"On the front of the Third Army," wrote Sir John French, "subsidiary operations of a similar nature were successfully carried out."
From the point of view of high generalship those holding attacks had served their purpose pretty well. From the point of view of mothers' sons they had been a bloody shambles without any gain. The point of view depends on the angle of vision.
Let me now tell the story of the main battle of Loos as I was able to piece it together from the accounts of men in different parts of the field--no man could see more than his immediate neighborhood--and from the officers who survived. It is a story full of the psychology of battle, with many strange incidents which happened to men when their spirit was uplifted by that mingling of exultation and fear which is heroism, and with queer episodes almost verging on comedy in the midst of death and agony, at the end of a day of victory, most ghastly failure.
The three attacking divisions from left to right on the line opposite the villages of Hulluch and Loos were the 1st, the 15th (Scottish), and the 47th (London). Higher up, opposite Hulluch and Haisnes, the 9th (Scottish) Division and the 7th Division were in front of the Hohenzollern redoubt (chalky earthworks thrust out beyond the German front-line trenches, on rising ground) and some chalk-quarries.
The men of those divisions were lined up during the night in the communication trenches, which had been dug by the sappers and laid with miles of telephone wire. They were silent, except for the chink of shovels and side arms, the shuffle of men's feet, their hard breathing, and occasional words of command. At five-thirty, when the guns in all our batteries were firing at full blast, with a constant scream of shells over the heads of the waiting men, and when the first faint light of day stole into the sky, there was a slight rain falling, and the wind blew lightly from the southwest.
In the front-line trenches a number of men were busy with some long, narrow cylinders, which had been carried up a day before. They were arranging them in the mud of the parapets with their nozles facing the enemy lines.
"Poison-gas. Worse than they used at Ypres."
"Christ!... supposing we have to walk through it?"