BATTLE OF LOOS

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 107, 6 May 1916, Page 10

BATTLE OF LOOS

/ NOT A MttITARY TRIUMPH

In .a; recent lecture in London, Sir 'Arthur Conan Doyle said that the Battle of Loos was by far the greatest battle ever fought in. British history, for no fewer than twelve divisions -of infantry were engaged—roughly 150,000 men. On this occasion we used gas for the first time. It was not the deadly gas of the Germans, but merely a narcotic. In the advance brigades were held up by barbed, wire which "had not been destroyed by our bombardment, and this led Sir Arthur to suggest that some device should be -adopted for cutting the wire before our troops left their trenches to go forward. This disastrous result had occurred so frequently in this war that anything which could be devised 'to prevent it would be extraordinarily valuable. QUESTION OP RESERVES. The question of reserves at the battle was a very difficult one, and one which would perplex historians for a long time. They consisted of the 24th and 21st Divisions, two very fine divisions of the New Army, and on the morning of the first day of the battle they were five or sis miles behind the British trenches. We had it on the authority of Lord French that at 9 o'clock in the morning he handed them oyer ,to General Haig^, who in turn handed them over to the commander of the 11th Corps, General Haking. In warfare things did not go by clockwork ; there were very many delicate links in the chain, any one of which might go wrong. What went wrong on this occasion could not be said. But what was quite certain was that these troops, which were badly wanted, did not get to the battlefield until late. Not a man of them had seen a shot fired in anger, nor a trench, except in England, but when they got into action they acquitted themselves remarkably well, and in some cases with extraordinary heroism. Some very cruel and unjust accounts got about in London concerning 'the behaviour of the 21st Division. It was said that they had been broken. .What really happened was that they had broken a very dangerous counter-attack of the Germans which might have got through our army, and that in breaking it they had themselves been broken. 9000 BOMBS IN TWO HOURS.. A very remarkable action took place on Bth October, when the Germans made a great counter-attack and endeavoured to Tetake the ground" they had lost. In two hours the bomb parties of the Guards discharged 9000 bombs.' The parties only comprised 100 men from each battalion,, and this gave some idea of the extreme vigour of the attack. The whole thing was entirely subterranean and very deadly, because the combatants were close to each other. The net result of the battle of Loos was that we captured 25 guns and 40 machine-guns and about 3000 . prisoners. Very likely the Germans made as many prisoners as we did. We gained also a strip of line 7000 yards long and 4000 yards deep? No doubt there was discontent that no better result had been achieved by so great an effort. None the less,-, if* we cast our minds back two years, and remembered with what awe and respect we looked upon the invincible Prussian army, which had never been beaten in a single action throughout three great wars, and if we then considered that in spite of barbed-wire and all kinds of defences a British army, consisting half of vamped-up troops, had swept through their lines and taken guns and prisoners —he thought we must be very exacting if we decided that our men had done anything but very well indeed at the Battle of Loos. I do not think, said Sir Arthur, that the valour of the British soldier has ever been more conspicuous and has shone out equally brightly in the old Army, the Territorials and the new Army." '