By the end of May good progress had been made in clearing the Labyrinth. The German salient had gone, the French line had been straightened out, and Lens was closely beset.
An officer gives us a vivid picture of the struggle in the Labyrinth, which was not captured till towards the end of September:--
"The war of trenches is nothing compared with the struggle of the burrows. Picture to yourselves narrow galleries, feebly lighted by flickering oil lamps, in which the foes are separated only by sand-bags, which they keep pushing against each other. As soon as an opening shows, a terrific hand-to-hand fight begins, in which grenades and the bayonet are the only arms possible. Sometimes the Germans take to knives and revolvers, and one day they even began throwing burning liquids; but in spite of these cowardly tricks, our men always had the best of it. They fought with clubbed rifles and fists when required, and their courage was never shaken, as the Germans soon saw. . . .
"The passages in which we were advancing were 18 feet deep, and often 24 feet and more. The water was sweating through in all directions, and the sickly smell was unbearable. Imagine, too, that for three weeks we were not able to get rid of the dead bodies, amongst which we had to live night and day! One burrow, 120 feet long, took us thirteen days of ceaseless fighting to conquer entirely. The Germans had placed barricades, trap doors, and traps of all kinds in it. When we stumbled we ran the risk of being pierced by bayonets hidden in holes lightly covered with earth. And all this went on in almost complete darkness. We had to use pocket electric lamps and advance with the utmost caution."
The first stage of the Battle of Artois may be said to have ended with the capture of Neuville St. Vaast on 8th June. The French had done splendidly, though they had not yet won a decisive success. The German losses during the terrible month of May cannot have been less than 60,000, and the French had suffered almost as severely. They had advanced with but few casualties; it was in the hand-to-hand fighting in the villages and against the forts that so many of their men fell. The victory was due largely to the French artillery, but the infantry did more than its fair share. It had shown itself as full of fiery courage and dashing bravery as in the great days of Napoleon.