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I found he had been twice out at the front, and was now home on sick leave. He had been at the battle of Mons, through the retreat to the Marne, the advance to the Aisne, the first battle of Ypres, and the fighting at Festubert.
At the end of three-quarters of a league, within fifty paces of Festubert, a larger bloodstain appeared; the ground was trampled by horses. Between the forest and this accursed spot, a little behind the trampled ground, was the same track of small feet as in the garden; the carriage had stopped here. At this spot Milady had come out of the wood, and entered the carriage.
The action began on Sunday morning, May 9, 1915, in the region between Bois Grenier and Festubert, and was a part of the forward movement of the British from Armentières to La Bassée. Part of the First Corps and the Indian Corps marched forward on the right from the Rue du Bois toward the southern part of the Bois du Biez, where there had been much fighting before.
He cannot say, 'I am prepared to fight at Neuve Chapelle, but I won't fight at Festubert, and I am not going near the place called "Wipers." He can't say, 'I have been in the trenches ten and a half hours, and the trade-unions won't let me work more than ten hours. He can't say, 'You have not enough men here, and I have been doing the work of two men, and my trade-unions won't allow me to do more than my share. When the house is on fire, questions of procedure and precedence and division of labor disappear.
On the morning of January 25, 1915, a demonstration along the front from Festubert to Vermelles and as far north as Ypres and Pervyse was inaugurated. The Germans began to shell Bethune, which was within the allied lines about eight or nine miles west of La Bassée.
Though both were being fought over in 1918 and many shells fell among the graves, the crosses were not much damaged; inscriptions, if nearly obliterated, were then renewed when, by the opportunity of chance, the Battalion found itself once more crossing the familiar area, before it helped to establish a line upon the redoubtable Aubers ridge, to gain which so many lives at the old 1915 battles of Neuve Chapelle and Festubert had been expended.
If the men there could dash across the intervening space and get into the German trenches before being annihilated by the kaiser's cannon, they would use the bayonet with deadly effect, and, from past experiences, have reasonable hope of gaining a victory. It was decided to make such an attempt first on that part of the line between Richebourg on the left and Festubert on the right.
"In the battle of Festubert the enemy was driven from a position which was strongly intrenched and fortified, and ground was won on a front of four miles to an average depth of 600 yards." The British had discovered the futility of attempting to smash through the German lines without an adequate supply of high-explosive shells with which to destroy the heavy wire entanglements.
The center and the right, with bomb and bayonet, drove the Germans from the trenches; and then together they forced their way into the Teutons' position 600 yards along a front 800 yards in length. Early the next morning, before daylight on May 16, 1915, the British Seventh Division forced its way into the German salient at Festubert.
We puffed away at our cigarettes for a second, and a certain despatch rider wished he were anywhere but in the cursed village of Festubert by Béthune. There was another scream and overwhelming relief. The next shell burst three houses away on our left. I knocked my pipe out and filled another. The Germans finished their little evening shoot.
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