CHAPTER VII
THE FAILURE OF THE ALLIED OFFENSIVE
Effective and timely military co-operation had been denied to the naval attack on the Dardanelles because our available forces had been mortgaged since January to an allied offensive in the West; and the gradual recognition of the fact that the naval enterprise could not succeed without the diversion of troops to that object committed the Entente to the simultaneous prosecution of two major operations which could only converge in case of success. This was but one of the factors in the spring campaign which exhibited Allied strategy at its worst. Even in the West there was inadequate co-operation, and the efforts made were both disjointed and premature. We had yet to learn that alphabet of annihilation without which the art of breaking German lines could not be mastered; and there still lingered the idea that isolated attacks on distant and narrow sectors of the front could rupture the German line and either roll it up or compel a general retreat. Possibly some such plan might have had some chance of success had the forces of the Entente been concentrated upon a single effort, and optimistic critics anticipated a breach to the north of Verdun which might close or at least threaten the neck of the German bottle between Metz and Limburg and precipitate a withdrawal from their carefully prepared positions in northern France and Belgium. But fear of a German counter-offensive threatening the Channel ports, difficulties of transport across lines of communication, and defective unity in ideas and in command condemned the Allied attacks to separate sectors of the front and spheres of operation; even that general supervision which Foch had exercised over all the forces engaged in the October and November battles seems to have disappeared before the spring, and the French offensive began in the Woevre while the British attacked the other flank protecting Lille (see Map, p. 79).
The point selected was Neuve Chapelle, a village at the foot of the Aubers ridge which guarded La Basse to the south-west and Lille to the north-east. The German line there formed a marked salient, and an attack on the ridge, if completely successful, would shake the security of Lille, and if but moderately successful would cut off La Basse and straighten the line as far as Givenchy. The moral indicated by the elaborate defences constructed by the Germans during the winter had been at any rate partially learnt, and the infantry attack on the morning of 10 March was preceded by an artillery preparation which set a new standard of destruction and was designed to obliterate trenches, barbed wire, and machine-gun positions. It was effective over the greater part of the front attacked, and in the centre and on our right the Fourth and Indian Corps quickly overcame the dazed and decimated Germans and pushed beyond Neuve Chapelle to the Bois du Biez and slopes of the Aubers ridge beyond. But our left had no such fortune in the north of the village and at the neighbouring Moulin de Pitre. There, for some inexplicable reason, the defences had hardly been touched by the artillery preparation, and the 23rd Brigade in particular suffered dismally as they tore with their hands at the barbed wire and were shot down by the German machine guns. The defences unbroken by artillery were impenetrable by human bodies, and the defenders were also able to enfilade the troops which had got through farther south and were now attacking the second German line. The staff-work, too, was deplorable, and reserves were late or went astray, though it is doubtful whether anything could have retrieved the initial error which left the German defences intact, impeded the whole advance, and enabled the enemy to recover and bring up reserves before the attack was renewed on the two following days. Possibly our high-explosive had been exhausted. In any case there was nothing to do but to count and consolidate our gains. A village and a strip of territory some three miles by one had been secured, and we estimated the German casualties at 20,000, and they themselves at 12,000; our own were nearly 13,000. The chief effect was produced on the German mind by the shock of our artillery: "this," was the childish complaint of the masters of high-explosive, "is not war, it is murder." But German annoyance was poor compensation for the shrinking of our ambitions, and there was cold comfort in the failure of the German counter-attacks here and at St. Eloi farther north; for the Germans were merely out for defence in the West and we for a successful offensive, which had to be tried again.
The French with their larger forces and greater experience were perhaps somewhat more fortunate, but their local successes in the Woevre and Alsace had no more effect upon the general situation. Early in April a series of attacks, spread over five days and hampered by snowstorms, gave them the plateau of Les parges on the northern side of the St. Mihiel wedge and enabled them to advance towards tain on the road from Verdun to Metz. The importance they attached to these operations is shown by their claim on 10 April that at Les parges the Germans in two months had had losses amounting to 30,000. Progress was also made along the southern side of the wedge between St. Mihiel and Pont--Mousson; but although ground was gained as a result of strenuous combat extending over several weeks, the wedge stood firm; and the effort to drive it out as a preliminary to the larger operations contemplated in Lorraine was presently abandoned. In Alsace Sondernach was taken and an advance was made during April down the Fecht towards Metzeral and Munster, and the summit of the Hartmannsweilerkopf was recovered. But the progress never really disturbed the Germans, and indeed they would probably have viewed greater success in that divergent sphere with comparative equanimity, knowing that it would waste an unfriendly country and would not threaten their main communications or position.
These operations, combined with the Russian descent of the Carpathians, were announced in "The Times" of 10 April as "the opening of the Allied offensive in the summer campaign of 1915." But the disaster which soon overtook the Russian plans had its effect upon Allied designs in the West, and induced an attempt to menace the Germans in a quarter more likely to disturb their concentration on the East than a campaign against the St. Mihiel wedge or in the mountain frontiers of Alsace. The tender spot on the West was Lille, with its concentration of railways and importance as protecting the right flank of the German front along the Aisne and the left flank of their hold on the Belgian coast. The Germans learnt, divined, or anticipated the design, and sought to parry or break the force of the projected blow by a defensive-offensive against Ypres. The attack was not their real offensive for 1915, but they developed the habit of distracting attention from their main objectives by decking out their subsidiary operations with some new devilry of ingenuity; and just as in 1918 they bombarded Paris with guns having a range of 75 miles when their real objective was the British front, so in 1915, when their main effort was against the Russians, they treated the defenders of Ypres to their first experiments in poison-gas. They had tried the effect on the humbler creation some time before, and had indicated their intentions by accusing their enemies of the practice they had themselves in mind; but it came as a ghastly surprise to the French Territorials and British and Canadian troops along the Yser on 22 April (see Map, p. 288).