CHAPTER XXX.

THE BATTLE OF THE ARTOIS.--II.

At ten in the morning of Sunday, 9th May, the infantry advanced; the right seized the ruins of La Targette, and pushed on to capture Neuville St. Vaast, which lies in a hollow to the east of it. The big church, the cemetery, and almost every house in the place bristled with machine guns, and furious fights took place inside the buildings from cellar to garret. Nevertheless, by noon the village was in French hands. Farther north the centre had swept over the torn and tumbled ground which had once been the White Works, had crossed the highroad, and had dug itself in two and a half miles to the east of the position from which it had started that morning. Never since the trench war began had so much ground been gained in a single day. The French troops in the centre were in the highest spirits; as they surged on they plucked sprigs of lilac and hawthorn and stuck them in their caps. Had the whole line been able to advance along with the centre, Lens would have been captured that day. The left, however, was held up in front of Carency, which was now being bombarded. When night fell three lines of German trenches had been won, 3,000 prisoners had been taken, and 10 field guns and 50 machine guns had been captured.

Next day the French were hard at it again. They pushed on to the outskirts of Loos, attacked the church on the Lorette ridge, took trenches to the south of it, seized the cemetery at Neuville, and beat off the German reserves which had been hurried up in motor cars. Everywhere the fighting was most desperate, for the Germans had turned every possible place into a little fort, and each of them had to be carried by storm. By Wednesday, 12th May, the Germans in Carency were surrounded. More than 20,000 shells had been hurled into the village, and 2,000 Germans were obliged to hold up their hands. Meanwhile the summit of the Lorette ridge had been carried, and only two or three strongholds on this high ground held out. The Germans at once rained shells on the ridge, and the ghastly scenes of Hill 60 were repeated. The French, however, clung to their trenches; nothing could move them.

On the 13th, amidst drenching rain, and in teeth of a bitter north wind, they returned to the assault. They had broken the German line; but their work was by no means done, for though the trenches had been carried, the German forts all along the front still held out, and each of them had to be besieged. The strongest position of all lay to the south of Neuville, and was known as the Labyrinth.[39] It was a wonderful network of trenches and redoubts, tunnels and roofed-in pits; it covered two square miles, and was so situated that the long-range fire of the French artillery could not get at it. Probably never before had such a stronghold been constructed. It was a cunning maze, furnished with every death-dealing device known to the science of war. It contained engines for making poison gas, machines for throwing liquid fire, scores of small fortresses, and underground passages which enabled the defenders to get to the rear of the attackers. In the background an enormous collection of big guns was in position, ready to sweep away any troops advancing upon it. Such was the Labyrinth which the French were attacking. They could not proceed until it was captured, for, as you will observe from the map on page 223, it enfiladed their advance.

By the end of May good progress had been made in clearing the Labyrinth. The German salient had gone, the French line had been straightened out, and Lens was closely beset.

An officer gives us a vivid picture of the struggle in the Labyrinth, which was not captured till towards the end of September:--

"The war of trenches is nothing compared with the struggle of the burrows. Picture to yourselves narrow galleries, feebly lighted by flickering oil lamps, in which the foes are separated only by sand-bags, which they keep pushing against each other. As soon as an opening shows, a terrific hand-to-hand fight begins, in which grenades and the bayonet are the only arms possible. Sometimes the Germans take to knives and revolvers, and one day they even began throwing burning liquids; but in spite of these cowardly tricks, our men always had the best of it. They fought with clubbed rifles and fists when required, and their courage was never shaken, as the Germans soon saw. . . .

"The passages in which we were advancing were 18 feet deep, and often 24 feet and more. The water was sweating through in all directions, and the sickly smell was unbearable. Imagine, too, that for three weeks we were not able to get rid of the dead bodies, amongst which we had to live night and day! One burrow, 120 feet long, took us thirteen days of ceaseless fighting to conquer entirely. The Germans had placed barricades, trap doors, and traps of all kinds in it. When we stumbled we ran the risk of being pierced by bayonets hidden in holes lightly covered with earth. And all this went on in almost complete darkness. We had to use pocket electric lamps and advance with the utmost caution."

The first stage of the Battle of Artois may be said to have ended with the capture of Neuville St. Vaast on 8th June. The French had done splendidly, though they had not yet won a decisive success. The German losses during the terrible month of May cannot have been less than 60,000, and the French had suffered almost as severely. They had advanced with but few casualties; it was in the hand-to-hand fighting in the villages and against the forts that so many of their men fell. The victory was due largely to the French artillery, but the infantry did more than its fair share. It had shown itself as full of fiery courage and dashing bravery as in the great days of Napoleon.

[Footnote 39: According to the old classical story, there was in Crete a building constructed for King Minos, in which dwelt the terrible beast known as the Minotaur. This building, which was known as the Labyrinth, contained many winding passages, arranged in such a fashion that a way out was most difficult to find.]