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Peering over the parapet, we saw the whole panorama of the battleground. The villages of Haisnes and Hulluch fretted the skyline, and Fosse 8 was a black wart between them. The "Tower Bridge," close by in the town of Loos, was the one high landmark which broke the monotony of this desolation. No men moved about this ground.
The front extended from the La Bassée Canal to the outskirts of Lens, and as in Champagne the attack on 25 September was preceded by an intense bombardment which destroyed the first German trenches and wire-entanglements. Nearly everywhere the advance was at first successful. The Hohenzollern redoubt was captured, the Lens-La Bassée road was crossed, and even Haisnes and Hulluch reached.
To our front the ground stretched smooth and level for two hundred yards, then fell gently away, leaving a clearly denned skyline. Beyond the skyline rose houses, of which we could descry only the roofs and upper windows. "That must be either Haisnes or Douvrin," said Major Kemp. "We are much farther to the left than we were yesterday. By the way, was it yesterday?"
That was the mise-en-scene of the battle of Loos those mining towns behind the lines, then a maze of communication trenches entered from a place called Philosophe, leading up to the trench-lines beyond Vermelles, and running northward to Cambrin and Givenchy, opposite Hulluch, Haisnes, and La Bassee, where the enemy had his trenches and earthworks among the slag heaps, the pit-heads, the corons and the cites, all broken by gun-fire, and nowhere a sign of human life aboveground, in which many men were hidden.
We were shelling Hulluch and Haisnes and Fosse 8 with an intense, concentrated fire, and the enemy was retaliating by scattering shells over the town of Loos and our new line between Hill 70 and the chalk-pit, and the whole length of our line from north to south. Only two men moved about above the trenches.
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 Cité St. Auguste. The Fifth Corps, under Sir Hubert Gough, on the left, had stormed the quarries, taken Cité St. Elie, and occupied a portion of the village of Haisnes.
To the north of them the 7th Division was also suffering horrible losses after the capture of the quarries, near Hulluch, and the village of Haisnes, which afterward was lost.
To the left the ruins of Hulluch fretted the low-lying clouds of smoke, and beyond a huddle of broken houses far away was the town of Haisnes. Fosse 8 and the Hohenzollern redoubt were hummocks of earth faintly visible through drifting clouds of thick, sluggish vapor.
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 Bassée 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.
Five such raids undertaken October 11-12, 1916, in the Messines, Bois Grenier, and Haisnes areas were all successful; heavy casualties were inflicted on the Germans and a number of prisoners were taken. During the day of October 12, 1916, the British attacked the low heights between their front trenches and the Bapaume-Péronne road, where they gained ground and made captures.
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