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These were our share of the wounded from Loos, the overflow of serious 'stretcher cases' who could not be taken in at the already overworked stations immediately behind their own front. Many had been lying on the battlefield many hours. Both had made a deathless name. The former got further forward than any other, and paid the penalty with over six thousand casualties.
I continued to film the scenes. First came Ploegsteert, Fromelles, and Aubers Ridge. Then we crossed to Neuve Chapelle, Festubert, La Bassée and Loos. Town after town, village after village, were passed over, all of them in ruins. From above the trenches, like a splash of white chalk dropped into the middle of a patch of brown earth.
Falkenhayn's orders for the use of gas shell, mentioned above, although they represent by no means the best final practice, were definite evidence that gas had come to stay with the Germans. The writer has vivid recollections of their use of lachrymators in the Loos Battle.
On January 27, 1916, the Germans attempted an infantry attack on a salient northeast of Loos, but were held back. A British night attack on the German trenches near Messines, Flanders, was likewise repulsed. In the morning of February 12, 1916, the Germans broke into the British trenches near Pilkellen, but were pushed out by bombing parties.
On the British front the key of the enemy's position was Hill 70, to the north of Lens, beyond the village of Loos, and the capture of that village and that hill was the first essential of success. They were to be supported by the 11th Corps, consisting of the Guards and two new and untried divisions, the 21st and the 24th.
Cicely Farrell apparently forgot them entirely. And in August and the first part of September she too, according to Captain Marsworth's information, had been away, paying visits. On the morning of September 26th, the Manchester papers which reached the cottage with the post contained columns of telegrams describing the British attack at Loos, and the French 'push' in Champagne.
Scattered about in different villages lying round Bethune, our battalions passed the next two months in the usual training before we should take up our own sector of the line, and we saw little or nothing of each other. March found us engaged, though still only attached by companies to more seasoned troops, in some rough crater-fighting on the ugly mine-riddled stretch between Loos and Hulluch.
We had to put these, still wet, into our packs, for at dusk we fell in, in column of route, along the village street, when our officers told us what was before us. I remember how vividly and honestly one of them described the situation. "Listen carefully, men. We are moving off in a few moments, to take over captured German trenches on the left of Loos.
We are going into our next fight with new-born confidence in the powers behind us. Loos was an experimental affair; and though to the humble instruments with which the experiment was made the proceedings were less hilarious than we had anticipated, the results were enormously valuable to a greatly expanded and entirely untried Staff.
So far as we had heard events seemed to be moving fairly well at Loos, but there were some ugly rumours and the atmosphere was one of great uneasiness. After dinner that evening the commanding officer, Major Frankau, took me aside, and asked me not to go to bed as they would need every available pair of hands throughout the night. Our Share of the Fifty Thousand
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