On August 31, 1915, the science of aviation lost one of its most daring and brilliant exponents by the death of Alphonse Pegoud. No man before him ever took such liberties with the law of gravitation or performed such dare-devil pranks at dizzy altitudes up in the sky. He was the first to demonstrate the possibility of "looping the loop" thousands of feet from the earth; many have done the trick since, but for the pioneer it was a pure gamble with almost certain death. Even into the serious business of war Pegoud carried his freak aeronautics, though it must be added that his remarkable skill in that direction had enabled him to escape from many a perilous situation. A few days before he fell Pegoud carried out a flight of 186 miles over German territory. He returned unscathed, while the planes of his machine were riddled with bullet holes. On the occasion of decorating Pegoud with the Military Medal in March, 1915, the French Minister for War said: "Time and again he has pursued the enemy's aeroplanes successfully. On one day he brought down a monoplane and a biplane and compelled another biplane to land while he was all the time within range of fire." The following two of his innumerable thrilling exploits deserve to be recorded: "At one time Pegoud caught sight of a German ammunition depot and dropped nine bombs on it. The air concussion was so great from the explosion of the ammunition that his machine was all but wrecked, and he regained his equilibrium only after performing more than exhibition acrobatics. On another occasion, having located a captive German balloon, he ascended to a great height behind the clouds and then literally fell out of the sky toward his target. At a distance of only fifty yards he dropped a bomb which struck the balloon squarely. The vibration waves caused his aeroplane to bounce about like a toy boat on a rough pond. But Pegoud still carried his good luck and, managing to steady the craft, sailed away amid a hail of German bullets."[1]

[Footnote 1: New York "Sun."]

Of all the fighting on the western front during the month of August, 1915, the main interest attaches to that carried on in the struggle for the important mountain peaks in the Vosges which dominated German positions in the Alsatian valleys and plain. According to the French official reports, these operations resulted in the capture of the peaks named Lingekopf, Schratzmannele and Barrenkopf. The German official statement of September 2, 1915, however, claimed that the first and last of these had been recaptured. The French preparations for the attack on Lingekopf included the building of a mountain road eight miles long with communication trenches extending even farther, and also the construction of innumerable camps, sheds, ammunition and repair depots, as well as ambulance stations. The mountain road proved to be a triumph of engineering, as more than a hundred tons of war material passed over it daily without a single breakdown. The slopes which had to be stormed were thickly wooded, which greatly facilitated their defense, while the main French approach trenches were exposed to a double enfilade fire, rendering their use impossible in daytime. Between Schratzmannele and Barrenkopf there was a German blockhouse with cement walls ten feet thick. This was surrounded with barbed-wire entanglements and chevaux-de-frise. The French delivered their first attack on July 20, 1915. After a violent bombardment of ten hours, chasseur battalions stormed the German positions, capturing the Linge summit to the left and the Barren to the right. The Germans, however, firmly retained their hold on Schratzmannele. They caught the exposed French flanks with a stream of machine-gun fire and forced the chasseurs to retire to sheltered positions lower down the slopes. Two days later the French made another attack, and for quite a month, judging from the contradictory "official" reports, these peaks changed hands about twice a week. The French claim that they obtained "complete possession" on August 22, 1915, and that "the enemy, who had employed seven brigades against us, had to accept defeat." The German version, on the other hand, ran: "The battle line of Lingekopf-Barrenkopf thus passed again into our possession. All counterattacks have been repulsed."



CHAPTER VII

POLITICAL CRISIS IN FRANCE—AEROPLANE WARFARE—FIERCE COMBATS IN THE VOSGES—PREPARATIONS FOR ALLIED OFFENSE

It was also during the month of August, 1915, that the political horizon in France was temporarily overcast by one of those peculiar "crises" which seem to happen chiefly in countries enjoying the most liberal institutions and the greatest freedom of speech and press. On the 6th it was announced from Paris that the Government had decided to replace General H. J. E. Gouraud, Commander of the French Expeditionary Force at the Dardanelles, by General Sarrail, who had been designated Commander in Chief of the Army in the Orient. That Gouraud would have to be relieved of his command was painfully obvious, for that gallant officer had been struck by a shell while visiting a base hospital on July 8, hopelessly shattering his right arm, which had to be amputated. As, however, the French military contingent in the ill-starred Gallipoli adventure was but a small affair, the appointment of General Sarrail to the command thereof could only be regarded as the reverse of a promotion. In the first great German offensive toward Paris it was General Sarrail who had successfully defended the fortress of Verdun against the attacks of the German Crown Prince. Gradually the story came out that the general was the victim of a political intrigue—a plot to displace him as well as M. Millerand, the Minister for War. An acrimonious discussion developed in the French Chamber on August 14, 1915, in which some of the members nearly came to blows. The political truce, arranged between the conflicting parties at the beginning of the war, hung in the balance. Faithful to the old tradition that the duty of the Opposition is to oppose anything and everything, the Radical-Socialists and the Socialist party were loud in their denunciation of the conduct of the war, and desired to allocate responsibility for the military failures of the previous year. A number of high officers had already been "retired" in connection with those failures, which were serious enough. But the charge alleged against Sarrail was that he had omitted to supply his men adequately with antipoison gas masks. In one of the German attacks in which gas was used, Sarrail's front was pierced and a thousand men were forced to surrender. Some accounts gave the number as 5,000. For this the general was at first suspended, and then offered the other command, which he refused on the ground that if he was guilty he deserved punishment; if not, he was entitled to reinstatement. The real motive underlying the prosecution, however, was generally believed to have been one of a purely political nature. Sarrail, a "Republican," as opposed to a "Reactionary," which latter signifies a conservative in politics and, frequently also, a professed churchman—in short, General Sarrail had attracted the animosity of both the clerical and radical parties. When, finally, the Government promised to increase the Dardanelles force to 80,000 men, he accepted the appointment.

The first week in September, 1915, saw considerable artillery activity along the whole front. Except in the Vosges, where French and German bayonets clashed on mountain peaks and in underground tunnels, infantry action had been suspended for nearly two weeks. Heavy bombardments had been maintained by both sides—those of the Allies being especially deliberate and persistent. As a fireman would sway the nozzle of his streaming hose from side to side, so the Allies poured a continuous, sweeping torrent of shot and shell over the German positions in certain well-defined zones along the line. It began from the extreme left on the Belgian front, thence swung into the region of Souchez, then around Arras, farther on along the Aisne, particularly at the two extremities of the Aisne plateau, turned to the right in Champagne, spread to the Argonne, next in the Woevre and finally in Lorraine. Beneath the cyclone and out of sight trench mortar actions were fought, mining operations carried on, bombs and hand grenades thrown.

On September 1, 1915, four German aeroplanes had dropped bombs on the open town of Luneville, killing many civilians. As a measure of reprisal forty French aeroplanes returned the compliment by making another air raid on Saarbruecken, where they bombarded the station, factories, and military establishments. A squadron of thirty or forty vessels of the British Fleet bombarded the whole of the Belgian coast in German possession as far as Ostend. French artillery stationed in the vicinity of Nieuport cooperated to shell the German coast batteries at Westende. In retaliation for the bombardment of the open towns of St. Die and Gerardmer by German aeroplanes, a French aeroplane squadron assailed the railroad and military establishments of Freiburg in Breisgau. Aerial operations had by this time become a powerful auxiliary to the combatants on each side. The aeroplane attained a definite position as a weapon even in trench and field warfare. Machines hovered over the lines every day, reconnoitering and dropping bombs on positions, stores, transports, moving troops, trenches, and munition depots. Bombardment by aeroplane was, in fact, quite as serious and formidable a business as any artillery attack. The bombs carried by these machines were exactly of the same caliber as those used by heavy guns. Constant practice afforded by daily opportunities had enormously increased the skill of the aviators, many of whom could hit a small house from high altitudes without much trouble. Duels and pitched battles in the air were of daily occurrence on the western front. As soon as an "enemy flyer" hove in sight on either side of the lines, locally attached aviators rose and attacked the intruder. This, the most "modern" method of fighting, has produced a crop of thrilling incidents and stirring examples of bravery exhibited by the German, French, and British flying men. A code of what might be called "aerial chivalry" has spontaneously grown up among the flying fraternity. Two pretty incidents will suffice to demonstrate: A German aviator had been attacked and brought to earth by a French airman. The German was killed in the contest. In the dead man's pocket was found a diary of his adventures in the war, and other happenings, from day to day. It was written in conversational style addressed throughout to his wife, together with a letter to her of the same day's date. The next morning a French aeroplane flew over the German line. Descending to within a few hundred yards of the ground, despite the hail of bullets that whistled around him, the aviator dropped a neatly wrapped parcel, rose suddenly to a great height and was gone. That parcel contained all the dead German aviator's private property, his papers, medals, etc., with a note of sympathy from the victor. A few days after the death of Pegoud, who was killed in midair before he fell, a German aviator flew at great height over an Alsatian commune on the old frontier and dropped a wreath bearing the inscription: "In memory of Pegoud, who died a hero's death, from his adversary."

The French method of aerial maneuvering is interesting as well as effective. Their air squadrons operate in the following manner: ten machines rise 6,000 feet along the enemy's line; ten others rise 9,000 feet. If an enemy machine attempts to pass the Frenchmen attack simultaneously from above and below, while, if necessary, two other machines come to their aid. Thus the intruder is always at a disadvantage. On several occasions the Germans attempted to fly across the French lines in force, but always with disastrous consequences. When the French set out in squadrons to make a raid or bombard a position they pursue the same tactics and achieve very important results.

Early in September, 1915, General Joffre paid a visit to Rome, was received in audience by King Victor Emmanuel, and decorated with the highest Italian military distinction—the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Savoy—as proof of his majesty's esteem for the French army. General Joffre afterward made a tour of the Italian battle front and conferred with General Cadorna.

About September 8, 1915, the Germans recommenced to attack in the Argonne, where the German Crown Prince had failed to break the French line in June and July. After a violent artillery preparation, including the use of a large number of asphyxiating shells, two infantry divisions were flung against the French. The Germans rushed the first-line trenches at several points. Strong attacks were launched against them and prevented any further advance.

French and British airmen raided the aviation sheds at Ostend; another air squadron dropped sixty shells on the aviation ground at Saint Medard and on the railway station at Dieuze, in Lorraine, twenty-five miles northeast of Nancy. A bombardment of Zeebrugge by the British fleet caused much damage, the Germans losing forty dead and some hundred wounded. Here the submarine port, with two submersibles and two guns on the harbor wall were destroyed, while the central airship shed, containing at the time two dirigibles, was also severely damaged. The semaphore tower was shot to pieces and some sluices crippled. Perhaps the most exciting incident at this period was the great allied air raid on the Forest of Houlthulst, about halfway between Ypres and Dixmude. The forest was quite sheltered from the ravages of the allied guns, and had been converted into a regular garrison district, with comfortable barracks full of soldiers, provision stores, and large munition depots. The whole camp was brilliantly illuminated with electric light.

At ten o'clock on the night of September 9, 1915, sixty French, British and Belgian aeroplanes started out in clear moonlight. Immediately the aerial flotilla had announced its approach by the well-known buzzing of sixty industrious propellers, the whole neighborhood was plunged in sudden darkness. The moon, however, supplied the necessary light to guide the sky raiders to their goal. Besides, French flyers had already photographed the region in broad daylight, so that the situation of the main buildings was thoroughly known to all the pilots. It is stated that four tons of high explosives and incendiary bombs were scattered with deadly effect; some of the aircraft whose stock became exhausted flew back to their base, landed, refilled, and returned to the scene of action—two and three times. The greatest consternation naturally prevailed among the soldiers below, running in panic-stricken groups to escape from the blasting shower let loose over their heads. Indescribable confusion prevailed; frequent explosions were heard as some aerial missile found a piled-up accumulation of its own kind. By 11.30, an hour and a half after the squadron had set sail, the entire forest and the buildings it contained were in flames. The next morning a German aeroplane, "adorned with sixteen Iron Crosses," was forced to descend near Calais owing to engine trouble and was captured by the French.

By way of reprisals for the continued attacks on Luneville and Compiegne by German aviators, a squadron of French aeroplanes flew over the German town of Trier (Treves) on September 13, 1915, and deposited one hundred bombs. After returning to the base and taking on board further supplies, they set out again in the afternoon and dropped fifty-eight shells on the station of Dommary Baroncourt. Other aeros bombarded the railway stations at Donaueschingen on the Danube and at Marbach, where movements of troops had been reported. Activity grew in intensity all along the front. Artillery fighting on the Yser, the north and south of Arras, in the sectors of Neuville, Roclincourt and Mailly. To the north of the Oise the French artillery carried out a destructive fire on the German defenses and the works of Beuvraignes. Infantry attacks occurred in front of Andrechy. On the canal from the Aisne to the Marne the French bombarded the trenches, batteries and cantonments of the Germans in the environs of Sapigneul and of Neuville, near Berry-au-Bac. Grenade engagements took place near the Bethune-Arras road and north of Souchez. South of the Somme, before Fay, there were constant and stubborn mine duels, while fierce bombardments in the sectors of Armancourt (southwest of Compiegne), Beuvraignes (south of Roye), as well as on the plateau of. Quennevieres (northeast of Compiegne) and Nouvron (northwest of Soissons), continued uninterruptedly. In Champagne and in the Argonne also, long range artillery fighting rent the air.

On the Lorraine front, in the environs of Embermenil, Leintrey, and Ancerviller, near Luneville, the German trenches and works were subjected to heavy fire. Poison shells and liquid fire played an important part in the furious fighting that was gradually developing in the Vosges, and assisted the Germans to gain some initial successes. On the Lingekopf-Barrenkopf front the French were driven out of a first-line trench on the Schratzmannele, but they recovered most of the ground by a counterattack. Similarly on the summit of the Hartmannsweilerkopf, where the Germans had also obtained a footing in the French trenches, they were subsequently ejected again. These trenches had been captured with the aid of blazing liquids. Our first knowledge of this "blazing liquid" (outside of Germany) was derived from a document which fell into French hands early in the war. It was Note 32 of the Second Army, dated October 16, 1914, at St. Quentin. In it were published the following instructions under the heading of "Arms at the disposal of Pioneers (Sappers) for fighting at close quarters":

"The flame projectors (Flammenwerfer), which are very similar to portable fire extinguishers, are worked by specially trained pioneers and throw a liquid which at once catches fire spontaneously. The jet of fire has an effective range of 30 meters. The effect is immediate and deadly, and the great heat developed forces the enemy back a long way. As they burn from one and a half to two minutes, and can be stopped whenever necessary, short and isolated jets of flame are advisable, so that one charge is sufficient to spray several objectives. Flame projectors will be mainly employed in street and house-to-house fighting, and will be kept in readiness at the place from which an attack starts."

There is no doubt that some engines of this nature were employed by the Germans during August and September, 1914, to destroy portions of the towns and villages destroyed by them. One captured apparatus, actually examined, comprised a portable reservoir for holding the inflammable liquid and the means of spraying it. The former, which is carried strapped on to a man's back, is a steel cylinder containing oil and compressed air in separate chambers. The latter consists of a suitable length of metal pipe fitted with universal joints and a nozzle capable of rotation in any direction. When a valve is turned on, the air pressure forces the oil out of the nozzle in a fine spray for a distance of over twenty yards. The oil is ignited automatically at the nozzle and continues to issue in a sheet of flame until the air pressure falls too low or the oil is exhausted. The heat given out is terrific in its intensity. A similar method employed by the German troops consists of a liquid substance which is squirted into the trenches. Bombs are then thrown which on explosion ignite the fluid. Yet another sort of projectile took the form of an incendiary bomb or shell which was discharged noiselessly, possibly from a catapult. It bursts on impact, tearing a hole and burning a circle of ground about eight feet in diameter.

By the middle of the month, September, 1915, the liveliest activity obtained everywhere in the west—each side apparently doing its utmost to harass the other. Nothing of a definite nature was achieved by either. The Germans were merely sitting tight along most of the line while taking the offensive only in those sectors where they had reason to believe the Allies would attempt to strike the great blow. The Allies, on the other hand, endeavored to weaken their opponents as much as possible in order to create an easier passage for the great "drive" they contemplated. The innumerable engagements about this time throughout the western theatre of the war form a bewildering conflict of unconnected and minor battles and skirmishes. When, years hence, the "official" histories are written and published, the student may be able to read the riddle and trace some thread of continuity and intention through the labyrinth of these operations. For the present they must be regarded as mere incidents in the overture leading to a great battle. The actions were described from day to day with some detail by the Allies, and as "unimportant attempts" by the German official communiques. The latter generally consisted of few words that gave little or no indication of what had happened, and frequently wound up with the phrase: "There was no change on the front." The following translation may be given as a typical example; "The French attempted an attack but were repulsed by our fire. An enemy aeroplane was shot down. We successfully attacked in the Argonne. The situation is unchanged."

On September 18, 1915, the British fleet again bombarded the German defenses on the Belgian coast, in conjunction with the British artillery in the Nieuport district. Unabated fighting raged along the whole front, and it was all summed up in the German official communique of September 20, 1915, with commendable brevity:

"The hostile vessels which unsuccessfully bombarded Westende and Middelkerke, southwest of Ostend, withdrew before our fire. Several hits were observed. Along the land front there were no important events."

Nevertheless, important events were shaping themselves about this time. German artillery attacks increased in violence against the British front. Aeroplanes were particularly busy observing all moves on the board. In Champagne the Germans kept the French occupied with heavy shells and "lachrymatory projectiles." These projectiles have been described as "tearful and wonderful engines of war." They are ordinary hand grenades with a charge that rips open the grenade and liberates a liquid chemical. When that happens, the effect of the fumes brings water to the eyes of the men in such quantities that they are quite unable to defend themselves in the event of an attack. Shooting is entirely out of the question. The stinging sensation produced in the eyes is not pleasant, but it is not painful, and the effect wears off in a few minutes. The troops humorously refer to these grenades as "onions."

On September 21, 1915, a party of French airmen carried out the most daring of the many raids on German towns and positions they had hitherto accomplished. An aero squadron flew to Stuttgart, which is about 140 miles due east from Nancy, and dropped thirty shells on the palace of the King of Wuerttemberg and the railway station of the town. They were fired at from many points, but safely completed their double journey of nearly 300 miles. Before this exploit, which was undertaken as a reprisal, the longest distances traveled by raiding squadrons of French aeroplanes were those to the Friedrichshafen Zeppelin factories on June 28, 1915, involving a double journey of 240 miles from Belfort; and to the explosives factory at Ludwigshafen, on the Rhine, which represented a distance of 230 miles from Nancy and back. The Berlin official report thus describes the event:

"At 8.15 this morning enemy airmen with German marks on their aeros attacked Stuttgart and dropped several bombs on the town, killing four persons and wounding a number of soldiers and civilians. The material damage was quite unimportant."



CHAPTER VIII

THE GREAT CHAMPAGNE OFFENSIVE

The day fixed for the opening of the Allies' long-projected offensive dawned on September 22, 1915. Gigantic preparations had been in the making. Large drafts of fresh British troops had been poured into France, which enabled Sir John French to take over the defense of a portion of the lines hitherto held by General Joffre's men. Defensive organizations had been improved all round; immense supplies of munitions had been accumulated; units had been carefully regrouped and new ones created; all that skill, foresight and arduous toil could accomplish had been attained. The spirit of the human fighting material was all that could be desired. In order not to interrupt the course of the narrative later, we insert here the interesting general order that the French commander in chief issued to his troops on September 23, 1915, when it was read to the regiments by their officers:

"Soldiers of the Republic:

"After months of waiting, which have enabled us to increase our forces and our resources, while the adversary has been using up his own, the hour has come to attack and conquer and to add fresh glorious pages to those of the Marne and Flanders, the Vosges and Arras.

"Behind the whirlwind of iron and fire let loose, thanks to the factories of France, where your brothers have, night and day, worked for us, you will proceed to the attack, all together, on the whole front, in close union with the armies of our allies.

"Your elan will be irresistible. It will carry you at a bound up to the batteries of the adversary, beyond the fortified lines which he has placed before you.

"You will give him neither pause nor rest until victory has been achieved.

"Set to with all your might for the deliverance of the soil of la Patrie, for the triumph of justice and liberty.

"J. JOFFRE."

The general outlines of the plan of campaign may be briefly described: The British were to deliver a main attack on the German trenches between Lens and La Bassee, in close cooperation with the French on their immediate right in Artois, and to hold the enemy by secondary attacks and demonstrations on the rest of the (British) front, about eighty miles. The French, for their part, took in hand the two principal operations—to batter through in Artois and to exert their mightiest efforts in Champagne.



To a proper understanding of a campaign or a battle, some knowledge of the topographical conditions is essential. The chief scene in the act—where the grand attack falls—is the beautiful vineyard region of Champagne. Here the German front is the same as they established and fortified it after the Battle of the Marne. It rests on the west side on the Massif de Moronvillers; to the east it stretches as far as the Argonne. It was intended to cover the railroad from Challerange to Bazancourt, a line indispensable for the concentration movements of the German troops. The offensive front, which extends from Auberive to the east of Ville-sur-Tourbe, presents a varied aspect. From east to west may be seen, firstly, a glacis or sloping bank about five miles wide and covered with little woods. The road from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet, with the Baraque de l'Epine de Vedegrange, marks approximately its axis.



(2) The hollow, in which lies the pretty village of Souain and where the first German line follows its edge. The road from Souain to Pomme-Py describes the radius of this semicircle. The farm of Navarin stands on the top of the hills two miles north of Souain.

(3) To the north of Perthes, a comparatively tranquil region of uniform aspect, forming between the wooded hills of the Trou Bricot and those of the Butte du Mesnil a passage two miles wide, barred by several lines of trenches and ending at a series of heights—the Butte de Souain, Hills 195 and 201 and the Butte de Tahure, surmounted by the second German line.

(4) To the north of Mesnil, a very strong position, bastioned on the west by two twin heights (Mamelle Nord and Trapeze), on the east by the Butte du Mesnil. The German trenches form a powerful curtain between these two bastions, behind which a thickly wooded undulating region extends as far as Tahure.

(5) To the north of Beausejour, a bare terrain easily traversable, with a gentle rise in the direction of Ripon to the farms of Maisons de Champagne.

(6) To the north of Massiges, hills numbered 191 and 199, describing on the map the figure of a hand, very strongly fortified and forming the eastern flank of the whole German line. This table-land slopes down gently in the direction of Ville-sur-Tourbe.

As to the German defenses, the French were intimately acquainted with every detail. They had maps showing every defensive work, trench, alley of communication, and clump of trees in the landscape. Each of these features had been given a special name or number preceded by a certain letter, according to the sector of attack wherein it was situated. These details had been laboriously collected by aviators and spies, and applied with minute precision.

On the morning of September 22, 1915, the French accelerated their long-sustained bombardment of the German positions with intense fury, continuing day and night without a break until the 25th. The direct object of this preparatory cannonade was to destroy the wire entanglements, bury the defenders in their dugouts, raze the trenches, smash the embrasures, and stop up the alleys of communication. The range included not only the first trench line, but also the supporting trench and the second position, though the last was so far distant as to make accurate observation difficult. The heavy long-range guns shelled the headquarters, the cantonments and the railroad stations. They speedily demolished the permanent way, thereby stopping all traffic in reenforcements, munitions and commissariat. From letters and notes afterwards found upon German prisoners who came out alive from that inferno, one may gather an approximate idea of what the bombardment was like:

"September 23.

"The French artillery fired without intermission from the morning of the 21st to the evening of the 23rd, and we all took refuge in our dugouts. On the evening of the 22d we were to have gone to get some food, but the French continued to fire on our trenches. In the evening we had heavy losses, and we had nothing to eat."

"September 24.

"For the last two days the French have been firing like mad. To-day, for instance, a dugout has been destroyed. There were sixteen men in it. Not one of them managed to save his skin. They are all dead. Besides that, a number of individual men have been killed and there are a great mass of wounded. The artillery fires almost as rapidly as the infantry. A mist of smoke hangs over the whole battle front, so that it is impossible to see anything. Men are dropping like flies. The trenches are no longer anything but a mound of ruins."

"September 24.

"A rain of shells is pouring down upon us. The kitchen and everything that is sent to us is bombarded at night. The field kitchens no longer come to us. Oh, if only the end were near! That is the cry everyone is repeating."

"September 25.

"I have received no news, and probably shall not receive any for some days. The whole postal service has been stopped; all places have been bombarded to such an extent that no human being could stand against it. The railway line is so seriously damaged that the train service for some time has been completely stopped. We have been for three days in the first line; during those three days the French have fired so heavily that our trenches are no longer visible."

"September 25.

"We have passed through some terrible hours. It was as though the whole world were in a state of collapse. We have had heavy losses. One company of 250 men had sixty killed last night. A neighboring battery had sixteen killed yesterday. The following instance will show you the frightful destructiveness of the French shells: A dugout five meters deep, surrounded by two meters fifty centimeters of earth and two thicknesses of heavy timber, was broken like a match."

Report made on September 24, 1915, in the morning, by the captain commanding the Third Company of the 135th Regiment of Reserves:

"The French are firing on us with great bombs and machine guns. We must have reenforcements at once. Many men are no longer fit for anything. It is not that they are wounded, but they are Landsturmers. Moreover the wastage is greater than the losses announced. Send rations immediately; no food has reached us to-day. Urgently want illuminating cartridges and hand grenades. Is the hospital corps never coming to fetch the wounded? I urgently beg for reenforcements; the men are dying from fatigue and want of sleep. I have no news of the battalion."

The time fixed for all the attacks on the Champagne front was 9.15 a. m., September 25, 1915. Just before the assault General Joffre issued the following brief order:

"The offensive will be carried on without truce and without respite.

"Remember the Marne—Victory or death."

Punctual to the moment the troops climbed out of their trenches with the aid of steps or scaling ladders and drew up in line before making a rush at the German trenches. The operation was rapidly effected. The German position was at an average distance of 220 yards; at the word of command the troops broke into a steady trot and covered that ground without any serious loss. The honor of the first assault was granted to the dare-devil Colonial Corps, men hardened in the building up of France's African Empire, and to the Moroccan troops, famous for fierce and obstinate fighting. The men tore across the ground to the assault, led by their commander, General Marchand, of Fashoda fame, who left the army at the age of forty-four but volunteered immediately on the outbreak of the war, and was given command of the Colonial Brigade. General Marchand fell in the charge with a dangerous shell wound in the abdomen. The men dashed on to the German trench line, stirring the rain-drenched, chalky soil to foam beneath their feet. Under the leadership of General Baratier, Marchand's right-hand man in his colonial conquests, the French Colonial Cavalry played an important part in the charge. This was the first time for many months that cavalry really came into action on the western front. They lost heavily, but their activities probably explain the great number of prisoners captured in so short a time.

At nearly every point the Germans were taken completely by surprise, for their defensive fire was not opened until after the flowing tide of the invaders had passed by. This was due neither to lack of courage nor of vigilance, but to the demoralizing effect on the nerves of the defenders by the terrific cannonade, which in all such cases induces a sort of helpless apathy.

The French actually penetrated into the first German trench over the whole attacking front at one rush; after that their progress met with fiercer resistance and varying checks. While certain units continued their advance with remarkable rapidity, others encountered machine guns still in action and either stopped or advanced with extreme difficulty. Some centers of the German resistance maintained their position for several hours; some even for days. A line showing the different stages of the French advance in Champagne would assume a curiously winding shape, and would reveal on one hand the defensive power of an adversary resolved to hold his ground at all costs, and on the other the mathematically successful continuity of the French efforts in this hand-to-hand struggle.

The Battle of Champagne must be considered in the light of a series of assaults, executed at the same moment, in parallel or convergent directions and having for their object either the capture or the hemming in of the first German position, the units being instructed to re-form in a continuous line before the second position. In order to follow the development clearly, the terrain must be divided into several sectors, in each of which the operations, although closely coordinated, assumed, as a consequence either of the nature of the ground or of the peculiarities of the German defenses, a different character. The unity of the action was nevertheless insured by the simultaneity of the rush, which carried all the troops beyond the first position, past the batteries, to the defenses established by the Germans on the heights to the south of Py. At the two extremities of the French attacking front, where the advance was subjected to converging fires and to counterattacks on the flanks, the offensive practically failed—or at least made no progress. The fighting that took place in Auberive and round about Servon was marked by several heroic features, but it led to no further result than to hold and immobilize the German forces on the wings while the attack was progressing in the center.



In accordance with the proposed arrangement of divisions into sectors, we will take as Number—

(1) The sector of the Epine de Vedegrange: Here the first German line was established at the base of a wide glacis covered with clumps of trees, and formed a series of salients running into each other. At certain points it ran along the edge of the woods where the supplementary defenses were completed by abatis. The position as a whole between Auberive and Souain described a vast triangle. To the west of the road from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet, the troops traversed the first German line and rushed forward for a distance of about 1,200 yards as far as a supporting trench, in front of which they were stopped by wire entanglements. A counterattack debouching from the west and supported by the artillery of Moronvillers caused a slight retirement of the French left. The troops on the right, on the contrary, held their gains and succeeded on the following days in increasing and extending them, remaining in touch with the units which were attacking on the east of the road. The latter had succeeded in a brilliant manner in overcoming the difficulties that faced them. The German position which they captured, with its triple and quadruple lines of trenches, its small forts armed with machine guns, its woods adapted for the defensive purpose in view, constituted one of the most complete schemes of defense on the Champagne front and afforded cover to a numerous artillery concealed in the woods of the glacis. On this front, about three miles wide, the attack on September 25, 1915, achieved a mixed success. The troops on the left, after having penetrated into the first trench, had their progress arrested by machine guns. On the right, however, in spite of obstacles presented by four successive trenches, each of which was covered by a network of wire entanglements and was concealed in the woods, where the French artillery had difficulty in reaching them, the attacking troops gained about one and one-half miles, took 700 prisoners and captured seven guns.

The advance here recommenced on September 27, 1915. The left took possession of the woods lining the road from Saint-Hilaire to Saint-Souplet as far as the Epine de Vedegrange. Along the whole extent of the wooded heights as far as the western side of the hollow at Souain the success was identical. Notwithstanding the losses they sustained and the fatigue involved in the incessant fighting, the troops pushed forward, leaving behind them only a sufficient force to clear the woods of isolated groups of Germans still remaining there. Between four and six in the afternoon they arrived immediately in front of the second German position. On the same day they penetrated this position at two points, and captured a trench over a thousand yards wide, called the "Parallel of the Epine de Vedegrange," which was duplicated almost throughout by another trench (the parallel of the wood of Chevron). A little farther east the French also penetrated the German trench to a depth of about 450 yards. But it was impossible to take advantage of this breach owing to a concentration of the heavy German artillery, a rapidly continued defense of the surrounding woods, and the fire of machine guns which could not be approached. These guns were planted in the trenches on the right and left of the entry and exit of the breach. The results attained by the French in this sector alone amounted to fifteen square miles of territory organized for defenses throughout nearly the whole of its extent. On September 28, 1915, they also took over 3,000 prisoners and forty-four cannon.

(2) Sector of Souain: The German lines round about Souain described a wide curve. Close to the French trenches, to the west at the Mill and to the east at the wood of Sabot, they swerved to the extent of about a mile to the north of the village and of the source of the Ain.

When the offensive was decided upon it was necessary, in order to extend the French lines forward to striking distance, to undertake sapping operations in parallel lines, and at times to make dashes by night over the intervening ground. The men working underground got into communication with the trenches by digging alleys of communication. Under the eyes and the fire of the Germans this difficult undertaking was carried out with very slight loss. These parallel lines approached to within a distance of 150 yards of the German trenches. The assault was made in three different directions: on the west in the direction of Hills 167 and 174; in the center along a line running parallel with the road from Souain to Pomme-Py, in the direction of the farm of Navarin; on the east in the direction of the woods intersected by the road from Souain to Tahure, and in the direction of the Butte de Souain. The advance was extremely rapid—on the left over 2,000 yards in less than an hour, in the center over 3,000 yards in forty-five minutes. At 10 a. m. the French had reached the farm of Navarin. Toward the east the forward march was more difficult. Some German machine guns stood their ground in the wood of Sabot and enormously strengthened the German resistance. This defense was eventually overcome by surrounding them. Arriving at the wooded region in that part where it is intersected by the road mentioned above, the assailants joined up on the 27th with those of their comrades who were attacking to the north of Perthes. They left behind them here, also, only sufficient men to clear the woods of stragglers.

Parlementaires were sent to the Germans, who received them with a volley of rifle shots and endeavored to escape during the night. The majority were killed and the survivors surrendered. Several batteries and a large quantity of war material remained to the French. On the 28th, along the entire length of the sector, they were immediately in front of the second German line.

(3) Sector of Perthes: Between Souain and Perthes stretches a wooded region in which heavy fighting had already taken place in February and March. At that time the French had contrived to take possession of the German defenses of the wood of Sabot on the eastern extremity of this region. They had also made some progress to the northwest of Perthes, on the summit of Hill 200. But between these two positions the Germans had retained a strong system of trenches forming a salient almost triangular in shape, which the French nicknamed "la Poche" (the Pocket). During the whole year a war of mining had been going on, and the region, which was broken up by concave constructions and intersected in all directions by trenches and alleys of communication, constituted an attacking ground all the more difficult because to the north of la Poche the rather thickly-wooded Trou Bricot, the edges of which had been put in a state of defense, obstructed a rapid advance. This wooded region extends over a width of more than a mile. The arrangements made for the attack contemplated, after the capture of la Poche, the surrounding of the woods of the Trou Bricot. The junction was to be made at the road from Souain to Tahure, with the troops assigned for the attack on the eastern border of the hollow at Souain.

The ground to the east of the Trou Bricot was less difficult. Open and comparatively flat it was defended on the north of Perthes by a triple line of trenches distant 100 yards from each other. At a distance of 1,000 to 1,200 yards a supporting trench, called the "York trench," was almost unique in its entire construction. The open country beyond stretched for a distance of two and one-half miles up to the second German position (Hill 195, Butte de Tahure). The principal effort was directed against this passage, the left flank of attack being secured by a subsidiary action confined to the capture of la Poche.

At 9 a. m. the French artillery directed their fire successively against the first-line trenches and the supporting trenches. The attack took place in perfect order. The infantry were already swarming into the German trenches when the German artillery opened its defensive fire. The French counterbatteries hampered the German pieces and the reserves in the rear suffered little from their fire. At 9.45 a. m. the two columns which were attacking the extremities of the salient of la Poche joined hands. The position was surrounded. Those Germans who remained alive inside it surrendered. At the same time a battalion was setting foot in the defenses of the southern edges of the wood of Trou Bricot. The battalion that followed, marching to the outside of the eastern edges, executed with perfect regularity a "left turn" and came and formed up alongside the communication alleys as far as the supporting trench. At the same moment, in the open country to the north of Perthes, the French troops surmounted the three first-line trenches and, preceded by artillery, made a quick march to the York trench and occupied it almost without striking a blow.

Farther to the east, along the road from Perthes to Tahure, the French advance encountered greater difficulties. Some centers of the German resistance could not be overcome. A sheltered machine gun continued its fire. An infantry officer, with a petty officer of artillery, succeeded in getting a gun into action at a distance of over 300 yards from the machine gun and firing at it at close quarters. Of the troops that were advancing to the north of Perthes, some made for the eastern border of the wood of Bricot, where they penetrated into the camps, ousting the defenders and surprising several officers in bed. Late in the afternoon a French regiment had reached the road from Souain to Tahure. Other units were marching straight toward the north, clearing out the little woods on the way. They there captured batteries of which the artillerymen were "riveted to their guns by means of bayonets." The same work of clearance was meanwhile being performed in the woods extending east of the road from Perthes to Souain and Tahure, where batteries were charged and captured while in action. At this spot a regiment covered three miles in two hours and captured ten guns. From midday onward the rate of progress slackened, the bad weather making it impossible for the French artillery to see what was going on, and rendering the joining up movements extremely difficult. From the Buttes de Souain and Tahure the Germans directed converging fires on the French, who were advancing there along very open ground. Nevertheless, they continued their advance as far as the slopes of Hill 193 and the Butte de Tahure and there dug themselves in.

The night passed without any German counterattack. In the darkness the French artillery brought forward their heavy pieces and several field batteries which had arrived immediately after the attack beyond the York trench. At dawn the reconstituted regiments made another forward rush which enabled them to establish themselves in immediate contact with the second German position from the Butte de Souain to the Butte de Tahure, and even to seize several advanced posts in the neighborhood. But on the lower slopes some of the wire entanglements remained intact; a successful assault on them would have been possible only after a fresh artillery preparation. Up to October 6, 1915, the troops remained where they were, digging trenches and organizing a defensive system which had to be constructed all over again on ground devastated by German fire.

(4) Sector of Le Mesnil: It was to the north of Le Mesnil that the French encountered the greatest German resistance. In the course of the engagements of the preceding winter the French had succeeded in securing a foothold on top of the hill numbered 196. The Germans remained a little to the east, in the "Ravin des Cuisines" (Ravine of the Kitchens). This the French now took by assault, but could get no farther. The German trenches, constructed on the northern slopes of Hill 196, were so concealed from field observation that it was difficult for the artillery to reach them. They were furthermore flanked on one side by the twin heights of the Mamelles, and on the other by the Butte du Mesnil. Some French units managed to penetrate into the trenches to the eastward on the 25th, but a counterattack and flank fires dislodged them again. To the west they did not capture the northern Mamelle till the night of October 1-2, 1915, thereby surrounding the trapeze works that surmounted the southern Mamelle.

(5) Sector of Beausejour: The French attacks launched north of Beausejour met with more conspicuous success. Throwing themselves on the first German lines the swarming invaders rapidly captured the defense works in the woods of Fer de Lance and Demi-Lune, and afterwards all the works known as the Bastion. Certain units won the top of Maisons de Champagne in one rush and darted past several batteries, killing the gunners as they served their pieces. The same movement took them across the intricate region of the mine "funnels" of Beausejour up to the wood intersected by the road to Maisons de Champagne. There they encountered German artillerymen in the act of unlimbering their guns. They killed the drivers and the horses; the survivors surrendered.

Farther westward the left wing of the attacking force advanced with greater difficulty, being hampered by the small forts and covered works with which the trenches were everywhere protected. At this moment the cavalry unexpectedly came to the support of the infantry. Two squadrons of hussars galloped against the German batteries north of Maisons de Champagne in the teeth of a fierce artillery fire. They nevertheless reached that part of the lines where the Germans still held their ground. Machine guns rattled against the cavalry, dropping many of their horses. The hussars dismounted and, with drawn sabers, made a rush for the trenches. Favored by this diversion the infantry simultaneously resumed their forward movement. The German resistance broke down, and more than 600 were taken prisoners. Later in the day of the 25th some German counterattacks were made from the direction of Ripon, but failed to drive the French from the Maisons de Champagne summit. During the next few days a desperate struggle ensued north of the summit in the vicinity of a defensive work called the "Ouvrage de la Defaite," which the French took by storm, lost it again, then recovered it, and finally were driven out by a severe bombardment.

(6) Sector of Massiges: The safety of the French troops which had advanced to the wood and the Maisons de Champagne was assured by the capture of the heights of Massiges. This sharply undulating upland (199 on the north and 191 on the south) formed a German stronghold that was believed to be impregnable. From the top they commanded the French positions in several directions. The two first attacking parties marched out in columns at 9.15 a. m., preceded by field-artillery fire. In fifteen minutes they had reached the summit. Then their difficulties began. In the face of a withering rifle and machine-gun fire they could proceed but slowly along the summits by the communication alleys, blasting their way through with hand grenades, and supported by the artillery, which was constantly kept informed of their movements by means of flag signals. The Germans surrendered in large numbers as the grenadiers advanced. The French formed an uninterrupted, ever-lengthening chain of grenade-bearers in the communication alleys, just as buckets of water were passed from hand to hand at fires in former times. This chain started from Massiges and each fresh arrival of grenades at the other end was accompanied by a further advance.

The fight continued in this manner from September 25, 1915, to October 3, 1915, with fierce perseverance against stubborn opposition. The Germans poured a continuous stream of reenforcements into the section and offered a resistance that has rarely been equaled for obstinacy and courage. According to French reports, they stood up to be shot down—the machine-gun men at their guns, the grenadiers on their grenade chests. Every attempt at counterattacking failed them. Having the heights of Massiges in their possession enabled the French to extend their gains toward Ville-sur-Tourbe, while taking in flank those trenches they had failed to capture by a frontal attack. The loss of these heights seemed to have particularly disturbed the German General Staff. It was at first denied in the official reports, and then explained that the ground had been abandoned owing to artillery fire, whereas the French Headquarters Staff claimed that they had captured the ground mainly by hand-grenade fighting at close quarters.

The Battle of Champagne presents a number of curious aspects. How came the Germans to be so overwhelmingly surprised? Beyond all doubt, they expected a great French offensive. In the orders of the day issued by General von Ditfurth on August 15, 1915—five weeks before the French attack began—we read, "The possibility of a great French offensive must be considered." General von Fleck was rather late: on September 26, 1915, when the French had already taken nearly the whole first-line trenches, he expressed the opinion that "The French Higher Command appears to be disposed to make another desperate effort." What is tolerably certain is that the German General Staff did not foresee the strength of the blow nor suspect the vigor with which it would be delivered. Even the command on the battle field itself apparently failed to recognize what was happening before their eyes. Inside the shelters of the second line two German officers were placidly enjoying the delights of morning in bed, when they were disturbed by noises which it was beyond their wits to account for. The door of their little house was rudely thrust open and excited voices said rude things in French. Then bayonets made their appearance, and soldiers, hot and breathing hard after their steeplechase across the German trenches, pulled the officers from their beds with scant respect, informing them briefly that they were prisoners. This was the first intimation which the stupefied officers received that the enemy had broken through their lines.

They seemed to have had an excessive confidence in the strength of their first line, and the interruption of telephonic communications had prevented their being informed of the rapid French advance. Then as to the disposition and employment of reserves: Here it looks as though that perfect organization and semi-infallible precision which characterize the German army had, for the nonce, gone awry in the Champagne conflict. In order to make up for the insufficiency of the local reserves the German military authorities had to put in line not only the important units which they held at their disposal behind the front (Tenth Corps brought back from Russia), but the local reserves from other sectors (Soissons, Argonne, the Woevre, Alsace), which were dispatched to Champagne one battalion after another, and even in groups of double companies. Ill provided with food and munitions, the reenforcements were pushed to battle on an unknown terrain without indication as to the direction they had to take and without their junction with neighboring units having been arranged. Through the haste with which the reserves were thrown under the fire of the French artillery and infantry—already in possession of the positions—the German losses must have been increased enormously. A letter taken from a soldier of the 118th Regiment may be cited as corroborative evidence: "We were put in a motor car and proceeded at a headlong pace to Tahure, by way of Vouziers. Two hours' rest in the open air with rain falling, and then we had a six hours' march to take up our positions. On our way we were greeted by the fire of the enemy shells, so that, for instance, out of 280 men of the second company only 224 arrived safe and sound inside the trenches. These trenches, freshly dug, were barely thirty-five to fifty centimeters (12 to 17 in.) deep. Continually surrounded by mines and bursting shells, we had to remain in them and do the best we could with them for 118 hours without getting anything hot to eat. Hell itself could not be more terrible. To-day, at about 12 noon, 600 men, fresh troops, joined the regiment. In five days we had lost as many and more."

The disorder in which the reenforcements were engaged appears strongly from this fact: On only that part of the front included between Maisons de Champagne and Hill 189 there were on October 2, 1915, no fewer than thirty-two different battalions belonging to twenty-one different regiments. During the days following the French rush through the first line, the Germans seemed to have but one idea, to strengthen their second line to stem the advance. Their counterattacks were concentrated on a comparatively unimportant part of the battle front in certain places, the loss of which appeared to them to be particularly dangerous. Therefore on the heights of Massiges the German military authorities hurled in succession isolated battalions of the 123d, 124th and 120th regiments; of the Thirtieth Regular Regiment and of the Second Regiment Ersatz Reserve (Sixteenth Corps), which were in turn decimated, for these counterattacks, hastily and crudely prepared, all ended in sanguinary failures. It was not the men who failed their leaders, for they fought like tigers when reasonable opportunities were offered them.

That strong offensive capacity of the Germans seemed also, on the occasion, to have broken down. General von Ditfurth's order of the day bears witness to this: "It seemed to me that the infantry at certain points was confining its action to a mere defensive.... I cannot protest too strongly against such an idea, which necessarily results in destroying the spirit of offensive in our own troops and in arousing and strengthening in the mind of the enemy a feeling of his superiority. The enemy is left full liberty of action and our action is subjected to the will of the enemy."

It is of course impossible to estimate precisely what the German losses were. There are certain known details, however, which may serve to indicate their extent. One underofficer declared that he was the only man remaining out of his company. A soldier of the third battalion of the 123d Regiment, engaged on the 26th, stated that his regiment was withdrawn from the front after only two days' fighting because its losses were too great. The 118th Regiment relieved the 158th Regiment in the trenches after it had been reduced to fifteen or twenty men per company. Certain units disappeared completely, as for instance the Twenty-seventh Reserve Regiment and the Fifty-second Regular Regiment, which, by the evening of the 25th, had left in French hands the first 13 officers and 933 men, and the other 21 officers and 927 men. Certain figures may help to arrive at the total losses. At the beginning of September, 1915, the German strength on the Champagne front amounted to seventy battalions. In anticipation of a French attack they brought there, before the 25th, another twenty-nine battalions, making a total of ninety-nine battalions. Reckoning the corresponding artillery and pioneer formations, this would represent 115,000 men directly engaged. The losses due to the artillery preparation and the first attacks were such that from September 25 to October 15, 1915, the German General Staff was compelled to renew its effectives almost in their entirety by sending out ninety-three fresh battalions. It is assumed that the units engaged on September 25-26, 1915, suffered losses amounting to from sixty to eighty per cent (even more for certain corps which had entirely disappeared). The new units brought into line for the counterattacks, and subjected in connection with these to an incessant bombardment, lost fifty per cent of their effectives, if not more. Hence it would be hardly overstating the case to set down 140,000 men as the sum of the German losses in Champagne. It must also be taken into account that of this number the proportion of slightly wounded men able to recuperate quickly and return to the front was, in the case of the Germans, very much below the average proportion of other engagements, for they were unable to collect their wounded. Thus nearly the whole of the troops defending the first position fell into French hands.

After recounting the losses of one side, let us turn to analyze the gains of the other. The French had penetrated the German lines on a front of over fifteen miles, and to a depth of two and a half miles in some places, between Auberive and Ville-sur-Tourbe. The territorial gains may be thus summarized: The troops of the Republic had scaled the whole of the glacis of the Epine de Vedegrange; they occupied the ridge of the hollow at Souain; debouched in the opening to the north of Perthes to the slopes of Hill 195 and as far as the Butte de Tahure; carried the western bastions of the curtain of le Mesnil; advanced as far as Maisons de Champagne and took by assault the "hand" of Massiges. The territory they had reconquered from the invaders represented an area of about forty square kilometers. On and from October 7, 1915, they beat back the furious efforts of the Germans to regain the lost ground. Nevertheless, in spite of the utmost resolution on the part of commanders, and of valor on the part of the French troops, the Germans were not completely overthrown, and the annihilating results expected from the action of the mass of troops and guns employed were not attained. It was a victory, but an indecisive one.

On October 5, 1915, General Joffre issued the following manifesto from Grand Headquarters:

"The Commander in Chief addresses to the troops under his orders the expression of his profound satisfaction at the results obtained up to the present day by the attacks. Twenty-five thousand prisoners, three hundred and fifty guns, a quantity of material which it has not yet been possible to gauge, are the trophies of a victory the echo of which throughout Europe indicates its importance.

"The sacrifices willingly made have not been in vain. All have been able to take part in the common task. The present is a sure guarantee to us of the future.

"The Commander in Chief is proud to command the finest troops France has ever known."



CHAPTER IX

THE BRITISH FRONT IN ARTOIS

Ever since August 16, 1915, a persistent and almost continuous bombardment of the German lines had been carried out by the French and, to a less extent, by the British and Belgian artillery. The allied gunners appear to have distributed their favors quite impartially. There was nothing in the action taken to direct attention to one sector more than to another. The Vosges, the Meurthe and Moselle, Lorraine and the Woevre, the Argonne, Champagne, the Aisne, the Somme, the Arras sector, Ypres and the Yser, and the Belgian coast where the British navy had joined in, all were subjected to a heavy, deliberate and effective fire from guns of all calibers. As in Champagne, the rate of fire quickened up on September 22, 1915. Great concentrations of guns had been made at various points, and enormous quantities of shells had been collected in readiness for the attack. But the artillery preparation which immediately preceded that attack in the west was of a most terrific description. Shortly after midnight and in the early hours of Saturday morning, September 25, 1915, the German positions were treated to a bombardment that had rarely been equaled in violence. From the Yser Canal down to the end of the French line the Allies' guns took up the note, and soon the whole of the allied line was thundering and reechoing with the infernal racket. The German lines became smothered in dust and smoke, their parapets simply melted away, their barbed-wire entanglements disappeared. Those sleeping thirty or forty miles away were awakened in the night by the dull rumbling. The whole atmosphere was choked with the noise, and so it continued throughout the day with hardly an interval. As if in anticipation of the coming onslaught the German artillery had also raised the key of its fire to a higher pitch several days before.

Simultaneously with the attack in Champagne, Sir John French assumed the offensive on the British front. The main British attack was directed in the neighborhood of Lens, against Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. While the French troops were rushing the German first line in Champagne, the British troops executed a precisely similar movement south of La Bassee Canal to the east of Grenay and Vermelles. With the first rush they captured the German trenches on a front of five miles, penetrating the lines in some places to a distance of 4,000 yards. They conquered the western outskirts of Hulluch, the village of Loos, with the mining works around it, and Hill 70. They lost the quarries northwest of Hulluch again, but retook them on the following day. Other attacks were made north of the La Bassee Canal, which drew strong German reserves toward these points of the lines, where hard fighting occurred throughout the day with fluctuating success. The British also made another attack on Hooge on either side of the Menin road. The assault north of the road yielded the Bellewaarde Farm and ridge, but the Germans subsequently recaptured this part. South of the road the attack gained about 600 yards of German trench. The British took 2,600 prisoners, eighteen guns and thirty machine guns in the first day. The Fourth British Army Corps, under Sir Henry Rawlinson, had thus taken Loos and overrun Hill 70, a mile to the east, and even penetrated to Cite St. Auguste. The Fifth Corps, under Sir Hubert Gough, on the left, had stormed the quarries, taken Cite St. Elie, and occupied a portion of the village of Haisnes. But the First Army, in its attack, had not kept adequate reserves on hand; and those at first at the disposal of the general in chief, which had to serve the whole front and to be kept in hand in case of unexpected events, came up too late to enable the British to hold and consolidate all the ground they had won. The Ypres-Arras sector had been more formidably fortified than any other portion of the German front. It is an extremely thickly populated neighborhood, and the terrain is full of difficulties. It could not be expected that an advance here, at least from the outset, could be as rapid as that in Champagne. Whereas in the latter it was a fight for rivers, ridges and woods, in the close country north of Arras the struggle raged in and around villages, houses, and for some particular trench that had to be taken before the French and British could enter the great plain that stretches down to Lille. Every house along that part had been converted into a fortress. When the superstructure had been blown to pieces by shell fire, pioneers burrowed thirty or fifty feet below the cellars and thus held on to the position.

To the right of the British in Artois, the French infantry attack was directed toward the forest of Hache. Only eighty or ninety yards separated the French from the German trenches, and the French infantry, which attained its objective in a few minutes, found the trenches a mass of ruins and almost deserted, and the Germans retreating into the wood. The first wave of attackers followed in pursuit, but they reached the second line of trenches, situated in the middle of the wood, without meeting any Germans in considerable force. They pushed on to the eastern edge of the wood, but the Germans again put up no defense, and their third-line trenches, on the fringe of the wood, were likewise taken. Then came a halt in the advance. The German commander pulled his men together and, with the reserves which had come up in the meantime, launched a counterattack against the French, who had quickly established themselves in their newly captured positions. Heavy shells, high explosives and shrapnel were raining in the trenches occupied by the French, and but for the new steel helmets which had recently been supplied, the casualties would have been enormous. One man's helmet was split clean across the crown by a shell splinter, but the man escaped with merely a scratch. The Germans came on in close formations, hurling grenades as they marched. The atmosphere of the wood became almost insupportable with the smoke. Finally, the French hurled a veritable torrent of grenades, which drove the Germans back and compelled them to withdraw across the River Souchez. Boise Hache was entirely won.

The British attack between La Bassee and Lens and the French attack on the Souchez side were admirably coordinated, and were directed mainly to assist the French to gain the heights west of Vimy, which were the unattained object of their efforts during May and June. By September 27, 1915, the French had all Souchez in their hands, and were advancing upon Givenchy. The capture of the Vimy heights was an item of the highest importance, for to the eastward of them all the ground was commanded by their fire, and the chances were that the Germans would fall back on Douai and on the line of the Lille-Douai Canal, once they were pushed off the high ground. In the Argonne the German Crown Prince carried out desperate attacks against the French first-line trenches at La Fille Morte and Bolante. These the French repulsed with heavy losses to the Germans, whose dead lay piled in heaps in front of the positions.

One result of the British attack was the hurried recall of the active Corps of Prussian Guards from the eastern front—an important relief to the hard-pressed Russians. This famous corps was at the time split up into three groups; the active corps was with Mackensen in Galicia and in the advance upon Brest-Litovsk. It was transferred to the Dvina after the fall of Brest, and had since been engaged before Dvinsk. The Reserve Guard Corps was in the central group of the German armies, and the other, the Third Division, was still in Galicia. The British and the Prussian Guards had made each other's acquaintance in the Battle of Ypres.



At the end of the month Haisnes, on the northern flank of the new British line, was still for the greater part in German possession; on the right flank the British were across the Lens-La Bassee road. The British had captured not only the first position of their enemy, but also a second or supporting line which ran west of Loos. They were now up against the third line. Sir John French reported having taken so far over 3,000 prisoners, twenty-one guns, and forty machine guns. The French in Artois had taken a matter of 15,000 prisoners and a number of guns. After obstinate day and night fighting they had reached Hill 140, the culminating point of the crests of Vimy, and the orchards to the south. The crown prince still plugged away on this front with heavy artillery and aerial torpedoes. Columns of flames began to issue from his trenches on September 27, 1915—the inflammable liquid appeared to be a composition of tar and petrol—and the smoke and flames, carried by the wind blowing from the German trenches, soon reached the French line and made the atmosphere intolerably hot and suffocating for the French troops. Then suddenly out of the thick fumes began to appear German infantry with fixed bayonets, sent forward to the attack. They were literally mown down by the fire from the French machine guns and rifles, but the wave of attackers seemed unending, and by dint of overwhelming numbers it poured into the French trenches. A terrible hand-to-hand fight then ensued in an atmosphere so thick that it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. These clouds were not poisonous, for the Germans had themselves to fight in them; they were let loose to cover the infantry charge.

The French were compelled to retire, which they did, contesting every foot of ground. Meanwhile, reenforcements had arrived and these were at once thrown into the fighting line. The French, however, were soon brought to a halt. Asphyxiating and lachrymatory bombs, which emitted bluish smoke as they exploded, began to fall in their midst. Spurred on by their leaders the men dashed on, passing through yet another of these barriers of smoke until they came to grips with the attackers, who were now coming on like a torrent, in close formation, shouting wildly. Altogether, the scene was one that vividly brings to the imagination the truth of Sherman's dictum that "war is hell." A mad potpourri of dimly visible forms, struggling like demons, shooting, stabbing, hacking and roaring in an infernal caldron of tar, poison, sulphur, tears and blood. Truly a worthy theme for another Dante and a Gustave Dore. For some time it looked as if the French would be crumpled up, but reserves were steadily streaming in, and eventually the attackers began to waver and fall back. The French 75-millimeter Creusots came into play again, and after a battle that lasted in all twenty-four hours, the Germans were driven back to their own trenches.

In the morning of October 2, 1915, the Germans made a demonstration in front of the Belgian trenches at Dixmude, consisting of a bombardment and a violent discharge of bombs. On one small section alone 400 bombs were dropped. The German infantry broke into the Belgian trenches, but were dislodged again in a few minutes.

The position which the British had captured was exceptionally strong, consisting of a double line, including some large redoubts and a network of trenches and bomb-proof shelters. Dugouts were constructed at short intervals all along the line, some of them being large caves thirty feet below the ground. The French capture of Souchez was an event of considerable importance, for the German High Command had issued orders for this section to hold on to the last, that it was to be retained at all costs. The road to the Douai plain was to be barred to the French, who had to be held back behind the advanced works of the Artois plateau. In May, 1915, the problem was to prevent the French setting foot on the summits of Notre Dame de Lorette and of the Topart Mill. The Germans sacrificed many thousands of men with this object, but the French nevertheless made themselves masters of the heights which the Germans considered of capital importance, and dislodged them from Carency and Ablain-St. Nazaire. There remained only one stage to cover—the Souchez Valley—to reach the last crest which dominated the whole country to the east, and beyond which the ground is flat. This task had been accomplished during the last few days of September and the beginning of October. Souchez and its advanced bastion, the Chateau Carleul, had been made into a formidable fortification by the changing of the course of the Carency streams. The Germans had transformed the marshy ground to the southeast of this front into a perfect swamp, which was regarded as impassable. The German batteries posted at Angres were able to enfilade the valley on the north. From behind the crest of Hill 119 to Hill 140, which were covered with trenches connected by a network of communication trenches, many batteries were engaged against the French in the district of Notre Dame de Lorette, Ablain-St. Nazaire and Carency. To the north of Souchez the German trenches were still clinging to the Notre Dame de Lorette slope.

The attack of September 25, 1915, was to overcome all these obstacles. The artillery preparation, which lasted five days, was so skillfully handled that, even before it was finished, many German deserters came into the French lines declaring that they had had enough. The infantry attack was delivered at noon on September 25, 1915, and with one rush the French troops reached the objectives which had been marked out for them—the chateau and grounds of Carleul and the islet south of Souchez. Meanwhile, other detachments carried the cemetery and forced their way to the first slopes of Hill 119. On the left the French troops advanced down the slopes of Notre Dame de Lorette and made a dash at the Hache Wood, the western outskirts of which they reached twenty minutes after the attack began. The capture of the wood has already been described. The French attack on the right, being held up by machine-gun fire, could not be maintained in the cemetery, and it was decided to approach Souchez by the main road so that they might pour in their forces on the east, while, to the north, the French force that had bitten its way into the Hache Wood was to continue its advance. This maneuver decided the day. The Germans, who were in danger of being cut off in Souchez, abandoned their positions, and those who had retaken the cemetery, being in the same perilous circumstances, regained by their communication trenches their second line on the slopes of Hill 119. Thus fell Souchez to the French in two days. The allied offensive was a short and sharp affair, skillfully planned and bravely executed, but disappointing in result. At the great price of 50,000 casualties the British had overthrown the Germans on a front of five miles, and in some places to a depth of 4,000 yards, and had captured many prisoners and guns; but they had not definitely broken the German lines. At a heavy cost the Allies on the western front had captured about 160 German guns and disposed of 150,000 Germans, including some 27,000 prisoners, and the result of their efforts was to shake the Germans in the west very severely and to call back to France many troops from the eastern front. That the blow was regarded by the kaiser as a serious one was shown by an Order of the Day in which he declared that every important success obtained by the Allies on the western front "will be considered as due to the culpable negligence of the German commanders, who will lay themselves open to being punished for incompetence." But if the Allies' successes were due to hard fighting and brilliant dash, the fact that they did not break right through the enemy's lines is an eloquent testimony to the wonderful strength of the German resistance. The marvel was that any were left alive in the first line after the preliminary bombardment to face the bayonets and grenades of the attackers. In a report from German General Headquarters, dated September 29, 1915, Max Osborn, special correspondent of the "Vossische Zeitung," described how the French artillery swept the hinterland of the German positions in Champagne and then concentrated upon these. "The violence of the fire then reached its zenith. Hitherto it had been a raging, searching fire; now it became a mad drumming, beyond all power of imagination. It is impossible to convey any idea of the savagery of this bombardment. Never has this old planet heard such an uproar. An officer who had witnessed during the summer the horrors of Arras, of Souchez, and of the Lorette Heights, told me that those were not in any way to be compared with the present, beyond all conception, appalling artillery onslaught. Day and night for fifty hours, at some points for seventy hours, the guns vomited destruction and murder against the Germans, the German trenches and against the German batteries. Strongly built trenches were covered in and ground to powder; their edges and platforms were shorn off and converted into dust heaps; men were buried, crushed, and inevitably suffocated—but the survivors stood fast." A German soldier told how, in the fierce hand-to-hand fighting which followed, a Frenchman and a German flew at each other's throat, and how they fell, both pierced by the same bullet, still locked in each other's grip. And so, too, they were buried. Courage is not the monopoly of any race or nation.



CHAPTER X

THE BATTLE OF LOOS

At 5.50 a. m. on September 25, 1915, a dense, heavy cloud arose slowly from the earth—a whitish, yellowish, all-enveloping cloud that rolled slowly toward the German trenches—a little too much to the north. Thousands of German bullets whistled through that cloud, but it passed on, unheeding. The attack began at 6.30.

A Scottish division had been ordered to take Loos and Hill 70. It therefore played the first role in the battle, since it was on Loos, of which Hill 70 is the gateway, that the efforts of all converged from the north as well as the south. Brigade "X" of the Scottish division was to execute an enveloping movement to the north around Loos and to carry Hill 70 by storm. Brigade "Y" meanwhile was to attack the Loos front, Brigade "Z" remaining in reserve. By 7.05 a. m. the whole of the first line was captured. The second line, covering Loos, was carried with the same ease. The Germans, taken by surprise, were fleeing toward Loos, where they put up a stern rear-guard fight, and toward Lens, which was strongly fortified.

After the capture of the second line in front of Loos, "X" and "Y" Brigades separated, "Y" surrounding the village with two battalions, while the rest captured the village and cleaned it up. It was stiff street fighting, the Germans being hidden away in all sorts of corners with plenty of machine guns. The Scots made a quick job of it, not stopping for trifles. It is related that a sergeant, to whom two Germans had surrendered, pulled a few pieces of string from his pocket, tied their hands together, and passed them to the rear with the request, "Please forward." Brigade "X" had meanwhile thrown its enveloping net around Loos without meeting much resistance. The British had reached the top of Hill 70 by nine o'clock. The climb was a hard and rough accomplishment, with the right flank under mitrailleuse fire from Loos, and with the left exposed to fire from Pit 14A; but it was accomplished far too quickly. Serious disasters frequently occur in war through tardiness; in this case a possible great victory was missed through being too quick and arriving too early. When the brigadier got up to Loos he saw his men vanishing in the distance. A strong German redoubt, over the other side of the hill crest, was not even defended. The brigade crossed the Lens-La Bassee road, which runs along the height, carried the third German line on the opposite slope, and at 9.20 it was outside St. Auguste. Unfortunately for the British, the corps commander, who arrived at this moment with his staff in hot haste, was unable to get his unit in hand again. Overflowing with offensive ardor, he had thrown his men forward with a most impetuous movement, and they got out of hand. The brigade turned at right angles and got into the suburbs of Lens. It seemed as though the gates of the northern plain were about to be smashed in. Then the great danger appeared. There was still no great converging movement from the south, where a British division and French troops were engaged. Touch was also lost to the north. The neighboring division in this direction was held up until the afternoon by wire entanglements. The left flank of the brigade was at the mercy of a German counterattack, but the Germans did not launch it, for they had not the men. What they did, however, was to concentrate on the brigade a murderous fire from Loos in the south, Lens in the east, St. Auguste in the north, and Pit 14A and two or three neighboring houses in the west. They were even seen hastily installing machine guns along the railway embankment northeast of Lens.

Shattered by fire, uncertain of its direction, shaken by the very quickness of its previous advance, the brigade hesitated, sowed the ground with its dead, and retired in good order on Hill 70, where it intrenched slightly below the redoubt abandoned by the Germans during the attack and which was now reoccupied by them. As a matter of fact, the screening gas clouds hindered rather than helped the attack. The Scottish division was exhausted, but if fresh troops had come up and a fresh attack had been delivered against the Germans, who were gathering all their men in the Douai region, the German front would undoubtedly have been pierced like cardboard. Brigade "X" had made a path, and if only reenforcements had arrived without delay the path would have become a highroad—would have become the whole of Douai plain. Not until nightfall were the reserves forthcoming. It is evident that, in this first day, advantage was not taken of the results achieved.

Though long-range fighting was incessantly kept up around Loos, nothing of importance happened till October 8, 1915, when the Germans, after an intense bombardment with shells of all calibers, launched a violent attack on Loos and made desperate efforts to recapture their lost positions. The main efforts were directed against the chalk pit north of Hill 70, and between Hulluch and the Hohenzollern redoubt. In the chalk pit attack, the Germans assembled behind some woods which lay from 300 to 500 yards from the British trenches. Between these woods and the British line the attacking force was mown down by combined rifle, machine-gun and artillery fire, not a man getting within forty yards of the trenches.

Farther to the south, between Hulluch and the quarries, the attack was also repelled, the British securing a German trench west of Cite St. Elie. The Germans did succeed in penetrating the British front in the southern communication trench of the Hohenzollern redoubt, but were shortly after expelled again by British bombers.

British flying men played an important part in the Battle of Loos and in the preparations that preceded it. Troops and guns had to be moved at night so that the German aeroplanes might not note the concentration. Hence it was decided that British aeros should warn off the German flyers by day. They probably outnumbered the German machines by eight to one. As the attack proceeded a flock of aeroplanes was cutting circles and dipping and turning over the battle field as if in an exhibition of airmanship. They appeared to be disconnected from the battle, but no participants were more busy or intent than they. All the panorama of action was beneath them; they alone could really "see" the battle if they chose. But each aviator stole only passing glimpses of the whole, for each one was intent on his part, which was to keep watch of whether the shells of the battery to which he reported were on the target or not. To distinguish whose shell-burst was whose in the midst of that cloud of dust and smoke over the German positions seemed as difficult as to separate the spout of steam of one pipe from another when a hundred were making a wall of vapor. Yet so skilled is the well-trained airman that he can tell at a glance. It is not difficult to spot shells when only a few batteries are firing, but when perhaps a hundred guns are dropping shells on a half-mile front of trench, a highly trained eye is required. Occasionally a plane was observed to sweep down like a hawk that had located a fish in the water. At all hazards that intrepid aviator was going to identify the shell-bursts of the batteries which he represented. The enemy might have him in rifle range, but they were too busy trying to hold up the British infantry to fire at him. Other aeroplanes were dropping shells on railway trains and bridges, to hinder the Germans, once they had learned where the force of the attack was to be exerted, from rushing reenforcements to the spot. For that kind of work, as for all reconnaissances, the aviators like low-lying clouds. They slip down out of these to have a look around and drop a bomb—thus killing two birds with one stone—and then rise to cover before the enemy can bring his antiaircraft guns to bear.



A German description of the Battle of Loos says that during the preliminary gas attack the British artillery was hurling gas bombs upon the Germans. The latter coughed and held their ground as long as they could, but many fell, unable to resist the fumes. In the midst of all this the Germans were preparing for the expected infantry attack. Finally the British appeared, emerging suddenly as if from nowhere, behind a cloud of gas, and wearing masks. They came on in thick lines and storming columns. The first line of the attackers were quickly shot down by the hail of rifle and machine-gun bullets that rained upon them from the shattered German trenches. The dead and wounded soon lay like a wall before the German position. The second and third lines of the British suffered the same fate. It was estimated that the number of British killed before this German division alone amounted to 8,000 to 10,000. The fourth line of attackers, however, finally succeeded in overrunning the decimated front line of Germans, who stood by their guns to the very last; those of them who had not fallen were made prisoners. Not one of them returned to tell what happened in this terrific fighting. The British are stated to have attacked in an old-fashioned, out-of-date manner that made the German staff officers stare in open-mouthed wonder. "Eight ranks of infantry, mounted artillery, cavalry in the background—that was too much! A veritable battle plan of a past age, the product of a mind in its dotage, and half a century behind the times! Splendidly, with admirable courage, the English troops came forward to the attack. They were young, wore no decorations; they carried out with blind courage what their senile commanders ordered—and this in a period of mortars, machine guns and the telephone. Their behavior was splendid, but all the more pitiable was the breakdown of their attack."



Connected with the Battle of Loos there was one little person who deserves a chapter in history—all to herself—and that is Mlle. Emilienne Moreau, a young French girl who lived—and probably still lives—with her parents in the storm-battered village of Loos. She was seventeen years of age at the time she became famous, and was studying to be a school-teacher. She was "mentioned in dispatches" in the French Official Journal in these terms:

"On September 25, 1915, when the British troops entered the village of Loos, she organized a first-aid station in her house and worked day and night to bring in the wounded, to whom she gave all assistance, while refusing to accept any reward. Armed with a revolver she went out and succeeded in overcoming two German soldiers who, hidden in a near-by house, were firing at the first-aid station."

This, however, was not a complete list of the exploits of la petite Moreau. She shot two Germans when their bayonets were very close to her, and later, snatching some hand bombs from a British grenadier's stock, she accounted for three more who were busy at the same occupation. Furthermore, "when the British line was wavering under the most terrible cyclone of shells ever let loose upon earth, Emilienne Moreau sprang forward with a bit of tricolored bunting in her hand and the glorious words of the 'Marseillaise' on her lips, and by her fearless example averted a retreat that might have meant disaster along the whole front. Only the men who were in that fight can fully understand why Sir Douglas Haig was right in christening her the Joan of Arc of Loos."

A more mature French Amazon is Madame Louise Arnaud, the widow of an officer killed in the war. She commanded a corps of French and Belgian women who were permitted by the War Minister to don uniforms. The corps was intended for general service at the front, one-third of them being combatants, all able to ride, shoot and swim.

After the great allied offensive in the west had spent its force—or rather the force of its initial momentum—quite an interesting battle broke out, this time on paper. It consisted on the one side of an attempt to estimate the results of success and to attach to them the highest possible value. The energy of the other side was devoted to belittling these results and proclaiming the alleged futility of the venture. Thus, King George telegraphed to Sir John French on September 30, 1915:

"I heartily congratulate you and all ranks of my army under your command upon the success which has attended their gallant efforts since the commencement of the combined attack."