directed in the neighborhood of Lens, against Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. While the French troops were rushing the German first line in Champagne, the British troops executed a precisely similar movement south of La BassÉe Canal to the east of Grenay and Vermelles. With the first rush they captured the German trenches on a front of five miles, penetrating the lines in some places to a distance of 4,000 yards. They conquered the western outskirts of Hulluch, the village of Loos, with the mining works around it, and Hill 70. They lost the quarries northwest of Hulluch again, but retook them on the following day. Other attacks were made north of the La BassÉe Canal, which drew strong German reserves toward these points of the lines, where hard fighting occurred throughout the day with fluctuating success. The British also made another attack on Hooge on either side of the Menin road. The assault north of the road yielded the Bellewaarde Farm and ridge, but the Germans subsequently recaptured this part. South of the road the attack gained about 600 yards of German trench. The British took 2,600 prisoners, eighteen guns and thirty machine guns in the first day. The Fourth British Army Corps, under Sir Henry Rawlinson, had thus taken Loos and overrun Hill 70, a mile to the east, and even penetrated to CitÉ St. Auguste. The Fifth Corps, under Sir Hubert Gough, on the left, had stormed the quarries, taken CitÉ St. Elie, and occupied a portion of the village of Haisnes. But the First Army, in its attack, had not kept adequate reserves on hand; and those at first at the disposal of the general in chief, which had to serve the whole front and to be kept in hand in case of unexpected events, came up too late to enable the British to hold and consolidate all the ground they had won. The Ypres-Arras sector had been more formidably fortified than any other portion of the German front. It is an extremely thickly populated neighborhood, and the terrain is full of difficulties. It could not be expected that an advance here, at least from the outset, could be as rapid as that in Champagne. Whereas in the latter it was a fight for rivers, ridges and woods, in the close country north of Arras the struggle raged in and around villages, houses, and for some particular trench that had to be taken before the French and British could enter the great plain that stretches down to Lille. Every house along that part had been converted into a fortress. When the superstructure had been blown to pieces by shell fire, pioneers burrowed thirty or fifty feet below the cellars and thus held on to the position.

To the right of the British in Artois, the French infantry attack was directed toward the forest of Hache. Only eighty or ninety yards separated the French from the German trenches, and the French infantry, which attained its objective in a few minutes, found the trenches a mass of ruins and almost deserted, and the Germans retreating into the wood. The first wave of attackers followed in pursuit, but they reached the second line of trenches, situated in the middle of the wood, without meeting any Germans in considerable force. They pushed on to the eastern edge of the wood, but the Germans again put up no defense, and their third-line trenches, on the fringe of the wood, were likewise taken. Then came a halt in the advance. The German commander pulled his men together and, with the reserves which had come up in the meantime, launched a counterattack against the French, who had quickly established themselves in their newly captured positions. Heavy shells, high explosives and shrapnel were raining in the trenches occupied by the French, and but for the new steel helmets which had recently been supplied, the casualties would have been enormous. One man's helmet was split clean across the crown by a shell splinter, but the man escaped with merely a scratch. The Germans came on in close formations, hurling grenades as they marched. The atmosphere of the wood became almost insupportable with the smoke. Finally, the French hurled a veritable torrent of grenades, which drove the Germans back and compelled them to withdraw across the River Souchez. Boise Hache was entirely won.

The British attack between La BassÉe and Lens and the French attack on the Souchez side were admirably coordinated, and were directed mainly to assist the French to gain the heights west of Vimy, which were the unattained object of their efforts during May and June. By September 27, 1915, the French had all Souchez in their hands, and were advancing upon Givenchy. The capture of the Vimy heights was an item of the highest importance, for to the eastward of them all the ground was commanded by their fire, and the chances were that the Germans would fall back on Douai and on the line of the Lille-Douai Canal, once they were pushed off the high ground. In the Argonne the German Crown Prince carried out desperate attacks against the French first-line trenches at La Fille Morte and Bolante. These the French repulsed with heavy losses to the Germans, whose dead lay piled in heaps in front of the positions. One result of the British attack was the hurried recall of the active Corps of Prussian Guards from the eastern front—an important relief to the hard-pressed Russians. This famous corps was at the time split up into three groups; the active corps was with Mackensen in Galicia and in the advance upon Brest-Litovsk. It was transferred to the Dvina after the fall of Brest, and had since been engaged before Dvinsk. The Reserve Guard Corps was in the central group of the German armies, and the other, the Third Division, was still in Galicia. The British and the Prussian Guards had made each other's acquaintance in the Battle of Ypres.

The French Gains in the Artois Region, September, 1915.

At the end of the month Haisnes, on the northern flank of the new British line, was still for the greater part in German possession; on the right flank the British were across the Lens-La BassÉe road. The British had captured not only the first position of their enemy, but also a second or supporting line which ran west of Loos. They were now up against the third line. Sir John French reported having taken so far over 3,000 prisoners, twenty-one guns, and forty machine guns. The French in Artois had taken a matter of 15,000 prisoners and a number of guns. After obstinate day and night fighting they had reached Hill 140, the culminating point of the crests of Vimy, and the orchards to the south. The crown prince still plugged away on this front with heavy artillery and aerial torpedoes. Columns of flames began to issue from his trenches on September 27, 1915—the inflammable liquid appeared to be a composition of tar and petrol—and the smoke and flames, carried by the wind blowing from the German trenches, soon reached the French line and made the atmosphere intolerably hot and suffocating for the French troops. Then suddenly out of the thick fumes began to appear German infantry with fixed bayonets, sent forward to the attack. They were literally mown down by the fire from the French machine guns and rifles, but the wave of attackers seemed unending, and by dint of overwhelming numbers it poured into the French trenches. A terrible hand-to-hand fight then ensued in an atmosphere so thick that it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. These clouds were not poisonous, for the Germans had themselves to fight in them; they were let loose to cover the infantry charge.

The French were compelled to retire, which they did, contesting every foot of ground. Meanwhile, reenforcements had arrived and these were at once thrown into the fighting line. The French, however, were soon brought to a halt. Asphyxiating and lachrymatory bombs, which emitted bluish smoke as they exploded, began to fall in their midst. Spurred on by their leaders the men dashed on, passing through yet another of these barriers of smoke until they came to grips with the attackers, who were now coming on like a torrent, in close formation, shouting wildly. Altogether, the scene was one that vividly brings to the imagination the truth of Sherman's dictum that "war is hell." A mad potpourri of dimly visible forms, struggling like demons, shooting, stabbing, hacking and roaring in an infernal caldron of tar, poison, sulphur, tears and blood. Truly a worthy theme for another Dante and a Gustave DorÉ. For some time it looked as if the French would be crumpled up, but reserves were steadily streaming in, and eventually the attackers began to waver and fall back. The French 75-millimeter Creusots came into play again, and after a battle that lasted in all twenty-four hours, the Germans were driven back to their own trenches.

In the morning of October 2, 1915, the Germans made a demonstration in front of the Belgian trenches at Dixmude, consisting of a bombardment and a violent discharge of bombs. On one small section alone 400 bombs were dropped. The German infantry broke into the Belgian trenches, but were dislodged again in a few minutes.

The position which the British had captured was exceptionally strong, consisting of a double line, including some large redoubts and a network of trenches and bomb-proof shelters. Dugouts were constructed at short intervals all along the line, some of them being large caves thirty feet below the ground. The French capture of Souchez was an event of considerable importance, for the German High Command had issued orders for this section to hold on to the last, that it was to be retained at all costs. The road to the Douai plain was to be barred to the French, who had to be held back behind the advanced works of the Artois plateau. In May, 1915, the problem was to prevent the French setting foot on the summits of Notre Dame de Lorette and of the Topart Mill. The Germans sacrificed many thousands of men with this object, but the French nevertheless made themselves masters of the heights which the Germans considered of capital importance, and dislodged them from Carency and Ablain-St. Nazaire. There remained only one stage to cover—the Souchez Valley—to reach the last crest which dominated the whole country to the east, and beyond which the ground is flat. This task had been accomplished during the last few days of September and the beginning of October. Souchez and its advanced bastion, the ChÂteau Carleul, had been made into a formidable fortification by the changing of the course of the Carency streams. The Germans had transformed the marshy ground to the southeast of this front into a perfect swamp, which was regarded as impassable. The German batteries posted at Angres were able to enfilade the valley on the north. From behind the crest of Hill 119 to Hill 140, which were covered with trenches connected by a network of communication trenches, many batteries were engaged against the French in the district of Notre Dame de Lorette, Ablain-St. Nazaire and Carency. To the north of Souchez the German trenches were still clinging to the Notre Dame de Lorette slope.

The attack of September 25, 1915, was to overcome all these obstacles. The artillery preparation, which lasted five days, was so skillfully handled that, even before it was finished, many German deserters came into the French lines declaring that they had had enough. The infantry attack was delivered at noon on September 25, 1915, and with one rush the French troops reached the objectives which had been marked out for them—the chÂteau and grounds of Carleul and the islet south of Souchez. Meanwhile, other detachments carried the cemetery and forced their way to the first slopes of Hill 119. On the left the French troops advanced down the slopes of Notre Dame de Lorette and made a dash at the Hache Wood, the western outskirts of which they reached twenty minutes after the attack began. The capture of the wood has already been described. The French attack on the right, being held up by machine-gun fire, could not be maintained in the cemetery, and it was decided to approach Souchez by the main road so that they might pour in their forces on the east, while, to the north, the French force that had bitten its way into the Hache Wood was to continue its advance. This maneuver decided the day. The Germans, who were in danger of being cut off in Souchez, abandoned their positions, and those who had retaken the cemetery, being in the same perilous circumstances, regained by their communication trenches their second line on the slopes of Hill 119. Thus fell Souchez to the French in two days. The allied offensive was a short and sharp affair, skillfully planned and bravely executed, but disappointing in result. At the great price of 50,000 casualties the British had overthrown the Germans on a front of five miles, and in some places to a depth of 4,000 yards, and had captured many prisoners and guns; but they had not definitely broken the German lines. At a heavy cost the Allies on the western front had captured about 160 German guns and disposed of 150,000 Germans, including some 27,000 prisoners, and the result of their efforts was to shake the Germans in the west very severely and to call back to France many troops from the eastern front. That the blow was regarded by the kaiser as a serious one was shown by an Order of the Day in which he declared that every important success obtained by the Allies on the western front "will be considered as due to the culpable negligence of the German commanders, who will lay themselves open to being punished for incompetence." But if the Allies' successes were due to hard fighting and brilliant dash, the fact that they did not break right through the enemy's lines is an eloquent testimony to the wonderful strength of the German resistance. The marvel was that any were left alive in the first line after the preliminary bombardment to face the bayonets and grenades of the attackers. In a report from German General Headquarters, dated September 29, 1915, Max Osborn, special correspondent of the "Vossische Zeitung," described how the French artillery swept the hinterland of the German positions in Champagne and then concentrated upon these. "The violence of the fire then reached its zenith. Hitherto it had been a raging, searching fire; now it became a mad drumming, beyond all power of imagination. It is impossible to convey any idea of the savagery of this bombardment. Never has this old planet heard such an uproar. An officer who had witnessed during the summer the horrors of Arras, of Souchez, and of the Lorette Heights, told me that those were not in any way to be compared with the present, beyond all conception, appalling artillery onslaught. Day and night for fifty hours, at some points for seventy hours, the guns vomited destruction and murder against the Germans, the German trenches and against the German batteries. Strongly built trenches were covered in and ground to powder; their edges and platforms were shorn off and converted into dust heaps; men were buried, crushed, and inevitably suffocated—but the survivors stood fast." A German soldier told how, in the fierce hand-to-hand fighting which followed, a Frenchman and a German flew at each other's throat, and how they fell, both pierced by the same bullet, still locked in each other's grip. And so, too, they were buried. Courage is not the monopoly of any race or nation.[Back to Contents]