The Battles in Flanders, from Ypres to Neuve Chapelle

by Edmund Dane

Not merely were the 25th Brigade held up, but the Indian troops of the Reserve, advancing towards the Bois de Biez, found themselves enfiladed by the fire of this German position. The Gurkhas indeed reached the wood, and entered it. They were under a cross fire, however, from front and flank, and in the end had to retreat. In the direction also of the Pietre road the 21st Brigade met with greatly superior opposition, and like the 25th could got get forward. This was the situation at nightfall. The British troops dug themselves in along this new line.

At daybreak on March 11 the battle was renewed with an attempt by the Germans to shell the British from their new positions. During the night the enemy had brought up strong reinforcements and posted them in the woods and on the plateau. Their positions were energetically bombarded. Two German regiments in the Bois de Biez suffered heavily.

The enemy launched a counter-attack. Their columns were broken by the British fire. In pursuit of these beaten forces the British attack was renewed by the 4th Army Corps and the Indian Corps. The Germans, however, had also on their side established a new line. It was found necessary to deal with this as with the others, by a squall of artillery fire. But meantime the weather had changed. Rain and mist made accurate observation and reliable ranging out of the question.

That night further German reinforcements arrived. They were Saxons and Bavarians, mainly from Tourcoing. Before dawn on March 12 the German artillery opened upon Neuve Chapelle. Then in the dim light of breaking day two immense grey columns of German infantry were seen coming out of the woods towards Neuve Chapelle, one on the north-east, the other on the south-east. What is more they came on in mass formation. The British trenches, needless to say, had as usual been made as nearly as possible invisible. In that uncertain light the line even at quite a short distance away could not be made out. The Bavarians attacking from the south-east were still in column of route. An officer rode in their midst on horseback. Finding that they were close to the British line the charge was sounded. The mass came on in the closest formation. One minute they had uttered a cheer, the next a score or more of machine guns opened upon them. As though struck by lightning, the mass went down as it seemed, together. It changed into a writhing rampart of dead and wounded. Along it men still unhit, could be seen digging themselves in for sheer life, and even using corpses as a shelter.

It was a terrible and ghastly spectacle, the result of a terrible and ghastly blunder. Hardened as they were, even the British troops were sickened by it. From out of the heap wounded Germans crawled towards the British lines. Some of the British went out and helped them in.

The attack from the north-east was also a failure. Whether it was the fate of the Bavarians or not, the heart went out of it. At the beginning it was violent, but it utterly petered out.

These crushing repulses were again followed by a renewal of the British onset. It was directed against the village or rather the group of houses on the ridge known as the Moulin de Pietre. Through a sweeping "curtain" of German fire the British infantry stormed the enemy's trenches with grenade and bayonet. Nothing could stand against their tenacity. They held on to their new positions until nightfall. It was found, however, that to keep these positions in face of the enemy's strength was a game not worth the candle. The line was therefore withdrawn and consolidated.

This work occupied the night, so that when the morning of March 13 dawned the Germans found the British firmly entrenched east of Neuve Chapelle. The bombardment which the enemy at once opened from the Aubers ridge did very little damage. This, the fourth day following upon three days of hard and continuous fighting, was the most trying of all. The men were by this time in the last stage of fatigue. The devotion of the British soldier, however, is not readily fathomed.

Such was the battle of Neuve Chapelle. It cost the lives of nearly 2,500 British heroes, and casualties to nearly 9,000 others, while 1,751 were listed as missing. The losses of the enemy were some 18,000. In his dispatch Sir John French says: "The results attained were, in my opinion, wide and far-reaching." Not only did the British attack breach a part of the German front which had been elaborately fortified, and prove the power to breach it, and at a cost to the attacking force actually less than the force defending, but it set back in a decisive manner a scheme which the Germans had for six months been striving regardless of cost to carry through—the barring of access to the valley of the Lys. That valley is the military main road into Belgium, and as already pointed out, it is along it that there lie the railway junctions vital to the German position between the coast and the Aisne, and vital consequently to their whole position on the West. From their point of view, too, this much more than the crossing of the Yser is the way to the coast. The struggle, therefore, for mastery of the valley of the Lys represents a most important phase of the war.

As to the losses in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle it is now clear that they were due mainly to two things—the parts in the German first and in the German second line of defences which escaped the effect of the artillery "rafales"; and the late arrival of the reserve on the first day. If the artillery sweep in each instance was not perfect, it is at once just and necessary to point out that the flatness of the country rendered ranging far from easy, and that in each instance the section missed was comparatively but a very small bit of the line under fire.