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Updated: May 15, 2025
In May, 1915, the problem was to prevent the French setting foot on the summits of Notre Dame de Lorette and of the Topart Mill. The Germans sacrificed many thousands of men with this object, but the French nevertheless made themselves masters of the heights which the Germans considered of capital importance, and dislodged them from Carency and Ablain-St. Nazaire.
Their High Command had continually improved their system of trench defense in accordance with the experiences of their own hurricane bombardments in Champagne and the Carency sector. General Castelnau, the acting Commander-in-Chief on the French front, was indeed the inventor of hurricane fire tactics, which he had used for the first time in February, 1915, in Champagne.
Souchez and its advanced bastion, the Château Carleul, had been made into a formidable fortification by the changing of the course of the Carency streams. The Germans had transformed the marshy ground to the southeast of this front into a perfect swamp, which was regarded as impassable. The German batteries posted at Angres were able to enfilade the valley on the north.
From behind the crest of Hill 119 to Hill 140, which were covered with trenches connected by a network of communication trenches, many batteries were engaged against the French in the district of Notre Dame de Lorette, Ablain-St. Nazaire and Carency. To the north of Souchez the German trenches were still clinging to the Notre Dame de Lorette slope.
Nazaire, Carency, Neuville St. Vaast have seen war at its cruellest; thousands of brave lives have been yielded here; some of the dead are still lying unburied in its furthest thickets, and men will go softly through it in the years to come. "Stranger, go and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, obedient to their will:" the immortal words are in my ears.
Lens was protected by a bulge in the German front which ran round by Grenay, Aix-Noulette, Notre Dame de Lorette, Ablain, and Carency to the north-west of Arras, and then south-eastwards by La Targette, Écurie, and Roclincourt.
Upon the heels of Lufbery came two more graduates of the Foreign Legion Kiffin Rockwell, of Asheville, N.C., who had been wounded at Carency; Victor Chapman, of New York, who after recovering from his wounds became an airplane bomb-dropper and so caught the craving to become a pilot.
You will find it barred a quarter of an hour further on; there is no way to proceed further." "Really?" "You will take the road on the left, leading to Carency; you will cross the river; when you reach Camblin, you will turn to the right; that is the road to Mont-Saint-Eloy which leads to Arras." "But it is night, and I shall lose my way." "You do not belong in these parts?" "No."
After violent artillery-fire preparations, the French center south of Carency was pushed forward a distance of three miles. In a few days they took the towns of Albain, Carency, Neuville St. Vaast, and most of Souchez, besides the whole plateau of Lorette. But the Germans had prepared a number of fortins, which had to be captured before any general advance could be made.
The greatest altitude in this section is the ridge known as Notre-Dame de Lorette, running east and west, and containing numerous ravines. To the south of it, in a little valley, is the town of Albain St. Nazaire. Carency is opposite on the next ridge. Next is the Bois de Berthonval in the middle of a wide depression. Beyond, the land ascends to Mont St. Eloi.
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