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We were not much worried by the enemy, in fact, except for one trench mortar near Hulluch, called the "Goose," he kept very quiet. At the end of the tour we were relieved by the 4th Battalion and went into billets at Noeux les Mines.
It was more human wreckage coming down from the salient of Loos, from the chalkpits of Hulluch and the tumbled earth of the Hohenzollern redoubt, which had been partly gained by the battle which did not succeed.
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 Cité St. Elie.
During the day a notable series of messages came through from G.H.Q., and it seemed at first as if the attack had broken the German lines, as we identified on our maps those names then unfamiliar Loos, Hill 70, Hulluch, Cité St. Elie, and Cité St. Auguste which successive messages announced as having passed into our hands.
The result of the battle on September 25th had been to create a salient thrust like a wedge into the German position and enfiladed by their guns. The sides of the salient ran sharply back from Hulluch in the north, past the chalk-quarries to Givenchy, and in the south from the lower slopes of Hill 70 past the Double Crassier to Grenay.
Through the rain and the mist loomed the long black ridge of Notre Dame de Lorette, where many poor bodies lay in the rotting leaves. The ruins of Haisnes and Hulluch were jagged against the sky-line. And here, on New Year's eve, I saw no sign of human life and heard no sound of it, but stared at the broad desolation and listened to the enormous clangor of great guns.
It was preceded by a stupendous bombardment which inflicted heavy casualties upon our 1st Division in the neighborhood of the chalk-pit, and upon the Guards holding the Hohenzollern redoubt near Hulluch.
The position of Hulluch village was indicated on the practice ground by a large notice board HULLUCH which probably gave any spies there might be in Hesdigneul a very fair idea of what was intended. Meanwhile, we received various reinforcements. Lieut. G.E. Russell returned, 2nd Lieut. W.M. Cole came from the Artists' Rifles, 2nd Lieuts.
Their attacks in the Artois fell chiefly between Hulluch and Hill 70, and southeast of Givenchy, against the heights of Petit Vimy. The Germans succeeded in retaking small sections of first-line trenches, but lost some of their new trenches in return. Whereas the Allies held practically all they had gained, the Germans were considerably the losers by the transaction.
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.
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