Part 6

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.

VII

LOOS

One of our officers was fortunate enough, very shortly after the events of September 25, to have the opportunity of reconnoitring the village of Loos, with a double purpose in view, namely to verify some landmarks that were doubtful from our observation posts, and to discover if any points existed suitable for permanent occupation as O.P.s. There were two ways open to him of reaching the village from his battery position, of which the first was to proceed to North Maroc and thence take the road to Les Cabarets and from there the track that runs into Loos at its south-western corner, and the second was to walk to Quality Street, thence along the Lens-Béthune road to the old German front-line, and so through their communication trenches into any required part of the village. Time being of importance, he chose the former method, and set out one morning at about 8 a.m. The narrative of his adventures in Loos, as throwing light upon the conditions obtaining in a place that had been heavily shelled by us until our capture of it, and has ever since been equally heavily shelled by the enemy, may be of some interest.

Once clear of the houses that screened his movements from the hostile lines, the road seemed very lonely and deserted. So far as the eye could see he was the only living person in the whole of the wide valley, and the sense of being under the observation of many pairs of eyes that were to him invisible produced in him a strangely nervous reaction, as though he were the principal actor in some horrible nightmare. It seemed as though every footstep rang upon the hard road with a note audible for miles, as though he were a gigantic black figure upon an unbroken background of white, as though the watching eyes bent such burning rays upon him that he could feel them pierce him as he moved. I have walked that road myself many times since, more than once when it has been under fire, and know now that it is as safe or safer than many others whose dangers never concern the most nervous, yet an echo of these first sensations of his has invariably struck me when I have done so, and I can understand his feelings. It can only be attributed to the fact that being alone in the middle of the valley one imagines that one is a conspicuous target for any one who will to spend a round upon.

The road crosses first our own old front line, then the German, over both of which substantial bridges had been built directly after the advance. It was not until he had crossed our own line that the cost of the battle became evident to him. Then he began to understand. Between the lines a burial party was at work, busy with the task of identifying and interring our own dead. Behind the German line the operation of clearing the battlefield had scarcely begun. Here the dead lay thick, our own and the enemy's in inextricable confusion. Here was a group of three or four, showing where a well-timed shrapnel had burst, there four or five in a line, stricken down as they charged by rifle fire from some fiercely-held support trench. And everywhere, mingling with the dead, were all the many insignia of war, rifles, ammunition, tins of beef, biscuits, cases of bombs, some unopened, some with their contents scattered round them, everything that is carried forward in a modern battle. At Les Cabarets itself, which is in reality the junction of the Lens-Béthune and Grenay-Hulluch roads, and which lies a few hundred yards south-east of the Lens Road Redoubt, the struggle seemed to have been fiercer. It is probable that the ruins of the houses that once stood at the cross-road had been held by a detachment of the enemy, for lying round them were a heap of dead Germans, their rifles in many cases still in their hands, and about these in a narrow circle the bodies of our attacking troops, some lying as they had fired, their legs spread out, their rifles fallen from their shoulders and their heads resting on them, as though an angel of sleep had touched them even as they pulled the trigger. Close by, two horses bearing the brand of the broad arrow were quietly grazing on the rank grass that covered the fallow land, their broken harness still hanging on their backs, evidently the team of a shell-shattered wagon that lay near by. My friend was tempted to pause and investigate further, but a dozen bullets whizzing by quickly convinced him that the locality was not healthy, and he made haste upon his way. Nor was he more lucky with the track that led from here towards Loos. Some persevering sniper evidently regarded him as fair game, and after this enthusiast had displayed his marksmanship by narrowly missing him twice in quick succession, my friend abandoned the field to him and took to a communication trench that ran in the required direction. He says that he hopes never to take a more hideous walk. The trench was literally paved with dead Germans--it must have been used as a line of defence against the advance of the 47th Division--some lying on their backs with their eyes staring heavenwards, others horribly buried in the thick clay that lay in the lower stretches of the trench, so that his attention was only called to their presence by a sudden dreadful yielding beneath his feet. They lay too thick for it to be possible to avoid treading upon them, and though more than once he deserted the trench for the clean earth of the plains, his friend the sniper was bent on each occasion upon showing him that he was still a happy memory to him, and he was forced to descend again. However, it was over at last, and with the greatest relief that he had ever experienced he found himself in the shelter of the outlying houses of Loos.

Here for a few minutes he stood and studied a plan with which he had been provided. His objective was the Pylons, easy enough to see, certainly, but unfortunately on the far side of an open square or market-place by the church, upon which the German gunners were making very pretty practice with field guns and light howitzers. There was nothing for it but to find a way round, along the streets choked with rubbish and torn by great craters, taking short cuts through gardens converted into cemeteries, in which the dead lying on the surface were more numerous than those below, across courtyards wherein the horses who had been stabled there lay where the flying bullets had found them. Strange work, this threading of the city of the dead, the sense of isolation growing as one advanced until one seemed a visitant to a world struck by a celestial bombardment that had left none alive to tell the tale. Troops there were in plenty, but they remained in the wonderful excavations that had been made; none, save rarely a messenger, crouching behind a wall as the whizz and roar of the shell echoed amongst the torn buildings, racing across an open space in a brief interval of quiet, ventured forth, unless before dawn to relieve his companions who were stationed in the hastily-dug trenches in front of the village. But during the course of this expedition my friend discovered a very valuable fact, namely, that the principal fire of the enemy was directed only upon certain spots, and was not being distributed indiscriminately over the village. Avoid these spots, and except for a few casual "universal" bursting overhead, one was perfectly safe, _voilà tout_! But that same casual universal is a very jumpy toy. You hear it coming, certainly, but far too quickly for you to do anything, and before you know where you are it has burst just over you with an ear-splitting crack, and small fragments hit the ground all round you with a most unpleasant thud. "Woolly bears," the men call them, for they leave a curious cotton-wool-like wreath of smoke in the air for some seconds, much larger and more lasting than the puff of a shrapnel.