100 years ago
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/first-world-war/article4565638.ece
The Battle of Loos
The greatest offensive launched by the Allies on the Western Front in 1915 ended in failure
The Battle of Loos began on September 25, 1915. It was the largest British
battle to take place in 1915 along the Western Front and was the first time
the British used poison gas in the First World War.
The Battle of Loos was part of the much larger Artois-Loos Offensive,
conducted by the British and French military in the autumn of 1915
(otherwise known as the Second Battle of Artois). It was decided that while
the British launched an attack at Loos, the French would launch attacks at
Vimy Ridge, Arras and Champagne (the Second Battle of Champagne).
General Douglas Haig presided over the offensive but had serious misgivings
about it, concerned by the shortage of shells (adding to the shell crisis
sparked by The Times correspondent Charles á Court Repington), the
difficult terrain and the fatigued state of his men. However, the Allies’
numerical superiority over the Germans - in some places 7-1 - sufficiently
addressed these concerns.
The attack began following a four day artillery bombardment, in which 250,000
shells were fired at German positions along a six mile front. The southern
section of Haig’s attack made significant progress on the first day,
capturing Loos and moving forwards towards Lens, but their need for reserves
brought their advance to a halt. Haig had asked the British commander, Sir
John French, to make the IX Corps available as reserves for the first day,
but French argued that they would not be needed until the next morning.
This time delay proved disastrous for the British. The following day the
Germans poured men into their counter-attack and the British advance,
without cover fire, was obliterated by German machine gun fire.
The British Army’s attempt to use poison gas at Loos also proved to be a
complete catastrophe. 150 tonnes of chlorine gas from over 5,000 gas
cylinders failed to reach the German trenches and in some places actually
blew back into the British trenches, resulting in 2,632 casualties of which
seven died.
After several days of fighting that gave little results, Haig was forced to
order the retreat. The offensive was renewed on October 13, but only to be
called off due to heavy casualties and poor weather conditions. The British
suffered 50,000 casualties from the battle, whereas the Germans were
estimated to have suffered half of that. The failure of Loos became a
significant factor in French’s eventual replacement as Commander-in-Chief by
General Haig.
-------
From The Times
October 6, 1915
The battlefield of Loos
Fragments of shell, old machine-gun belts, rifle cartridges, biscuit tins, dirty pads of cotton wool are everywhere, and a horrible number of unburied bodies.
From JOHN BUCHAN. BRITISH HEADQUARTERS, Sept 30.
I have today had the privilege of visiting the battlefield of Loos. Let me describe its elements. A low ridge runs northward from the Bethune-Lens railway to the high ground south of La Bassee. It sends off a spur to the north-east, which is the Hill 70 of the communiques. In the angle between the two lies the village of Loos. The German first position was along the crest of the western ridge; their second was in the hollow just west of Loos; their third runs today through Cite St Auguste and along the slopes to the north.
To reach their old front trenches one leaves the Bethune-Lens high road near the houses called Philosophe. In front is a long easy slope so scarred with trench lines that I can only compare it to the Karroo, where tussocks of grass are sparely scattered over the baked earth. Only in this case the earth is white. The coarse herbage springs from a light chalk, and the sand-bagged parapets are further patches of dull grey. Looking from the high road, the skyline is about a thousand yards distant, and beyond it rise the strange twin towers of Loos, like the rigging of a ship seen far off at sea. The place is not very “healthy” - no hinterland is - but, though the shelling was continuous, the trenches were fairly safe.
PLOUGHED UP REDOUBT.
Beyond the old British front trench you pass through the debris of our wire defences and cross the hundred yards of No Man’s Land over which, for so many months, our men looked at the enemy. Then you reach the German entanglements, wonderfully cut to pieces by our shell-fire. There our own dead are lying very thick. Presently you are in the German front trenches. Here, in some parts, there are masses of German dead, and some of our own. This is the famous Loos-road Redoubt, a work about five hundred yards in diameter, built around a tract from Loos to Vermelles which follows the crest of the downs. It is an amazing network, ramified beyond belief, but now a monument to the power of our artillery. It is all ploughed up and mangled like a sand castle which a child has demolished in a fit of temper. Fragments of shell, old machine-gun belts, rifle cartridges, biscuit tins, dirty pads of cotton wool are everywhere, and a horrible number of unburied bodies.
But the chief interest of the Redoubt is the view. The whole battlefield of our recent advance is plain to the eye. Below, in the hollow, lie the ruins of Loos around the gaunt tower. Beyond is the slope of Hill 70, with the houses of Lens showing to the south-east of it. North, one can see Hulluch and the German quarries, and further on St Elie and Haisnes, hidden in a cloud of high explosives, and west of them the site of the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the ill-omened slag-heap, Fosse 8. It is that sight rare in this present war, at least in the northern section - an old-fashioned battlefield. It is all quite open and bare and baked. The tactical elements can be grasped in a minute or two.
And, to complete the picture, the dead are everywhere around one, high explosives and shrapnel boom overhead, the thresh of an airplane’s propeller comes faint from the high heavens, and up towards Fosse 8 there is a never-ending mutter of machine-guns. Only living soldiers seem to be absent, for, though battle is joined two miles off, scarcely a human being is visible in the landscape.
HIGH SPIRITS OF OUR MEN.
I came home late this evening through a wonderful scene. A clear blowing autumn sky was ending in a stormy twilight. Far off in the sky a squadron of airplanes glimmered like white moths against the sullen blue. Battalions were marching down from the trenches, khaki and tartan alike white with chalk mud from the rain of yesterday. They had none of the haggard, weary look of most troops in such circumstances, but laughed and joked and had a swagger even in their fatigue. Other battalions, very spruce and workmanlike, were marching off. They are stout fellows to look at, these soldiers of the New Army. Interminable transport trains choked all the road, so that one had leisure to study the progress of the thick rain clouds from the west through the skeleton webs which once were cottages.
At a certain Corps Headquarters where I had tea there were many odd relics. I saw the alarm bell which had once hung in the Loos-road Redoubt. I saw, too, a strange fragment of steel which fell a long way back from the front, and which could belong to no German type of shell. It looked like a piece of a burst gun, but where it came from heaven alone knows. Among the captured German field guns outside the chateau was a Russian machine-gun, which must have been taken on the Eastern front. That little gun had seen life since it first left its factory in Odessa.
Everywhere in our troops there seems to be the quickening of a new hope. You can see it, too, in the civil population. The inhabitants of the towns behind the front have seen too much of war, and have grown apathetic. But the other day they lined the streets and cheered the tattered remnants of a battalion returning from action. And you can see it most of all among the French. The great news from Champagne - of the charge of Marchand’s Colonials, of the brigades that have gone clean through all the German lines and are now facing open country- is reflected in a brighter eye and a stiffer bearing even among those clear-eyed and upstanding men.
FRENCH SOLDIERS’ SONG.
To-night, I passed a knot of French soldiers in their new horizon blue, and they were singing some marching song, from which I caught the word “Prussians”. Perhaps it was the old song of the men of Dumouriez:
Savez-vous la belle histoire
De ces jameux Prussiens?
Ils marchaient a la victoire
Avec les Autrichiens...
A famous general is reported to have said, with a pardonable mixture of metaphors, that if the French once got their tails up, they would carry the battlement of heaven. Let us hope that, for our, incomparable Allies and for ourselves, “the day of glory has arrived”.
Grim work at Loos
Throughout that first long day men fought as though possessed - thrusting, stabbing, shouting, swearing, laughing, and crying
British Headquarters, Oct 1.
The story of the battle of Loos is one glowing epic of the heroism of the British Army. For three days, from the early morning of Saturday till Monday evening, the fight raged, practically uninterruptedly, down the whole line from west of Hulluch in the north to below Hill 70 in the south. Throughout that first long day men fought as though possessed - thrusting, stabbing, shouting, swearing, laughing, and crying. Battalions charged as one man, hacking their way through the thickest barbed wire, forcing a passage into the enemy’s trench, and then on, in one glorious rush, across the open into the next line.
Where we broke through, the German position was about one of the strongest anywhere on the British front. Every means which ingenuity or experience could suggest had been employed to make the enemy’s line in the Lens sector secure from any possible attack. The trenches we took from the Germans were narrow and deep, with dug-outs burrowed beneath the level of the floor, with innumerable machine-gun emplacements, protected with many thicknesses of solid tree trunks, with several lines of excessively thick wire strung out in front of the parapet. The line was further protected by a number of immensely strong redoubts erected at certain strategic points, while the Germans had constructed fortifications in all the fosses.
One curious incident is vouched for by eye-witnesses. While the fighting was proceeding on the first day, two of the women who, as we found later, were still living in Loos suddenly left the village and walked calmly across to our lines. One of them is now cooking for some of the troops around Loos.
The Battle of Loos
The greatest offensive launched by the Allies on the Western Front in 1915 ended in failure
The Battle of Loos began on September 25, 1915. It was the largest British
battle to take place in 1915 along the Western Front and was the first time
the British used poison gas in the First World War.
The Battle of Loos was part of the much larger Artois-Loos Offensive,
conducted by the British and French military in the autumn of 1915
(otherwise known as the Second Battle of Artois). It was decided that while
the British launched an attack at Loos, the French would launch attacks at
Vimy Ridge, Arras and Champagne (the Second Battle of Champagne).
General Douglas Haig presided over the offensive but had serious misgivings
about it, concerned by the shortage of shells (adding to the shell crisis
sparked by The Times correspondent Charles á Court Repington), the
difficult terrain and the fatigued state of his men. However, the Allies’
numerical superiority over the Germans - in some places 7-1 - sufficiently
addressed these concerns.
The attack began following a four day artillery bombardment, in which 250,000
shells were fired at German positions along a six mile front. The southern
section of Haig’s attack made significant progress on the first day,
capturing Loos and moving forwards towards Lens, but their need for reserves
brought their advance to a halt. Haig had asked the British commander, Sir
John French, to make the IX Corps available as reserves for the first day,
but French argued that they would not be needed until the next morning.
This time delay proved disastrous for the British. The following day the
Germans poured men into their counter-attack and the British advance,
without cover fire, was obliterated by German machine gun fire.
The British Army’s attempt to use poison gas at Loos also proved to be a
complete catastrophe. 150 tonnes of chlorine gas from over 5,000 gas
cylinders failed to reach the German trenches and in some places actually
blew back into the British trenches, resulting in 2,632 casualties of which
seven died.
After several days of fighting that gave little results, Haig was forced to
order the retreat. The offensive was renewed on October 13, but only to be
called off due to heavy casualties and poor weather conditions. The British
suffered 50,000 casualties from the battle, whereas the Germans were
estimated to have suffered half of that. The failure of Loos became a
significant factor in French’s eventual replacement as Commander-in-Chief by
General Haig.
-------
From The Times
October 6, 1915
The battlefield of Loos
Fragments of shell, old machine-gun belts, rifle cartridges, biscuit tins, dirty pads of cotton wool are everywhere, and a horrible number of unburied bodies.
From JOHN BUCHAN. BRITISH HEADQUARTERS, Sept 30.
I have today had the privilege of visiting the battlefield of Loos. Let me describe its elements. A low ridge runs northward from the Bethune-Lens railway to the high ground south of La Bassee. It sends off a spur to the north-east, which is the Hill 70 of the communiques. In the angle between the two lies the village of Loos. The German first position was along the crest of the western ridge; their second was in the hollow just west of Loos; their third runs today through Cite St Auguste and along the slopes to the north.
To reach their old front trenches one leaves the Bethune-Lens high road near the houses called Philosophe. In front is a long easy slope so scarred with trench lines that I can only compare it to the Karroo, where tussocks of grass are sparely scattered over the baked earth. Only in this case the earth is white. The coarse herbage springs from a light chalk, and the sand-bagged parapets are further patches of dull grey. Looking from the high road, the skyline is about a thousand yards distant, and beyond it rise the strange twin towers of Loos, like the rigging of a ship seen far off at sea. The place is not very “healthy” - no hinterland is - but, though the shelling was continuous, the trenches were fairly safe.
PLOUGHED UP REDOUBT.
Beyond the old British front trench you pass through the debris of our wire defences and cross the hundred yards of No Man’s Land over which, for so many months, our men looked at the enemy. Then you reach the German entanglements, wonderfully cut to pieces by our shell-fire. There our own dead are lying very thick. Presently you are in the German front trenches. Here, in some parts, there are masses of German dead, and some of our own. This is the famous Loos-road Redoubt, a work about five hundred yards in diameter, built around a tract from Loos to Vermelles which follows the crest of the downs. It is an amazing network, ramified beyond belief, but now a monument to the power of our artillery. It is all ploughed up and mangled like a sand castle which a child has demolished in a fit of temper. Fragments of shell, old machine-gun belts, rifle cartridges, biscuit tins, dirty pads of cotton wool are everywhere, and a horrible number of unburied bodies.
But the chief interest of the Redoubt is the view. The whole battlefield of our recent advance is plain to the eye. Below, in the hollow, lie the ruins of Loos around the gaunt tower. Beyond is the slope of Hill 70, with the houses of Lens showing to the south-east of it. North, one can see Hulluch and the German quarries, and further on St Elie and Haisnes, hidden in a cloud of high explosives, and west of them the site of the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the ill-omened slag-heap, Fosse 8. It is that sight rare in this present war, at least in the northern section - an old-fashioned battlefield. It is all quite open and bare and baked. The tactical elements can be grasped in a minute or two.
And, to complete the picture, the dead are everywhere around one, high explosives and shrapnel boom overhead, the thresh of an airplane’s propeller comes faint from the high heavens, and up towards Fosse 8 there is a never-ending mutter of machine-guns. Only living soldiers seem to be absent, for, though battle is joined two miles off, scarcely a human being is visible in the landscape.
HIGH SPIRITS OF OUR MEN.
I came home late this evening through a wonderful scene. A clear blowing autumn sky was ending in a stormy twilight. Far off in the sky a squadron of airplanes glimmered like white moths against the sullen blue. Battalions were marching down from the trenches, khaki and tartan alike white with chalk mud from the rain of yesterday. They had none of the haggard, weary look of most troops in such circumstances, but laughed and joked and had a swagger even in their fatigue. Other battalions, very spruce and workmanlike, were marching off. They are stout fellows to look at, these soldiers of the New Army. Interminable transport trains choked all the road, so that one had leisure to study the progress of the thick rain clouds from the west through the skeleton webs which once were cottages.
At a certain Corps Headquarters where I had tea there were many odd relics. I saw the alarm bell which had once hung in the Loos-road Redoubt. I saw, too, a strange fragment of steel which fell a long way back from the front, and which could belong to no German type of shell. It looked like a piece of a burst gun, but where it came from heaven alone knows. Among the captured German field guns outside the chateau was a Russian machine-gun, which must have been taken on the Eastern front. That little gun had seen life since it first left its factory in Odessa.
Everywhere in our troops there seems to be the quickening of a new hope. You can see it, too, in the civil population. The inhabitants of the towns behind the front have seen too much of war, and have grown apathetic. But the other day they lined the streets and cheered the tattered remnants of a battalion returning from action. And you can see it most of all among the French. The great news from Champagne - of the charge of Marchand’s Colonials, of the brigades that have gone clean through all the German lines and are now facing open country- is reflected in a brighter eye and a stiffer bearing even among those clear-eyed and upstanding men.
FRENCH SOLDIERS’ SONG.
To-night, I passed a knot of French soldiers in their new horizon blue, and they were singing some marching song, from which I caught the word “Prussians”. Perhaps it was the old song of the men of Dumouriez:
Savez-vous la belle histoire
De ces jameux Prussiens?
Ils marchaient a la victoire
Avec les Autrichiens...
A famous general is reported to have said, with a pardonable mixture of metaphors, that if the French once got their tails up, they would carry the battlement of heaven. Let us hope that, for our, incomparable Allies and for ourselves, “the day of glory has arrived”.
Grim work at Loos
Throughout that first long day men fought as though possessed - thrusting, stabbing, shouting, swearing, laughing, and crying
British Headquarters, Oct 1.
The story of the battle of Loos is one glowing epic of the heroism of the British Army. For three days, from the early morning of Saturday till Monday evening, the fight raged, practically uninterruptedly, down the whole line from west of Hulluch in the north to below Hill 70 in the south. Throughout that first long day men fought as though possessed - thrusting, stabbing, shouting, swearing, laughing, and crying. Battalions charged as one man, hacking their way through the thickest barbed wire, forcing a passage into the enemy’s trench, and then on, in one glorious rush, across the open into the next line.
Where we broke through, the German position was about one of the strongest anywhere on the British front. Every means which ingenuity or experience could suggest had been employed to make the enemy’s line in the Lens sector secure from any possible attack. The trenches we took from the Germans were narrow and deep, with dug-outs burrowed beneath the level of the floor, with innumerable machine-gun emplacements, protected with many thicknesses of solid tree trunks, with several lines of excessively thick wire strung out in front of the parapet. The line was further protected by a number of immensely strong redoubts erected at certain strategic points, while the Germans had constructed fortifications in all the fosses.
One curious incident is vouched for by eye-witnesses. While the fighting was proceeding on the first day, two of the women who, as we found later, were still living in Loos suddenly left the village and walked calmly across to our lines. One of them is now cooking for some of the troops around Loos.