Instructions had been given, in anticipation of any misunderstandings which might tend to lead to another fiasco like the battle of Neuve Chapelle. Orders were issued that troops in certain areas were to push on and not delay, because telephonic communication had not been established. The order of the day asked the troops to "break a hole in the enemy's line," and assured the attacking Divisions that the whole Army was behind, ready to deal sledge-hammer blows on the broken German front.
My gunner friends confidently expected to sleep in Lille on the night of the 9th, and proceeded jocosely to mark on a map of that city the houses each one chose as his billet. Roads to Lille had been selected for the ammunition columns, and orders given which would ensure a supply of shells that far forward, in case the attack "got through."
All was excitement when I left that front in the small hours of the morning of the 9th, and greatly would I have loved to stay and see the Auber Ridge attack at daybreak. But at early morning light on Sunday, May 9th, the 1st Cavalry Division, placed under the orders of General Plumer, who had taken General Smith-Dorrien's place as the General Officer commanding the 2nd Army, was once more to be sent to Ypres.
Things had not gone well in the Salient on the 8th. The 5th Corps, then under General Allenby, who had been promoted from Cavalry Corps, was composed of the 4th, 27th and 28th Divisions. These troops had been driven from their first-line trenches by a strenuous German attack, and had fallen back to the next line with heavy casualties.
The 2nd Cavalry Brigade had been rushed early on the 9th into the reserve trenches east of Ypres, and were in readiness from Potijze south to the Menin Road. The 1st Cavalry Brigade and the 9th Cavalry Brigade were near Vlamertinghe, west of Ypres, waiting orders.
The Huns had begun a ferocious onslaught on that perfect Sunday morning, and the roar of battle around Ypres drowned, in our ears, the noise of the 1st Army attack towards Aubers.
That 9th of May was to see bitter fighting on many fronts. The enemy attack on the Ypres Salient, and our "push" against the Auber ridge, were pregnant with bloody work, but away to the south, in front of Arras, the French Army was commencing the second day of the biggest attack it had yet planned since the winter mud had limited the fighting to trench warfare.
Five hundred thousand men and 2,000 guns were hammering at the German front, in an effort to break through to Douai, and though it was too early to expect a detailed report of the onslaught, word had come that the soldiers of France had won through in three places.
On the Russian front the German arms were crowned with success on that day, in a gigantic conflict, and the day before saw the sinking of the Lusitania and the sacrifice of its load of women and children.