STRAIGHTENING THE LINE
Straightening out the line is an expression frequently found in official dispatches, and it may usually be understood to cover the operations that take place after a definite attack. In the case of the Battle of Loos, these operations extended into the third week of October, and as a corollary to an account of this great event, and as a study of what was in effect a series of minor battles, the following sketch is intended. There were many events during these days that are not yet fully understood, the time has not yet come when a dispassionate history may be written. Controversy is yet busy with the names of many disputed positions. I make no attempt at contribution to any opinion expressed, but merely endeavour to convey some faint idea of such portions of the drama as were played before the eyes of the artillery observers.
During the night of September 25-26, the general position was something as follows. The enemy, from a point not far south of Fosse 8 to the Double Crassier, had been driven out of his front line to a greater or less distance in rear. Here, many months before this time, he had already constructed a second line of defence in anticipation of such a possibility. We, finding ourselves confronted by this line, were obliged to make some sort of cover for our advanced infantry, using the abandoned German front line and communication trenches as far as they could be adapted for our reserves and supports. Along the whole of this front of advance, therefore, both sides were busily engaged upon strengthening their respective positions, covering meanwhile their working parties with rifle fire. The artillery could not render much direct assistance, the light had failed before the final positions of the infantry on either side were determined, and the risk of injuring friends as much as foes was too great. The function of the guns was to keep a steady fire directed upon the possible lines of approach of hostile reinforcements, which were pouring up on both sides during the whole of the night. The front of advance was something as follows: From the south of the canal we remained in our old trenches to a point just north of the quarries, and from here the position we held ran through the front line of the Hohenzollern Redoubt, of which we held the front and the enemy the rear, thence somewhat to the west of the Lens-La BassÉe road in front of CitÉ St. Elie and Hulluch, through Chalk Pit Wood and Puits XIV his, somewhere over the western slopes of Hill 70, then abruptly back to the Double Crassier, where it joined our old line again.
Up till midnight both sides worked comparatively undisturbed, except on Hill 70, where attacks and counter-attacks followed one another without intermission. But at about 12.30 a.m., the enemy, having apparently succeeded in bringing up sufficient troops for the purpose, made a series of local attacks, the fiercest of which seems to have been on our line from the Bois Hugo to Hill 70. This attack was repulsed, as were the remainder of the series made at the same time. The weather now became even more misty than before, and the cold drizzle that had been falling all the evening increased in intensity. Shortly after dawn, at 5.30 a.m., the enemy made a more determined attack from much the same part of his line, in which he scored some initial successes, afterwards retrieved, and by 6.30 a.m. the position was the same as it had been all night. Observation was extremely bad on the morning of the 26th, so much so that it was fully 8 a.m. before artillery could be effectively used. But at this hour we again assumed the offensive, and opened a furious bombardment upon the redoubt on the summit of Hill 70, a work already of extreme strength, and now doubly so after the feverish energies of large working parties during the night. At nine o'clock the bombardment ceased, and the infantry rushed to the assault, but were unable to penetrate the hostile defences. They were re-formed and the attempt was repeated, again unsuccessfully.
Towards mid-day the local offensive passed into the hands of the enemy, who made a determined attack from the Bois Hugo and succeeded in driving our line back a considerable distance and recapturing Puits XIV bis. This was a distinct advantage to him, for it gave him a point of vantage from which he could direct machine-gun fire upon the flank of troops moving to the assault of Hill 70. No further determined attacks were made by either side on the afternoon of the 26th or the night 26th-27th, although desultory fighting continued, and various reliefs and reinforcements were made amongst our own troops. The 3rd Cavalry Division, who up till now had been waiting for the chance that would have been theirs had we succeeded in piercing the German line, were dismounted and relieved the troops holding Loos, where they remained for a couple of days, some of them taking part in the final assault upon Hill 70 on the 27th.
On the afternoon of the 27th every gun that could possibly be brought to bear opened a furious fire upon the Hill 70 Redoubt. For two hours the bombardment continued in a light that nearly broke the observers' hearts, so early did the evening close in, and so persistently hung the mist. Then, with one earth-shaking salvo from the massed batteries, it ceased, and the Guards Division rushed to the assault. What they achieved will probably never be accurately known, undoubtedly they penetrated the first line of the redoubt, but the enemy, continually reinforced from his fortress of CitÉ St. Auguste, contrived to expel them, and slowly they were swept back, in the gathering darkness of night, to the positions from which they had sprung. The attack had failed, Hill 70, the key of Lens, was still in the enemy's hands.
The strength of this position lay perhaps not so much in its natural advantages, as in the artificial means which had been employed to render it capable of effective defence. Its position upon one of the main arteries leading from the fortress of Lens made it easy to reinforce from CitÉ St. Auguste, one of the outliers of that fortress. The western slopes of the hill, up which the attack must come, formed a sort of glacis to the redoubt, on to which observers in the redoubt itself or in the woods around La Ferme des Mines de Lens could direct fire from their batteries at Pont-a-Vendin, CitÉ St. Emile and CitÉ St. Laurent. The work itself was of considerable extent and exceptionally formidable, and was probably impregnable by frontal attack when fully manned. Further, all possible approaches to it were enfiladed from the northward by machine-gun fire from Puits XIV bis and some ruined houses at the edge of a small wood, and from the southward by the strong works at the edge of CitÉ St. Auguste, namely Puits XI and a building known as the DynamitiÈre. Our failure to capture this important strategical point was therefore regrettable, but not incomprehensible.
A couple of days after the failure of our last attack upon Hill 70, a redistribution of the front took place between the Allied Armies. The Tenth French Army took over the new line up to a point near the Chalk Pit Wood, the boundary of their territory, which included the village of Loos, being now roughly a line drawn from this point through Quality Street, and thence along the Lens-BÉthune Road. From this time Hill 70 ceased to be a British objective, and the whole of the line in front of Lens came under one command, instead of being divided right in front of the fortress, a change of considerable administrative advantage.
During these days, from the 25th to the end of the month, there had been spasmodic fighting along the rest of the front of advance, especially about the quarries and the Hohenzollern Redoubt. This latter work, in which we had gained a footing on the 25th, was repeatedly reported lost and re-captured, but eventually it was found to be untenable under the enemy's fire from Auchy and Fosse 8, and to a lesser degree from CitÉ St. Elie and Hulloch. The actual new line as now consolidated was therefore the same as on the evening of the 25th, except that it ran to the westward of the Hohenzollern and at the foot of the slopes of Hill 70.
During the succeeding week no events of outstanding importance took place, the infantry were busy in the improvement of their new trenches, and the artillery in keeping the hostile batteries quiet while they did so. But on October 8, "the lid suddenly came off Hell," as Gunner Wolverhampton aptly expressed it. During the early part of the morning the enemy had been unusually quiet, but about ten o'clock he opened a bombardment upon the whole of the new line, more especially upon that part of it in front of Loos, upon the village itself, and upon the trenches between Hill 70 and the Double Crassier. This bombardment grew in intensity, and towards noon we were ordered to retaliate upon certain parts of his line. A few minutes later, the wind being in his favour, he let loose a dense cloud of smoke and gas, and at the same time lifted his fire on to our batteries and observation stations, employing a large percentage of lachrymatory gas shell. Very shortly after this, his counter-attack was launched. As on the 25th, very little was visible from our observation stations, owing to the obscurity caused by the smoke. It appears, however, that he developed two separate attacks, one issuing from the Bois Hugo and the other from the directions of the DynamentiÈre and Puits XI. These attacking columns were composed of waves of men in close order, each wave, according to the French observers, who were more suitably placed as far as noting details went than our own, as the smoke did not blow in their direction, being composed of a mass of men six abreast and twenty-five deep. The French field batteries were at that time massed close together, and their commander held their fire until the attackers were well clear of the cover from which they issued. As soon as this was the case, every battery was ordered to open fire at its maximum rate, which they did with results that were nothing short of appalling. Our battery happened to be just in front of them, and anything like their fire cannot be imagined. For fully an hour the continuous roar was such that telephones were useless, orders shouted through a megaphone into the recipient's ear absolutely inaudible. The effect of such a cannonade upon a slow moving mass of men in the open may be imagined. It is said that the loss of one of the attacking columns in dead alone was upwards of six thousand, and this estimate was subsequently largely increased. The hopeless position of these unfortunates, was, curiously enough, enhanced by an accident. One French battery had suffered severely a few days before, having been badly shelled, whereby it had lost all its officers and had had to change its position. Being at this time still somewhat disorganized, it was late in opening fire, and when it did so, opened at the same range as the other batteries had done some minutes before, thereby directing its fire upon a point that the attackers had already passed over, so placing a curtain of fire behind them. Caught thus between two hail-storms of shell, the massed columns had no escape, and were mown down where they stood.
The conditions in the battery during this affair were curious and extremely interesting. Each gun was firing as fast as the shell could be loaded and the round laid, orders being passed by gesticulation as best they could. Behind us the roar of the French batteries grew until it was only by watching for the flashes that we could tell when our own guns had fired. All round the hostile shells were bursting, filling the air with a sweet ether-like vapour that sent a sharp pain shooting through one's eyes until it seemed as if complete blindness must shortly supervene. The tears coursing down the men's faces made strange white tracks through the grime of battle, till the detachments became fierce, ghost-like and terrible, the reeking demons of the pit, striving and sweating that they might slay ever more and more, that the bitter screams of their mutilated victims might swell ever louder into the livid heavens. And the endless succession of ammunition wagons, their drivers clad in gas-helmets till they resembled the Inquisitors of old, lashing their horses into a yet more frantic gallop as they neared their goal, seemed as the shell burst all about them like monstrous chariots of hell. And all the time the French reserves were massing behind us, passing in turn down the boyaux into the threatened trenches, each party as they passed cheering the roaring guns, and winning from the detachments a hoarse shout in return, as for a moment they rested from their ceaseless labour.
Slowly the inferno of sound died away, and with its first ebb came the voice of rumour. We had lost the Double Crassier, and the enemy had gained a footing on the slag-heap of Fosse 5, he was close to us, and we should have to save the guns as best we could! The French had repelled the attack, and, following up their advantage, had swept into Lens! The truth of the affair we did not discover till later, when it appeared that a portion of our new line from the middle of the Double Crassier northwards had been captured, re-occupied and captured again, that the enemy had been finally driven out, but that the trench was now so full of dead as to afford no cover to the living. But for this minor success, if success it was, the furious counter-attack had failed with great loss to the enemy. If our total losses during the operations of September and October were between eighty and ninety thousand, it is believed that the enemy lost about ten thousand upon this one day alone. During the night of the 8th-9th the Germans contrived to establish themselves in the disputed length of trench, but otherwise the position remained for the next two days the same as before the counter-attack.
On the 11th the French developed a fresh attack in this sector, with the primary object of retaking the lost trench, and the secondary object of pushing such successes they might achieve right up past the end of the Double Crassier and Puits XI until they should rest upon the mineral railway running past Puits XI and CitÉ St. Pierre as far as CitÉ St. Elisabeth, thus forming an offensive line from which to threaten the DynamitiÈre and the enemy's approaches to Hill 70. We were called upon to assist in this enterprise, and at 2 p.m. commenced to drop shell along the Lens-La BassÉe and Lens-BÉthune roads, from their junction in Lens up to CitÉ St. Auguste and CitÉ St. Laurent. We also kept the church in the latter place under fire to prevent its use as an observation station. About 3 p.m. the French launched their troops to the assault, and succeeded in recapturing the lost trench, but owing to intense machine-gun fire from Puits XI and XII and from CitÉ St. Pierre, they failed to advance any further along the line of the Double Crassier towards the mineral railway.
The primary object of the operations so far had been the capture of Lens. The importance of the place can hardly be over-estimated. If we imagine England with Lancashire and the West Riding in hostile occupation, we shall have a parallel to the case of France deprived of the Department du Nord and part of Pas de Calais, except that in our own case we should still have left to us many manufacturing districts, and France has but few. The importance to the economic life of France of the three towns of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing is comparable to the importance of Manchester to us, and the coal-mining districts lying round Lens, which include such fields as those of CourriÈres, Drocourt and Dourges occupy relatively a far more important position than those of the West Riding. Lens itself is the key to this productive area, whose energies are at least as valuable to the enemy as to its rightful owners, and Lens has in skilful hands become a fortress in the modern sense, far more difficult of capture than older works at one time deemed impregnable. It is comparatively easy to concentrate fire upon guns whose position is known, as they must be when permanently mounted in the fortifications of the text-books, and once a sufficient concentration of fire has been obtained, guns so sited, being incapable of removal, must sooner or later be put out of action, but it is impossible so utterly to destroy a city and its suburbs that its ruins are no longer sufficient to afford cover to mobile ordnance and machine guns. It has been found that a building that in itself is merely a screen from direct observation, becomes, when destroyed by artillery fire, a heap of ruins amongst which may be concealed artillery and machine guns, and which by its very mass is an excellent protection against hostile fire. Bombard this type of fortress as you will, its defenders are not tied by their gun-mountings to any one position, but can move their batteries from place to place, knowing full well that the attackers, with each round they fire, are preparing fresh situations wherein they may be concealed. It will surely be found that this war has sounded the knell of permanently fixed guns except for purposes of coast defence, where alone the immobile gun has triumphed in the face of many years' accumulation of scornful criticism.
The last phase of the operations was due to a desire on our part to strengthen as much as possible our position from the quarries to the new point of junction with the French. On October 13 our battery was ordered to open a bombardment upon the German trenches that lay along the Lens-La BassÉe road to the west of Hulluch. This bombardment continued for an hour or so, and at two o'clock the infantry advanced to the assault, we at the same time lifting our fire on to the village of Hulluch itself, starting at the western end and slowly increasing the range so as gradually to drive through the whole place. But at half-past three our hopes of a capture of Hulluch similar to that of Loos were dashed to the ground by an order from headquarters to come back on to the western edge of the village. This we did until darkness supervened, and we were ordered to cease firing. As far as we were concerned, this was the most exacting day we had yet known, our expenditure of ammunition during the five or six hours that we were in action being greater than that of any previous day. So rapidly were the guns worked that the continual concussion broke the platform of one of the guns, so that in the middle of the action it had to be hauled out of its pit on to a hard road close by, and fired without concealment of any kind, regardless of the risk of observation from hostile captive balloons or aeroplanes. It may be added that next day the detachment found some rafters in a ruined building and from these constructed a new platform for themselves without any form of skilled assistance.
It was not until the next day that we learnt the history of the attack. The intention had been to capture the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and from that as a point d'appui to extend our line along the Lens-La BassÉe road as far as Chalk Pit Wood, with the possibility of capturing CitÉ St. Elie and Hulluch as advance posts. The attempt only partially succeeded. We contrived to advance our line in front of Hulluch almost on to the road, but failed to occupy permanently any of the German trenches. The Hohenzollern was apparently taken, but could not be held, as upon September 25, under concentrated fire from Fosse 8. Between CitÉ St. Elie and Hulluch, also, history repeated itself. Concealed wire, so placed that the artillery observers could find no place from which satisfactorily to observe the effect of their fire, held up the infantry assault. An attempt had been made to destroy this wire by map shooting combined with the use of high-explosive shell, but the destruction was not complete, and the attack failed. It was said that a handful of men actually penetrated into Hulluch but were never seen again, and that for a short time our infantry held the German trenches in front of the village. But with the enemy established in houses overlooking them, and occupying a strong commanding line along the crassier of Puits XIII bis, these trenches were untenable and had to be evacuated. The net gain of ground during the day was a depth of some two hundred yards on a front of rather less than a mile. At the same time the French, who had been supporting our attack upon the right, reported that the northern suburbs of Lens, CitÉs St. Auguste, St. Laurent and St. Pierre, had been so carefully prepared and were held in such strength that for the moment a frontal attack upon them was inadvisable.
Here, then, the offensive operations that began with the Four Days' bombardment, may be said to have ended. Although the gain of ground seemed insignificant, consisting as it did of one ruined village and a few square miles of fallowland, and although Lens still stood triumphant and untaken, there is still much to be reckoned in the Allies' favour. Victory it was not, and no amount of advertisement will ever make it so. But it was an exhibition of strength on the part of the Allies, and a stern reminder to the enemy that their power of offensive on the Western Front had permanently passed into our hands. The resources in men, money and munitions of the Central Powers are decreasing, those of the Allies increasing; equal losses on either side, therefore, is a condition favourable to the latter. It is maintained that our losses were too great in proportion to the results achieved. Yes, perhaps they were, but, had they been only slightly greater, had more men been flung into the struggle at the critical time, it is impossible to forecast what the issue of the fighting might have been. The enemy knew this, and was prepared for a substantial retirement. Conjecture is unprofitable, but let us as a nation learn the lesson that men and men alone will terminate this war. Other factors may check it temporarily; it may be to the advantage of the enemy to agree to an apparently disastrous peace in order to gain a respite for fresh preparation. But a certain page of history should harden our resolution, should make us convinced of the bitter fact that there is no peace for the world except in the disappearance of the German Empire or our own. Delenda est Carthago—let us preach the lessons of the Punic wars in season and out of season till every soul in these islands realizes their significance at the present day. The world is no larger than it was then, there is still no room in it for two rival World Powers, one must sink into obscurity before the might of its rival. And, accepting this incontrovertible fact as an axiom, let us face our position, let us remember how the power of Rome trembled in the balance as she strained every nerve in her system during Hannibal's Italian campaign, and let us realize at last that the destruction of our rival will demand of us sacrifices compared to which the efforts that we have yet made are nothing, are as the puny efforts of a feeble infant contrasted with the struggle of a strong man wrestling for his life. And if the operations that have been named the Battle of Loos have any share in bringing these things home to us, their effects will be far more beneficial than those of a spectacular victory.
