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The 6th Cavalry Brigade dismounted no more dreams of exploiting success and galloping round Lens were sent into Loos with orders to hold the village at all cost, with the men of the 15th Division, who had been left there. The Londoners were still holding on to the chalk-pit south of Loos, under murderous fire. It was a bad position for the troops sent into action at that stage.
Pryor informed me that it would be impossible for the two men with him to drive on the horses after him without tireing all the good ones in pursute of the more indifferent to keep them on the Course. that in passing every gangue of buffalow Several of which he had met with, the loos horses as Soon as they Saw the Buffalow would imediately pursue them and run around them.
On the morning of the 28th we discussed the situation, and the general agreed to send the 9th French Corps to take over the ground occupied by us, extending from the French left up to and including that portion of Hill 70 which we were holding, and also the village of Loos. This relief was commenced on September 30th, and completed on the two following nights."
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.
At the time of the voyage D'Houdetot was a baby in arms, and in an action between the Regeneree and the English, at the Loos Islands, his wet nurse was cut in two by a round shot, which gave rise to a saying of his, "I have more right to promotion than anybody. Lots of people have had horses killed under them, but I'm the only man in the French army that ever had a woman killed under him."
The Irish Guards, supported by the Coldstreamers, advanced down the valley beyond Loos and gained the lower edge of Bois Hugo, near the chalk-pit, while the Scots Guards assaulted Puits 14 and the building in its group of houses known as the Keep. Another body of Guards, including Grenadiers and Welsh, attacked at the same time the lower slopes of Hill 70.
The last operation, if more force had been put into it, might have secured La Bassée and done more to convert the battle of Loos into a substantial victory than could ever have been achieved by a series of local successes farther north.
If we can hold on to this position until the others make good upon our right and left, we shall have reclaimed a clear two miles of the soil of France, my son." The Major swept the horizon with his glasses. "Let me see: that is probably Hulluch away on our right front: the Loos towers must be in line with us on our extreme right, but we can't see them for those hillocks.
The battles of Festubert, Neuve Chapelle, Loos, and all minor attacks which led to little salients, were but experimental adventures in the science of slaughter, badly bungled in our laboratories. They had no meaning apart from providing those mistakes by which men learn; ghastly mistakes, burning more than the fingers of life's children.
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