Chapter II: Part 2

The study of nomenclature at the front is a very fascinating one, if only for the light that it throws upon the psychology of nostalgia. Every road, every communication trench is christened with some name around which hang the memories of the men who gave it, so that the native origins of these shrewd godfathers is never for a moment in doubt. Who but a native-born Londoner would have evolved a Harrow Road, off which, in an orgy of local geography, branch Edgware Road, Finchley Road, Maida Vale and a dozen other familiar names? Who but a young subaltern--his heart still unforgetful of the old _joie de vivre_, having established an O.P. at the end of a muddy ditch already known as Burlington Arcade, would have proudly labelled it "The Bristol," or who, but his envious friends near Shaftesbury Avenue, would have emulated him with "Maxime's" and "The Villa-villa"! Moray Avenue, Prince's Street, Deansgate, Dale Street, College Green, all tell their own story. And where association ends, description begins. Stink Farm, is, I believe, now marked as such on the official maps. Quality Street has already a place in history that may one day be shared by Mud Cottage, Canadian Orchard, la Maison des Mitrailleurs, Rue d'Enfer, and Le Tirebouchon. Sometimes the names of places have been anglicized almost out of recognition. Wingles and Hinges are pronounced as they appear to an English eye, Choques is Chokes, Gris Pot is Grease Pot, Lozinghem is Lozenges, to quote a very few examples. The same may be found on the German side. The Hohenzollern Redoubt is familiar by name to everybody. Near it is Breslauer Chausée Loos contained Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse, and, rather curiously, Ringstrasse; Vendin le Vieil is Alt-Vendin, Lens, Lenze. But this is yet another digression, the wandering thoughts of the idle observer; let us suppose him suddenly recalled to the affairs of the moment by the insistent voice of the telephone.

"Message for you, sir--from headquarters," says the telephonist, bearing a piece of pink paper in his hand. I take it, and read, "Fire twenty rounds at intersection of communication trenches at----" Here follow a combination of figures and letters that denote the position on the map. "Very well, call up the battery and give 'action.' Tell them to report when ready." Out comes the map, and the point mentioned in the message found. A road runs east and west close by it, yes, I know that road, have often noticed it. A communication trench runs along it for some way, then turns off at right angles by a hedge, which it follows for a couple of hundred yards till it meets its fellow, which place of meeting I am ordered, in the parlance of the front, to "strafe." Can I see that hedge, I wonder? Prolonged inspection through the glasses assures me that I cannot. There is nothing for it but to take a bearing. One hundred and seventeen degrees from my position, five degrees left of the church tower. Compass and sextant agree, giving me the line to the corner of a wood on the horizon, on which line my target must somewhere be situated. Out come the glasses again. There certainly is a mound right in line with my mark in the centre of that meadow, but it might be anything. Yes, the telescope shows it to be earth thrown up from some excavation or other, it must be the trench junction. It looks hopelessly foreshortened, nothing like the map, but then the map seems to look down on things with a calm judicial air, whilst I can only peer at them from their own level. A very little practice in observation soon shows one that the human eye is utterly unreliable as a gauge of the length of anything that stretches away from it. "Battery reports ready for action, sir," says the telephonist. "Thank you. No. 1 gun ranging, elevation nineteen degrees, etc., etc." Back comes the warning, "No. 1 reports ready to fire, sir." "Fire No. 1!" "No. 1 fired, sir!" and then an eternity of breathless anxiety, during which all the fabled deadly sins of gunners long since condemned to everlasting execration rush upon my memory. Suppose I have read the map wrong, and that is not the place at all? An instant's piercing scrutiny, which fails to reassure me in the least. Even if that is the place, it is not very far from our own trenches. Did I give the right elevation? Did I allow enough for wind? Were my orders perfectly clear to the section commander? Did the layer lay correctly? Shall I be "broke" if I slaughter a whole platoon in our own trenches, or only shot?... Eternity comes to an end at last after a life of some ten seconds, and I hear the whistle of the shell coming ever nearer--safely over my head, anyhow, thank heaven! Yes, she must have passed the trenches by now; where's she going to fall? The whistle ends abruptly, but nowhere is there any sign of smoke, nor does the sound of the burst reach me. A blind, I suppose, the shell must have fallen into something soft, but I'd give ten years of my life to know _where_. Well, there is nothing for it--"No. 1, repeat, fire!" "No. 1 fired, sir!" The whistle again, then right in line with the target, and hiding it, a bright flash, a spout of earth and a cloud of black smoke, followed by a peculiar, sharp crash, and the hell of doubt gives way to the heaven of satisfaction. Such are the delights of observation.

And variously the excitement infects the blood of the observer. One will sit far back from his window, lest prying eyes should detect him through it, and give his orders slowly and methodically, weighing each carefully and making elaborate calculations the while, and occasionally exhorting the battery to care and deliberation. Another will thrust a telescope through a chink between two sandbags so that it shines like a heliograph in the morning sun and one wonders if some well-disposed angel has smitten the enemy with blindness for that every battery within range does not open fire on him. He, meanwhile, oblivious of such minor dangers, roars contradictory orders as through a megaphone, calling on the inhabitants of Tophet with strange formulæ because his orders are not obeyed before he gives them. I have seen a French Territorial battery in action for the first time in their lives, Mons. le capitaine subdued, almost tearful, but resolved to die in his O.P. as befits a soldier. His telephonists and assistants (he appeared to have dozens) equally anxious to see the fray, festoon themselves all over the building, hanging out of windows, clambering on to the roof, expressing their delight at the top of their voices. Eventually he restores some degree of order, and, rushing to the telephone, sweeps aside the operators, and gives the word himself. "Tirez, tirez, pour l'honneur de la belle France!" The shot falls apparently in a totally different direction to where he anticipates. Again he rushes to the instrument, more perhaps in sorrow than in anger, and demands the presence of the section commander. "Mon lieutenant!" he says, "ce n'est pas juste, c'est épouvantable! Je me sens brisé! Nom d'un nom, que vous êtes maladroit! Dirigez la pièce encore vous même!" He finishes his series at last, and as he turns to go, he salutes me gravely, saying, "Au revoir, monsieur, j'aimerais bien travailler ici à coté de vous, mais, hélas! c'est fort impossible. Dans cette observatoire il y en a toujours de bruit!" It must not for a moment be supposed that I speak disparagingly of the French gunners. They are, as a matter of fact, far better artillerists than ourselves, and we have much to learn from them. Possibly they lack something of our insular calm, as we certainly lack the vivid power of imagination and discernment that contributes very largely to their success. For this same calm the British gunner is hard to beat. On one occasion a heavy shell hit an O.P. fair and square, bringing it down in a heap of ruins. The observer, who by some miracle was not hurt, extricated himself from the pile of rubbish under which he found himself, and rushed down to the cellar, where he expected to find the mangled remains of his telephonist. There was the man, his hands full of fragments that had once been a telephone, standing with a puzzled expression on his face. "I 'ardly know what to do with this 'ere instrument, sir," was his greeting. "I don't see as 'ow I'm goin' to mend it without goin' back to the battery for some spare parts."

Observation by night is sometimes useful, as then the flashes of hostile batteries can be seen most distinctly. It is, however, a peculiarity of modern propellants that the actinic power of the flame produced on their combustion is such as to attract attention in broad daylight. I have had my eye caught by the flash of a ten-centimetre gun about four miles away at four o'clock on a sunny afternoon in September, and there is no doubt that this distance has frequently been exceeded. Still, night of course is the best time, although then it is very much easier to mistake the flash of a bursting shell for that of a gun, and even if flashes are observed, nothing can be noted except their direction, their surroundings being invisible. And a few hours at night in an O.P. have their compensations. Over the trenches rise continually the searching lights, throwing everything into sudden contrast of light and shade, making of the familiar scene whose every stone and blade of grass one thought to know by heart, a strange land of white snow islands standing sheer out of yawning black gulfs. Every now and then sharp tongues of flame dart out from the parapet, a sudden lurid flash in the air shows a bursting shrapnel, or a brighter one on the ground the more violent detonation of high explosive. Perhaps a rocket signal of green and red goes up, followed by a quicker succession of flashes of all kinds as a patrol between the trenches is discovered. Perhaps one may be lucky enough to see a chance shell start a huge fire, such as burnt once for three days and three nights in Cité St. Pierre, producing a glow as of twilight two good miles away. Whatever may be seen, night has its fascination in this strange world of sleepless activity as much as in a land of quiet, but here its fascination is a stirring into life of eager pulses, a whispering in the ear of that ever-ready lust of battle that makes of war the finest sport that man ever devised. Somehow at night all deeds seem possible.

IV

THE FOUR DAYS

(September 21-24, 1915)

Although many descriptions and maps of the country round about Loos have been issued, it may not be out of place to attempt one more brief outline, from which the general trend of the operations from September 25, 1915, onward can be followed. Descriptions of a country that one does not know being invariably flat and unconvincing, it may suffice to lay down the main features in a very few words. From the La Bassée Canal southward to Souchez is a purely coal-mining district, one of the most important in France, an undulating country devoid of natural features, but abounding in artificial ones, such as chimney-stacks, mine-shafts and dump-heaps. The miners' villages, locally termed _corons_, group themselves about the pit-heads, and form two long lines of almost continuous brick and mortar, separated by a shallow valley, normally under cultivation, but now lying fallow and deserted, varying in width from a few hundred yards to a couple of miles or so. In the centre of this valley lies Loos, a village of some two thousand inhabitants, conspicuous for miles round from the huge double shaft, the famous Pylons, that rise nearly three hundred feet above the surface of the plain.

Of the two lines of villages, that surrounding the mines owned by the Compagnie des Mines de Béthune, and consisting of Cambrin, Vermelles, Philosophe, Mazingarbe, Les Brebis, Grenay, Maroc, and Aix Noulette, was, about the middle of September, held by the Allies. The eastern line, consisting of Auchy, Haisnes, Cité St. Elie, Hulluch, Benifontaine, Vendin, Cité St. Auguste, Lens and its countless suburbs, and Liévin, was, at the same period, held by the enemy. Along the course of the valley, but well up the western slope of it, so that the village of Loos lay a mile within them on the German side, ran the two opposing lines, with their maze of support and reserve trenches, their sinuous lines of communication trenches leading up the slopes of the valley to the villages in rear. From our observation posts in Maroc the whole of the southern sector of these parallel works could be plainly seen, the line of each trench through the green overgrowth of weeds being conspicuously marked by the white chalk thrown up in excavating them. Behind these again, two long black arms stretched out towards us, with a sinister look as though inviting us to leave the comparative security of our trenches and rush to the attack of the body from which they grew, the city of Lens. In reality nothing but embankments formed by the continual deposition of refuse from the mines, these two arms, the northern known as the Double Crassier, the southern as the Puits XVI embankment, had been transformed by the enemy into exceedingly strong positions, mined, entrenched, fortified by every known means, the westernmost ramifications of the fortress into which Lens had been converted. Opposite the extremity of the Puits XVI embankment the Allied armies met, the right of the British line resting upon the Tenth French Army, the first of that great chain of armies that spreads, with one short gap, to the faraway Swiss mountains.

All through August and September the roads behind the Allied front had been covered by infantry and artillery, and even towards the end by cavalry, all moving eastwards through the all-pervading chalk dust. Rumour, as ever, was busy with conjecture. This was merely a feint, maintained the pessimists, the real advance is to lie with the French in Champagne. Nonsense, replied the optimists, this is at last the long-looked-for general advance, the death-blow of trench warfare, the dawning of the millennium when the Battle of Position shall give way to the Battle of Movement, the beginning of the final struggle that will end only with the death-throes of the enemy on the Rhine! Whatever were one's individual opinions, the scent of battle, the glorious prospect of a "scrap," was in the air, and spirits rose accordingly.

Slowly, from the august sources wherein the strategy of armies has its birth, the true intentions of the Allies percolated. Looking back now, it seems that too much was allowed to be known from the first. Documents containing detailed programmes of the proposed operations were circulated in some cases as much as a fortnight before the selected day, and in the field it is impossible to prevent the contents of such documents becoming common knowledge within an incredibly short time, which is practically equivalent to sending the originals across to the enemy with one's compliments. It was subsequently established by the examination of prisoners that the German General Staff had full knowledge of our plans many days before the attack took place, and had, indeed, made dispositions to meet it. It is undoubtedly essential to circulate beforehand exact instructions as to the part that each unit is to perform in contemplated operations, but it is extremely doubtful if it is expedient to do so until the last possible moment. Apart from the danger of leakage to the enemy, it is always found, as indeed in this case, that the interval that elapses between the receipt of instructions and their execution is filled with a storm of amplifications, contradictions and amendments, poured out by intermediate commanders, until the unfortunate commander of a unit is faced, when called upon to act, by an accumulation of mutually incompatible orders. If a strong man, he throws them all indiscriminately into the fire, and, acting by the light of his own commonsense and initiative, stands a fair chance of succeeding; if a weak man, he endeavours to act upon them all, and, with deadly certainty, fails.

The ultimate intention of the General Staff will not be revealed until long after the end of the war, if even then, nor need we concern ourselves with anything but the general instructions issued to the Fourth Corps, the southernmost portion of the First British Army, the army that held the line from the canal southward to the junction with the French. Briefly, these were to seize Loos, Hill 70, which is merely the eastern slope of the valley behind Loos, and to establish themselves on this slope in such a position as to command Lens from the north. It was understood that the French were to make a simultaneous attack from the direction of Souchez, occupy the Vimy ridge, and similarly threaten Lens from the south.

In order to attain these objects, a four days' bombardment of the enemy's position was to be undertaken, to be immediately followed by an assault upon the fifth day. Of the actual details of the targets to be engaged by each battery it is unnecessary to speak in a sketch of this nature. Our own battery, in common with the rest, was allotted targets to be engaged at different periods of each of the four days, these days being not specified, but described as days V, W, X, and Y. Throughout a breathless week we elaborated our plans, each day bringing as a rule some modification of our original instructions. We spent our daylight hours peering out of our observation slits, and our evenings measuring ever new angles and ranges on our maps, until each one of us knew every stone in the country that lay in front of us by some pet name, and our maps developed strange diagrams in every possible combination of coloured chalks, for all the world like the diagram of the London Tubes. Thus we possessed our souls in a greater or less degree of impatience, till at last the message came: "To-morrow is day V," and on the night of September 20 I at least sought the genial warmth of my valise feeling that the curtain was about to rise upon the finest spectacle that the world had ever seen.

That night was the lull before the storm. All along our line the restless field guns woke but fitfully, as a watch-dog to bark at the moon, and then fell off to sleep again. Even the incomparable French _soixante-quinzes_ on our right, whose voices are hushed neither by day nor night, seemed restless, impatient, restrained, keeping long silences, until in sheer desperation they burst into uncontrollable passion, ceasing again as suddenly as they began, as though appalled by their own act. Only the vivid lights soared brilliantly as ever above the trenches, failing, however, to evoke the usual salutation from their unsleeping wardens. So the morning dawned, unheralded by the noisy "morning hate" with which the opposing armies invariably greeted one another, the still air seeming to cower silently, awaiting the shocks that were to come.

The spirit of expectancy had penetrated into the battery itself. The gun detachments stood to their guns, polishing and oiling for the twentieth time each smallest detail. The men off duty stood about in groups, talking in hushed voices, broken suddenly now and then by a loud laugh quickly checked, as men will when something is expected to happen. In the telephone dug-out sat the officers, silent save for spasmodic efforts at general conversation, starting nervously at each note of the buzzer. At last a sudden stiffening of the telephonist on duty, "Yes, I'm battery, yes--battery action, sir!" and the tension ceased. Instantly the battery leapt into life. "Right section, lyddite, full charge, load! Switch angle four degrees right----" Strings of order pour from the section commanders, echoed by the "numbers one" in the gun-pits, dying away to silence again. Then the voice of the senior subaltern, "Report battery ready to fire!" a breathless minute, seemingly interminable; at last a faint buzz from the telephone, the sharp cry "Fire No. 1 gun!" and before the last sound of the order dies away the flash and roar of the howitzer proclaim that for us, at least, the Battle of Loos has begun.

So as the day passes on we fall into our usual routine. The battery is seemingly uninhabited but for the strident section commanders standing between their hidden guns, except when reliefs descend into the pits as into Avernus, out of which presently appear a knot of men dusty, grimy and incredibly thirsty. Sometimes an officer comes up to the section commander, stands reading his notebook over his shoulder for a few seconds, nods as he receives a terse word or so as to rate of fire, takes over the notebook, pencil and megaphone and carries on the ceaseless clamour. All the time, at regular intervals, the guns fire and the orders pass. Sometimes a keener note is heard, "Left section, cease loading! Fresh target----" and a new string of orders, soon followed by a resumption of the periodic roaring, as of a thunderstorm controlled by an angel with a stop-watch. Or perhaps "Fire No. 3 gun!" and no instant report. "What's the matter, No. 3?" "Missfire, sir!" "All right, look sharp!" "All ready, sir!" "Fire No. 3, then!" and the rhythm commences again. After a time it all has a strangely soothing effect on the senses. First one loses the din of the surrounding batteries, then fails to notice the report of one's own guns a few feet away, giving orders mechanically notwithstanding. Perhaps a stifled yawn and a glance at the watch--is that infernal fellow never coming to relieve me? Then the warning voice of the telephonist, "Fresh target coming through, sir!" and the wandering attention leaps into watchfulness again.

Up at the observation post things are very different. There the observing officer sits, watching the black and yellow smoke clouds of the bursting high explosive, or the cotton-wool-like puffs of the shrapnel. "No. 1 fired, sir!" The words of the telephonists seem to come as from some other world. Here she comes, far away behind, the whistle of the shell shrieking louder as she passes right overhead--splendid! in the very trench itself; see the black smoke spread out and rise slowly from a long section of trench, whilst the green vegetation grows white with the falling chalk. No correction can be made to that, "No. 1, repeat!" "No. 2 fired, sir!" Here she comes, ah, a little to the right--"No. 2, ten minutes more left, fire!" So it goes on, until this particular section of trench has practically disappeared, leaving only a white scar. Then a change of target and a repetition of the destruction. A fascinating business this on so fine an autumn day, so fascinating that all sense of time is lost, all conjecture as to whether the enemy will take it into his head to select our observation post as a target is forgotten. The only thing in the world is the measured fall of the shell and the swift framing of the consequent order, the only pleasure the deep satisfaction of a well-placed round, the only despair the haunting memory of a shot wasted that might have been saved by a different procedure.

During those four days of ceaseless bombardment, the enemy made very little reply except at certain points; we subsequently discovered why. He made no attempt to distribute his fire along our front line, nor did he make a systematic search for our observation posts, the vital organ of every battery and its most vulnerable one. Certain spots he selected, and with magnificent gunnery rendered them utterly untenable. Shell after shell fell with mathematical accuracy into Vermelles, Le Rutoire, Quality Street, but when once we had learnt these favoured spots, our casualties were very few, being avoided by the simple expedient of removing to places that appeared to be more suitable in the capacity of health-resorts, or, where that was impossible, taking to the cellars and remaining there.

Through four long days, from early in the morning until it became too dark to observe the fall of the rounds, the pitiless shelling continued, nor was the enemy allowed any respite at night. In the batteries we were then busy replenishing ammunition and overhauling every detail of the equipment, but still one gun per battery at least fired steadily throughout the hours of darkness, not now on the enemy's positions, but on his billets and on certain places through which his reinforcements must pass on their way to the firing line. A few rounds per hour only, sufficient to keep men crouching huddled in cellars wherein was no possibility of sleep, or to shake the _morale_ of working parties faced with the necessity of running the gauntlet of that steady rain. The moral effect upon troops already shaken by bombardment is enormous, as we ourselves have had bitter cause to know in the earlier months of the war. The effect of these days and nights upon the enemy is vividly shown in the diary of a private in the Second Reserve Infantry Regiment (Prussian) which fell into our hands later. A few extracts will suffice. On the 21st he writes: "Towards mid-day the trenches had already fallen in in many places. Dug-outs were completely overwhelmed ... most of them fled, leaving rifles and ammunition behind ... the air was becoming heated from so many explosions." On the 22nd: "Shells and shrapnel (_granatschuss_) are bursting all round ... in places where the trench had disappeared I crawled on my hands and knees amid a hail of bullets." On the 23rd: "Our look-out post was completely destroyed, and my comrades killed in it ... even the strongest man may lose his brain and nerves in a time like this." On the 24th: "The fourth day of this terrible bombardment.... I am sorry to say that there is no reply from our artillery."

Other prisoners, on being interrogated, testified to the awful effects of our fire. Upon one in particular, an artillery officer, was found an order that revealed the secret of the ineffectiveness of the enemy's reply. After briefly setting out the measures to be taken in case of a British offensive, it goes on as follows: "Owing to the fact that the preponderance of hostile artillery in this sector is probably more than two to one, and owing to the vital necessity of economy in ammunition, battery commanders will confine their fire to targets whose importance is known to them, and upon which they can count on producing a good effect. They will under no circumstances allow themselves to be drawn into anything approaching to an artillery duel." It was also stated by many captured officers that during the night September 23-24 a deserter from our line had conveyed to the German Staff the time and date of the coming assault, and that to this fact they owed much of the effectiveness of the measures taken to resist it. Yet another captured document was of somewhat disconcerting interest to us gunners, namely, a map upon which was very accurately shown the position of every allied battery, with only two exceptions, in the whole of our sector. It seems fairly certain that this was due to the most efficient espionage, and not to aerial observation.

The material effect of such a bombardment is harder to judge, for it must be remembered that, despite the high science of modern gunnery, the percentage of direct hits upon a given objective is still comparatively small. When, however, a heavy shell detonates under favourable conditions, its destructive power is enormous. For instance, on the third day I saw a direct hit by one of our largest howitzers upon the boiler-house of Puits XVI. The shell penetrated the roof and burst inside the building, sending up an enormous cloud of black smoke tinged with the pink of pulverized brick, that hung for several minutes. When it cleared, nothing but a gaunt and twisted framework of steel girders remained, a heap of rubbish alone showing where the walls had stood. A smaller howitzer was ordered to fell a brick wall, some thirty feet high and many courses thick. The shell burst in regular sequence at its foot, at roughly ten yards interval, each round bringing down an equivalent section of the wall, until nothing remained but a long pile of smoking rubble. And, more impressive, perhaps, than all is the sight of a medium lyddite shell bursting in a narrow trench. Out of the centre of a vivid flash fly heavy timbers, sandbags, revetments, all that once formed the trench, sometimes the mangled fragments of its occupants, whilst to right and left rolls the choking smoke, driving its way into the deepest dug-outs, overcoming men many yards away from the point of impact, spreading death in every form. Is it to be wondered at that when our infantry reached these trenches they found a few survivors, living indeed still, but struggling and raving as the inmates of some ghastly Bedlam?

V

THE DAY OF ASSAULT

(September 25, 1915)

During the night of September 24-25, infantry patrols left the trenches to explore the condition of the enemy's wire entanglements, upon the destruction of which our field batteries had been engaged during the previous day. Artillery fire was therefore reduced as much as could be done with safety, and was chiefly directed upon reserves and billets, in order to make the chance of rounds falling short injuring the patrols as small as possible. During the evening the batteries opposed to us had shown far greater liveliness than they had hitherto. Possibly the enemy had got information as to where the decisive attack was to be made, as it seems to be the fact that owing to the four days' bombardment having taken place along the whole of the British front, they had hitherto hesitated to reinforce any particular sector, but had kept their reserves in a state of immediate readiness at their various railway centres. If this was the case, it is very probable that during the 23rd and 24th fresh batteries were placed in position between Vendin-le-Vieil and Lens, and that these came into action on the afternoon and evening of the 24th. This supposition is borne out by the fact of the enemy's ability to bring a terrific fire to bear on Loos as soon as we entered it.

Until the light failed, we had been busily engaged dropping shell along the Double Crassier, upon whose grim black crest the enemy were suspected of having mounted a number of machine guns. I had been in the observation post nearly the whole day--it is, by the way, worthy of remark as showing the immunity from retaliation that we had enjoyed in our sector, that we used to walk to and from our O.P. at all hours of the day through country literally covered with batteries, none of whom up till now had suffered any casualties--but at about seven o'clock duty recalled me to the battery. So absorbed had I been in the difficult business of observing in the failing light, that although I was conscious that shells were bursting all round, I had no idea that anything out of the ordinary was taking place until one of our telephonists, who had been out repairing the line, returned somewhat shaken, having been blown off his feet and thrown some distance by a high-explosive detonating close to him. His only complaint, I may say, was that he had lost a pair of wire-cutters in the adventure!

However, as soon as I started my walk homewards along the "Harrow Road," I found things still fairly lively. Several houses had been destroyed since the morning, and some very fine examples of shell-holes in the middle of the road added to the joys of the transport drivers, whose wagons of all descriptions were now beginning to pour along it. At one point a medium shell burst about twenty yards away from me--I had heard it coming and found friendly refuge in the ditch--and before the smoke had fairly cleared an armoured car and a motor cyclist orderly drove simultaneously into it from opposite directions. Nobody was hurt, but the road was most effectively obstructed, and the effect produced was exactly like that of a block in Piccadilly, including the language. I reached the battery safely, to find that the shelling had not reached so far back, but that another form of excitement had supervened. We had received orders to be ready to move at the shortest possible notice, in case a general advance upon the morrow should render a change in our position necessary. Of course, we had been prepared for this for days, but even so this official pronouncement of our hopes sent a thrill through every one of us. This was, then, the decisive struggle, the Waterloo of the campaign at last!

Moving a battery of heavy guns is, however, no small matter, and one that involves a vast amount of labour, not to be lightly undertaken. A story is told of a certain major, distinguished alike for his capability and his piety, who, knowing from bitter experience the difficulties that attended a change of position of his battery, added on this night to his usual formula of prayer these heart-felt words, "O Lord, grant us victory in the coming struggle--_but not in my sector_!"

I think that despite the fact that the guns were silent for the first time since the beginning of the bombardment, very few of us slept much that night. Our schemes were perfect, certainly, every detail of our actions of the morrow had been long worked out, each phase starting a definite time after an empiric zero, which we now learnt was fixed for 5.50 a.m. But--would the enemy consent to fall in with those schemes? Suppose they anticipated our offensive by an attack of their own? The wire in front of their trenches was already destroyed, even now our infantry were busy cutting wide passages through our own. How strong were they in reality? Was their passive endurance of our fire only a blind to lull us into security? These and a thousand other conjectures troubled our minds all night, and it was with a deep feeling of relief that we stood in the battery, no untoward incident having marred our plans, at 5.30 a.m. on the 25th--the eagerly awaited Day Z!

Then were the scenes at the opening of the bombardment repeated. Along our line all was again quiet, only from our right came the distant echoes of the fighting round Souchez and the Labyrinth, a deep roar that had now been continuous for over a week. Again we sit in the telephone dug-out, tense and expectant. "Official time coming, sir!" Watches are taken out in readiness. "Five thirty-five--now!" Quarter of an hour to go! One by one we creep out to see for the last time that all is ready. One minute more--"Hook your lanyards!" slowly the hand ticks round--time zero--"Fire!" This was no deliberate bombardment, every gun must in the short interval allowed it work to its utmost capacity, every man sweating in the dust-laden pits must toil as he never toiled before to feed it; into the luckless trenches in front of us must pour such a blasting hurricane of fire that the resistance prepared for our attack shall wither away in its deadly breath. But soon our own troops will be pouring out of their trenches, charging over the dividing ground to hurl themselves upon the trenches into which our wrath is now being poured, and then our fire must be lifted lest we do more harm than good. All is arranged for in the time-table. At forty minutes past zero, or 6.30 a.m., every battery lifts its fire from the front line to the second line, and still the furious fire continues. But now we know that the blow is being struck--what would we all not give to be in action in the open as in old days so that we could see the assault, watch the joining of the battle? Unprofitable thoughts! let us rather devote every fibre of our beings to the only task by which we can help, the task of pouring an ever-increasing weight of shell upon the defenders. That morning dawned grey and dull. From the observing post it was hardly possible to see further than the front line trenches at half-past five, and until the moment of the assault visibility did not greatly increase. However, this was to be the battlefield, we knew, at all events in the first stages of the struggle. The expectancy of viewing the greatest battle in history was to our little party in the O.P. strangely _banal_; I, for one, could not grasp the reality of it; I felt as though I were in a box waiting for the actors to come upon a stage before which the curtain had risen prematurely. There was no sign of battle, no movement that the eye could detect over the whole of the wide prospect before us. And then suddenly came time zero, bringing with it a scene that could never be forgotten. From the whole length of our front trench, as far as the eye could reach, rose, vertically at first, a grey cloud of smoke and gas, that, impelled by a gentle wind, spread slowly towards the enemy's trenches, very soon enveloping the whole of our range of vision in its opaque veil. This was our view of the assault, this dismal vapour the aura that was to surround a thousand sacrifices, the cloak that was to hide a thousand gallant deeds, the winding-sheet that was to enwrap so many a hero. Modern war holds no dramatic spectacles to enchant the brush of a Meisonnier, no drama is wrought upon a lime-lit stage to arrest the pulses of the watching nations. Yet none the less is its fascination omnipotent; its magnetic attraction, that draws into its vortex every man that owns a soul to plague him, is none the less irresistible; its influence still has the power to weld a chain of heroes out of a dirty, blasphemous, footsore crowd of sinners. War tends to the uplifting of the race, not to its debasement, let him who has faced it deny it if he can!

At 6.30 a.m. the infantry left their trenches and, so far as we were concerned, vanished into the smoke. All we could see were the columns scaling the ladders and starting to double across the open. Some seemed to trip as they ran, and fell in various attitudes from which they did not trouble to rise. At first we thought that our wire had not been thoroughly cut, and that these men had fallen over some unseen strands. But the red pools that slowly surrounded each soon undeceived us, the while that the roar of rifle-fire from the enemy's side grew ever more menacing. We could not see what success attended those who went on, but we heard subsequently that practically no resistance was encountered on the enemy's first and second line, but that the third line was very strongly held and considerably delayed, in some sectors permanently arrested, our advance.

The battery and the O.P. were equally desirable as far as vision went, the battery being blind by nature and the O.P. by science. It has, incidentally, yet to be proved that the hindrance to the enemy caused by the use of smoke is not more than counterbalanced by the paralysing of the initiative of one's own artillery, who are entirely dependent, when this method of warfare is employed, upon time-tables and such messages as the advancing infantry may be able to send back. However, that is not a question meet for discussion except in works devoted to the abstruse study of strategy and tactics. Let us return to the passage of events in the battery.

Here hopes and fears fought for the mastery throughout the morning, in accordance with the portents of the day. An order to lift fire on to a more distant point seemed to mean that our attack was developing against it, and the men in the pits paused to cheer in the midst of their unceasing labour. Then suddenly fire would be swept back on to a point that we had determined in our own minds to have been captured long ago, and our spirits fell, the detachments setting their teeth and straining at the heated guns to force by sheer weight of metal the taking of the disputed point. Or, saddest sight of all, down the road flowed an ever-widening stream of casualties, ambulances laden with stretchers upon which twisted forms lay very still, others with the less severely wounded, and a motley crowd on foot with minor injuries, supporting one another as one imagines the scriptural halt, maimed and blind to have done. I think that none of us realized till we saw the magnitude of this stream, how fierce a fight was raging in front of us. If this sight hardened our determination, the next procession went far to cheer us. A few hundred prisoners were marched past us on the way to the rear, fine upstanding men enough, looking perfectly fit and in the prime of life, disposing effectually, in my mind at least, of the fable born of our national love for self-deceit that the enemy were hard put to it to find men fit for service.

The German batteries were now devoting their attention to our advancing infantry, endeavouring at the same time to create a barrage behind them on our main arteries of communication. The Harrow Road suffered to a certain extent, but the greatest slaughter took place on the Lens-Béthune and Vermelles-Hulluch roads. On the former the whole of a divisional train was overwhelmed by shrapnel, blocking the road for a quarter of a mile with shattered wagons and dead horses (a picture of which debris subsequently went the round of the illustrated Press under the heading "Captured German Battery at Loos"). Two of our field batteries that endeavoured to come into action in the open between Quality Street and La Chapelle de Notre Dame de Consolation suffered very heavily and were silenced. Of the losses of the infantry, nobody who did not see the procession of casualties and, worse still, the burial parties of the next few days, can form an adequate picture. "British Offensive in the West," we read, "Gain of five miles of trench." Each foot of that five miles cost us a life and a sum of human agony such as this world has never known. Watch that communication trench marked "Stretchers to rear only." Here they come, two stretcher-bearers, one limping painfully, the sleeve of the other growing ever darker with a purple stain that spreads slowly over it. Between them they carry a poor wretch with both legs broken, whose low moan of agony rises to a sharp wail at each jolting step. Supporting themselves on the shoulders of the stretcher-bearers are two more, one with his breath gurgling through a throat choked with blood, one with a shattered shoulder and side. Through the treacherous clay that covers the bottom of the trench they make their way of agony, reeling from side to side as their feet fail to find a foothold, cursing their Maker for the horror of their torture. See, the first stretcher-bearer slips--his wounded foot will bear him no longer--and down falls the whole party in one screaming, writhing mass. Two miles more: is there no end to human suffering? is heaven so pitiless? There is the answer, a sharp whistle, a low report, a puff of smoke just over the trench, and all is quiet, save for one form that crawls very slowly on hands and knees through the yellow clay that grows dark crimson in his track. In these terms must we reckon the price of victory.

This is not the place, nor is it within my ability, to give an historical study of the varying phases of the battle. Suffice it to say that by noon the 15th Division had swept through the northern end of Loos, and were engaged upon that part of the eastern slope of the valley known as Hill 70. There had been considerable street-fighting in the village, but the enemy had evidently realized that this was not the place to make a determined stand. Their strategy appears to have been to concentrate their forces on the edge of the valley, leaving within it only detachments of such strengths that the loss occasioned by their sacrifice would be altogether outweighed by the gain in time that they secured to the main defence. And nobly these detachments performed the task allotted to them. One battery took up a position along the Loos-Benifontaine road, and remained in action under a fire whose intensity it is impossible to describe until our troops were almost upon it, when its fire ceased, not from lack of courage to continue, but because no single man was left alive to serve the guns. Let us give the enemy his due, we are not fighting a nation of cowards and assassins, as we are so fond of trying to believe, but of brave and determined men, whom to defeat will call from us our utmost energies.

As soon as we had taken Loos, the enemy opened a steady artillery fire upon the village, in order to prevent its use by us as a _point d'appui_ for further attack, and to hinder observation from the various landmarks it contained. There is so little natural cover that this must have been a serious disadvantage to us, as by this time the communication trenches leading from the German front line trenches that we now held up the slopes of the valley were choked with dead, and reinforcements had to run the gauntlet of a well-directed fire in order to reach our line of attack. This may have something to do with that fatal delay that left the attacking divisions unsupported and checked an advance that might well have resulted in the capture of Lens, which would probably in turn have sealed the fate of Lille. We have learnt from prisoners that the enemy anticipated the worst in the early hours of the morning, and that the feebleness of the final blow amazed them. Had fresh divisions poured down the Lens road through Cité St. Auguste and Cité St. Laurent, rolling the enemy back upon the French who were advancing towards Vimy, who knows what might not have happened? Conjecture is useless, regret of a lost opportunity must take its place.

The facts so far as known--and no two accounts, even of those who took part in the struggle, quite agree--are as follows: The 47th Division, London Territorials all of them, the heroes of the day, but of whose performances, because less showy, little has been heard, had by 9.30 a.m. surmounted a series of obstacles, the storming of any one of which would have earned them lasting fame. Like a tide they poured over the western end of the dreaded Double Crassier, utterly regardless of withering machine-gun fire, and swept to the attack of the walled cemetery that stands to the south-west of Loos. From here, after a titanic struggle, they dislodged the strong party of its defenders, and, gaining fresh impetus from the check, irresistibly fought their way through the outskirts of the village, in which every point of vantage was held against them, right up to its heart, the mine buildings that cluster at the foot of the Pylons. This fortress they stormed and won, and the rush of their assault carried them on its crest over the Loos Crassier--another high embankment of refuse and slag--over the exposed surface of the plain, into the copse that stretches westward from Loos Chalk Pit. Here at last for a while they rested, and here for the present we may leave them. May the great city be for ever proud of the achievements of her sons this day, the thousand forgotten deeds of heroism of which her ears will never hear!

Meanwhile the 15th Division, having captured the Lens Road Redoubt that straddled the Lens-Béthune road, were engaged in clearing the northern portion of the village of Loos. The 1st Division, the left wing of the Fourth Corps, had met with varying fortune. The 1st Brigade had penetrated to the enemy's reserve trenches in front of Cité St. Elie and Hulluch, roughly upon the line of the Lens-La Bassée road. The 2nd Brigade, impeded by a mass of concealed wire that our fire had failed to destroy, were held up in the direction of Lone Tree and Bois Carrée. This necessitated the bringing up of the divisional reserve, who managed to advance between the left flank of the 15th Division and the Loos Road Redoubt, a strong point in the German line on the track leading from Loos to Vermelles. This relieved the pressure on the 2nd Brigade, and the Loos Road Redoubt, attacked from the front and both flanks, fell into our hands, compelling some six or seven hundred of the enemy to surrender. But the delay had enabled the Germans to reinforce Hulluch and the Crassier of Puits XIII bis to such an extent that the attack was diverted to the right, in which direction it advanced as far as the Bois Hugo and Puits XIV bis, both being situated on the eastern slope of the valley to the north of Hill 70. Of the events of the afternoon it is impossible to speak with any degree of certainty. It seems most probable that the paths of the three divisions having brought them all on to the rising ground to the eastward and north-eastward of Loos, an attack was made upon the redoubt that existed on Hill 70 at the point where a track from Loos to Cité St. Auguste crosses the Lens-La Bassée road. It also seems probable that after many vicissitudes this redoubt was captured and subsequently held, though by a force utterly inadequate for the purpose. About 8 p.m. a messenger reached one of our batteries, having lost his way in the dark, bearing a message addressed to the headquarters of one of the Brigades forming the 15th Division, to the effect that the sender was holding Hill 70 with a mixed handful of men, numbering a thousand in all, and urgently requesting the immediate supply of sandbags and other material for defence.

In the battery we were, of course, ignorant of all these things at the time, and the progress of events could only be conjectured by the position of the spots upon which we were ordered to fire and the reports of wounded passing by us on their way to the rear. We knew of the fall of Loos by the forlorn procession of refugees who had been living in the village all through the German occupation, but who were sent back immediately upon the capture of the place by our troops. Be it noted in parenthesis that much consternation was caused in a certain office by the arrival of a telephone message to this effect: "The loose women are expected shortly, please arrange for their accommodation!" From the observation post came the news of the taking of the Double Crassier and the Cemetery, but beyond that, and the information that no attack had been launched towards the Puits XVI ridge, the observing officer had nothing further to tell us. But I think that in the ominous absence of any further reference to our projected advance, we all felt something of the chill breath of disappointment, that whispered that our high hopes had somehow failed of their realization.

VI

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.