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The first night they were in the trenches on our right they would occasionally open up with their Maxims, and the scare they would give the Germans was a sight worth seeing. The German flares would go up, and the Huns "stood to" and blazed away like mad. Out of some 800 men in the second battalion of the Gordons only about 350 came out uninjured from Neuve Chapelle.
As I was disposed to place more reliance on Miss Bubbleton's statements than those of her imaginative brother, I agreed to his proposal to pay her a visit; and accordingly we set out together for the Rue Neuve des Capucines. Lieutenant-General Bubbleton's quarters were by no means of that imposing character which befitted his rank in the British army.
What was left of the Cheshires gradually rallied in Festubert. This German success, together with a later success against the 3rd Division, that resulted in our evacuation of Neuve Chapelle, compelled us to withdraw and readjust our line. This second line was not so defensible as the first. Until we were relieved the Germans battered at it with gunnery all day and attacks all night.
To carry the alarm to the Porte Neuve, therefore, and secure that gate, seemed to be the first and most urgent step; since to secure the Tertasse and the other inner gates would be of little avail, if the main body of the enemy were once in possession of the ramparts.
For three-quarters of an hour this "strafing" continued, then giving Bosche ten minutes to settle down we came out of our holes and corners. What sights we were! Collecting my apparatus, I again crossed "No Man's Land," and carefully made my way into the village of Neuve Chapelle itself. To describe it would only be to repeat what I said of the devastated city of Ypres.
For three days the most savage fighting continued, resulting in the capture of Neuve Chapelle by the Germans on October 27, which was defended by East Indian troops. The fighting was desperate on both sides and became much confused, as units here and there had succeeded in breaking through their respective opponents' lines.
Early in the spring the British forces gained a notable victory at Neuve Chapelle in the western theater of war.
The events of the early spring, the bloody failure of British generalship at Neuve Chapelle, the naval disaster in the Dardanelles, the sinking of the Falaba, the Russian defeat in the Masurian Lakes, all deepened the bishop's impression of the immensity of the nation's difficulties and of his own unhelpfulness.
Before leaving the Neuve Chapelle engagement and what immediately followed it, it is well to give a brief survey of the actions along the line that supported it. To prevent the Germans from taking troops from various points and massing them against the main British attack, the British soldiers all along that part of the front found plenty of work to do in their immediate vicinity.
Madame de Chavoncourt asked Monsieur de Soulas. "In the first place, madame, I live in the Rue Neuve, at the corner of the Rue du Perron; I look out on the house where this mysterious personage lodges; then, of course, there are communications between my tiger and Jerome." "And you gossip with Babylas?" "What would you have me do out riding?"
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