Near Louvemont, on the left bank of the Meuse, the French were successful in several encounters with German patrols, which they dispersed after sharp fighting, killing a number and taking prisoners.
In the Champagne, especially at Le Casque and Le Teton, there was active artillery fighting throughout the day. In the region between the Miette and the Aisne the Germans attacked three French posts, but were driven off by the French artillery fire.
The British now took the offensive and advanced their line on a 600-yard front south of Ypres, near Hollebeke, and continued to exert pressure on the German lines. On the 7th a further push forward was made east of Wytschaete in Belgium.
The French sector of the Chemin-des-Dames to the south of Filain was menaced at all times because it was dominated by the ancient fort of Malmaison in possession of the enemy. In the early morning of July 9, 1917, the Germans began an intense bombardment of this sector and then attempted to rush ten or twelve infantry battalions into the French positions. A brigade of the famous Chasseurs-à-pied holding the line were forced back by overwhelming numbers. The Germans evidently thought that success was certain, for they had brought with them quantities of barbed wire, boxes of grenades, and trench mortars, and everything that was needed to organize the position whose capture would give them the command of a considerable section of Chemin-des-Dames.
They failed, however, to consider the indomitable French spirit. The Chasseurs had only retreated a short distance when they gathered together engineers and reservists who had been working on roads in the rear and rushed back, and by a series of brilliant counterattacks ejected or killed most of the Germans in spite of their heroic resistance, capturing large quantities of their war material and reoccupying the line almost to its fullest extent.
The Germans having obtained reenforcements, fought furiously to regain the lost position, but the French elated by their success redoubled their efforts to destroy the enemy and the shell craters, and communication trenches were soon encumbered with German dead. The French losses in the fighting here were severe, but as they occupied safer positions the Germans' casualties were far greater. The fighting was so intense throughout the action that very few prisoners were taken by either side. A group of French soldiers who had been made prisoners and brought to the German second line attacked their guard and fled to their own lines, escaping without hurt the intense fire directed against them.
On this date, July 10, 1917, the Germans delivered a smashing blow against the British lines north of Nieuport on the Belgian coast. For twenty-four hours the Germans had maintained an intense bombardment which lasted from 6 o'clock in the morning of the 10th up to midnight and was renewed again at dawn on the following day. The firing was on such a huge scale that it could be distinctly heard as far as London. The effect of this bombardment was to level all the British defenses in the dune sector and to destroy their bridges over the Yser. According to the Berlin reports 1,250 men were captured by the Germans in this battle.
To the southward, in the region, of Lombaertzyde, the Germans only obtained a temporary success, the British in a strong counterattack driving them out of the positions they had won before they had time to organize for defense.
That the Germans were enabled to succeed in this coup was largely owing to the weather conditions. A heavy gale was blowing on the Belgian coast and British naval support was impossible. The Germans enjoyed the advantage of having strong coast batteries all along the dunes which they could move about at will from one point to another. There was, however, no blinking the fact that a weak point existed in the British defenses. Such success as the Germans won was attributed by some critics to their superiority in the air, the British at the time being short of machines.
The net gains to the Germans in this battle was the capture of British positions on a front of 1,400 yards to a depth of 600 yards. The British losses in the shelled terrain between the river Yser and the sea were estimated at 1,800.