CHAPTER X
NEUVE CHAPELLE
All through the winter campaign the enemy had been incessantly trying to sap and mine forward, and not only at La Bassee but right across the valley of the Lys to the hills south of Ypres.
He was anxious to make this gap secure. It was the key of his position along the line from Noyon to the sea.
The construction of the Allies' entrenchment barrier was but the first stage of their great plan. At once after that barrier had been made the second stage was entered upon. The second stage was that of drawing one by one the enemy's teeth in the shape of the carefully fortified promontories and ridges, selected by him with an eye to their defensive possibilities. As in the entrenchment stage this was gone about methodically. Neither time was lost, ammunition wasted, nor lives thrown away.
Guns were massed against the position picked out for assault. They were massed without being seen. The present day gunner does not trust to the eye. He uses his gun with mathematical precision. This system the French artillerists had reduced to an exact science. At a given time these guns opened at the same instant, and on a preconcerted plan swept the position with a squall of fire. In this tornado everything, entanglements and obstructions, were cut to pieces; trenches crumbled; concrete redoubts were split into ruins. Amid the hurricane of lead nothing could live. Having swept the position the guns drew a curtain of fire behind it while the infantry advanced to the attack.
More than once it happened that the French infantry charged up to and captured trenches after this treatment without losing a man. None were left to oppose them. In fact, however, no assaults were made until the "lie" of the enemy's trenches and defences was thoroughly known.
The first German "tooth" drawn under this system was their fortification on the spur at Vermelles, four miles to the south of La Bassee. That was on December 7. After that fangs were one by one extracted all round the hostile front.[15]
One of these fangs was the German position on the spur at La Bassee. Along the south side of this spur early in February the Irish Guards and the Coldstreams turned the enemy out of his defences among the brick stacks there, and made the position useless to him save for purposes of defence.
Affairs having reached this stage the plan of assault was decided upon by Sir John French on February 19. It was to be carried out by the British First Army, under the command of Gen. Sir Douglas Haig, with the support of a large force of heavy artillery, a division of cavalry and some infantry of the general reserve.
The attack was to be directed against Neuve Chapelle. Holding attacks, that is practically feints, were to be made at the same time by the Second Army against La Bassee from the south and by the 4th Army Corps and the Indian Army Corps to the north.