THE BATTLE OF LOOS

At 5.50 a. m. on September 25, 1915, a dense, heavy cloud arose slowly from the earth—a whitish, yellowish, all-enveloping cloud that rolled slowly toward the German trenches—a little too much to the north. Thousands of German bullets whistled through that cloud, but it passed on, unheeding. The attack began at 6.30.

A Scottish division had been ordered to take Loos and Hill 70. It therefore played the first rÔle in the battle, since it was on Loos, of which Hill 70 is the gateway, that the efforts of all converged from the north as well as the south. Brigade "X" of the Scottish division was to execute an enveloping movement to the north around Loos and to carry Hill 70 by storm. Brigade "Y" meanwhile was to attack the Loos front, Brigade "Z" remaining in reserve. By 7.05 a. m. the whole of the first line was captured. The second line, covering Loos, was carried with the same ease. The Germans, taken by surprise, were fleeing toward Loos, where they put up a stern rear-guard fight, and toward Lens, which was strongly fortified.

After the capture of the second line in front of Loos, "X" and "Y" Brigades separated, "Y" surrounding the village with two battalions, while the rest captured the village and cleaned it up. It was stiff street fighting, the Germans being hidden away in all sorts of corners with plenty of machine guns. The Scots made a quick job of it, not stopping for trifles. It is related that a sergeant, to whom two Germans had surrendered, pulled a few pieces of string from his pocket, tied their hands together, and passed them to the rear with the request, "Please forward." Brigade "X" had meanwhile thrown its enveloping net around Loos without meeting much resistance. The British had reached the top of Hill 70 by nine o'clock. The climb was a hard and rough accomplishment, with the right flank under mitrailleuse fire from Loos, and with the left exposed to fire from Pit 14A; but it was accomplished far too quickly. Serious disasters frequently occur in war through tardiness; in this case a possible great victory was missed through being too quick and arriving too early. When the brigadier got up to Loos he saw his men vanishing in the distance. A strong German redoubt, over the other side of the hill crest, was not even defended. The brigade crossed the Lens-La BassÉe road, which runs along the height, carried the third German line on the opposite slope, and at 9.20 it was outside St. Auguste. Unfortunately for the British, the corps commander, who arrived at this moment with his staff in hot haste, was unable to get his unit in hand again. Overflowing with offensive ardor, he had thrown his men forward with a most impetuous movement, and they got out of hand. The brigade turned at right angles and got into the suburbs of Lens. It seemed as though the gates of the northern plain were about to be smashed in. Then the great danger appeared. There was still no great converging movement from the south, where a British division and French troops were engaged. Touch was also lost to the north. The neighboring division in this direction was held up until the afternoon by wire entanglements. The left flank of the brigade was at the mercy of a German counterattack, but the Germans did not launch it, for they had not the men. What they did, however, was to concentrate on the brigade a murderous fire from Loos in the south, Lens in the east, St. Auguste in the north, and Pit 14A and two or three neighboring houses in the west. They were even seen hastily installing machine guns along the railway embankment northeast of Lens.

Shattered by fire, uncertain of its direction, shaken by the very quickness of its previous advance, the brigade hesitated, sowed the ground with its dead, and retired in good order on Hill 70, where it intrenched slightly below the redoubt abandoned by the Germans during the attack and which was now reoccupied by them. As a matter of fact, the screening gas clouds hindered rather than helped the attack. The Scottish division was exhausted, but if fresh troops had come up and a fresh attack had been delivered against the Germans, who were gathering all their men in the Douai region, the German front would undoubtedly have been pierced like cardboard. Brigade "X" had made a path, and if only reenforcements had arrived without delay the path would have become a highroad—would have become the whole of Douai plain. Not until nightfall were the reserves forthcoming. It is evident that, in this first day, advantage was not taken of the results achieved.

Though long-range fighting was incessantly kept up around Loos, nothing of importance happened till October 8, 1915, when the Germans, after an intense bombardment with shells of all calibers, launched a violent attack on Loos and made desperate efforts to recapture their lost positions. The main efforts were directed against the chalk pit north of Hill 70, and between Hulluch and the Hohenzollern redoubt. In the chalk pit attack, the Germans assembled behind some woods which lay from 300 to 500 yards from the British trenches. Between these woods and the British line the attacking force was mown down by combined rifle, machine-gun and artillery fire, not a man getting within forty yards of the trenches.

Farther to the south, between Hulluch and the quarries, the attack was also repelled, the British securing a German trench west of CitÉ St. Elie. The Germans did succeed in penetrating the British front in the southern communication trench of the Hohenzollern redoubt, but were shortly after expelled again by British bombers.

British flying men played an important part in the Battle of Loos and in the preparations that preceded it. Troops and guns had to be moved at night so that the German aeroplanes might not note the concentration. Hence it was decided that British aeros should warn off the German flyers by day. They probably outnumbered the German machines by eight to one. As the attack proceeded a flock of aeroplanes was cutting circles and dipping and turning over the battle field as if in an exhibition of airmanship. They appeared to be disconnected from the battle, but no participants were more busy or intent than they. All the panorama of action was beneath them; they alone could really "see" the battle if they chose. But each aviator stole only passing glimpses of the whole, for each one was intent on his part, which was to keep watch of whether the shells of the battery to which he reported were on the target or not. To distinguish whose shell-burst was whose in the midst of that cloud of dust and smoke over the German positions seemed as difficult as to separate the spout of steam of one pipe from another when a hundred were making a wall of vapor. Yet so skilled is the well-trained airman that he can tell at a glance. It is not difficult to spot shells when only a few batteries are firing, but when perhaps a hundred guns are dropping shells on a half-mile front of trench, a highly trained eye is required. Occasionally a plane was observed to sweep down like a hawk that had located a fish in the water. At all hazards that intrepid aviator was going to identify the shell-bursts of the batteries which he represented. The enemy might have him in rifle range, but they were too busy trying to hold up the British infantry to fire at him. Other aeroplanes were dropping shells on railway trains and bridges, to hinder the Germans, once they had learned where the force of the attack was to be exerted, from rushing reenforcements to the spot. For that kind of work, as for all reconnaissances, the aviators like low-lying clouds. They slip down out of these to have a look around and drop a bomb—thus killing two birds with one stone—and then rise to cover before the enemy can bring his antiaircraft guns to bear.

A German description of the Battle of Loos says that during the preliminary gas attack the British artillery was hurling gas bombs upon the Germans. The latter coughed and held their ground as long as they could, but many fell, unable to resist the fumes. In the midst of all this the Germans were preparing for the expected infantry attack. Finally the British appeared, emerging suddenly as if from nowhere, behind a cloud of gas, and wearing masks. They came on in thick lines and storming columns. The first line of the attackers were quickly shot down by the hail of rifle and machine-gun bullets that rained upon them from the shattered German trenches. The dead and wounded soon lay like a wall before the German position. The second and third lines of the British suffered the same fate. It was estimated that the number of British killed before this German division alone amounted to 8,000 to 10,000. The fourth line of attackers, however, finally succeeded in overrunning the decimated front line of Germans, who stood by their guns to the very last; those of them who had not fallen were made prisoners. Not one of them returned to tell what happened in this terrific fighting. The British are stated to have attacked in an old-fashioned, out-of-date manner that made the German staff officers stare in open-mouthed wonder. "Eight ranks of infantry, mounted artillery, cavalry in the background—that was too much! A veritable battle plan of a past age, the product of a mind in its dotage, and half a century behind the times! Splendidly, with admirable courage, the English troops came forward to the attack. They were young, wore no decorations; they carried out with blind courage what their senile commanders ordered—and this in a period of mortars, machine guns and the telephone. Their behavior was splendid, but all the more pitiable was the breakdown of their attack."

A more mature French Amazon is Madame Louise Arnaud, the widow of an officer killed in the war. She commanded a corps of French and Belgian women who were permitted by the War Minister to don uniforms. The corps was intended for general service at the front, one-third of them being combatants, all able to ride, shoot and swim. After the great allied offensive in the west had spent its force—or rather the force of its initial momentum—quite an interesting battle broke out, this time on paper. It consisted on the one side of an attempt to estimate the results of success and to attach to them the highest possible value. The energy of the other side was devoted to belittling these results and proclaiming the alleged futility of the venture. Thus, King George telegraphed to Sir John French on September 30, 1915:

"I heartily congratulate you and all ranks of my army under your command upon the success which has attended their gallant efforts since the commencement of the combined attack."

Lord Kitchener sent this message:

"My warmest congratulations to you and all serving under you on the substantial success you have achieved...."

In his report of October 3, 1915, General French stated that "The enemy has suffered heavy losses, particularly in the many counterattacks by which he has vainly endeavored to wrest back the captured positions, but which have all been gallantly repulsed by our troops.... I feel the utmost confidence and assurance that the same glorious spirit which has been so marked a feature throughout the first phase of this great battle will continue until our efforts are crowned by final and complete victory."

The following sentence is culled from the French official report on the fighting in Champagne:

"... Germans surrendered in groups, even though not surrounded, so tired were they of the fight, and so depressed by hunger and convinced of our determination to continue our effort to the end...."

Rather contradictory in tone and substance were the German dispatches:

"The German General Staff recently invited a number of newspaper men from neutral countries—the United States, South America, Holland, and Rumania—to inspect the fighting line in the west during time of battle.... They are thus enabled to verify the reports from the German headquarters concerning this greatest and most fearful battle fought on the western front since the beginning of the war. They are, accordingly, in a position to state that exaggerated statements are made in the reports from French headquarters, and to confirm the facts that the Germans were outnumbered several times by the French; that the French suffered terrific and unheard-of losses, in spite of several days of artillery preparation; that the French attacks failed altogether, as none of them attained the expected result, and that the encircling movement of General Joffre is without tangible result." "The world presently shall see the pompously advertised grand offensive broken by the iron will of our people in arms.... They are welcome to try it again if they like." "French and English storming columns in unbroken succession roll up against the iron wall constituted by our heroic troops. As all hostile attacks have hitherto been repulsed with gigantic losses, particularly for the English, the whole result of the enemy's attack, lasting for days, is merely a denting in of our front in two places...." Who shall decide when doctors disagree?[Back to Contents]