With the Guns

by Cecil J. C. Street

(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.