The 10th Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment was part of 21 Division during the battle of Loos in September, 1915. At that time my grandfather was not in the battalion, he was with the 6th in Gallipoli, but he would join the 10th in Feb/March of 1917.

The lie of the land Sketch map The initial plans Albert Marshall dies at 108 years of age.

The ground on which this battle was fought lies north of Vimy Ridge, an area of small mining towns, Loos, Lens and La Bassee.  Where there are mining towns there are pit head winding stations, ideal as observation posts (the best known was Tower Bridge at Loos, so called because of the double towers for the winding gear), and slag heaps (crassieres), and these would be found around Loos and some would become familiar names during the battle.

“Tower Bridge”

The battle started on the 25th September, 1915, and has often been written of as a failure, although it was almost a success.  Some 60,000 casualties were suffered by the Allies, many of them on the first day, but some 8,000 yards of German front line was taken.  However, the objective of the attack was to effect a breakthrough to the rear areas, this did not happen and one controvertial ‘cause’ may have been the way in which the reserve divisions were deployed and used, but more of that later.

This photo was taken by me at the Canadian monument on Vimy Ridge. The ground falls away steeply to the right while on the skyline the two large slag heaps, or double crassiere, of Lens can be seen.

By September of 1915 the war was settling into a static war from the trenches, but there were still some who believed that breakthoughs were possible, among them was the French commander, Marshal Joffre. Joffre believed that an attack by the French 1st and Xth Armies in the area of Lens-Arras, while the British attacked in the La Bassee-Loos area would bring the required tactical success. However, some factors mitigated against the chances of the attack suceeding; the British did not have the weight of artillery that would be needed for such an attack and Joffre had been wrong when he had told the british commanders that the ground at Loos was good for the enterprise.  It was flat, open and very difficult for the attackers.  General Haig was in command of the British 1st Army, under Sir John French as Commander in Chief, and French would later take much of the criticism for the result of the battle of Loos.  While Sir John was the commander, he was ordered to go ahead with the proposed attack by Lord Kitchener, but blame in these circumstances often has a way of implicating some more than others.

Because of the nature of the terrain, with the pits and pit villages, it would be appropriate to give a description of the area, and I can’t do better than include an extract from Lyn Macdonald’s book, “1915”.

“It was a coalfield rather than a battlefield. In the centre of the sector, on the ridge that rose immediately above the British line, the Germans had constructed two redoubts in their front trench system.  The Lens Road redoubt protected the main road that led to the large mining village of Lens, invisible behind rising ground and slag-heaps. The Loos Road redoubt, some few hundred yards to the north, straddled a country track from Vermelles to the smaller village of Loos across the valley.  It was a strange landscape.  Wide stretches of fields and farmland.................  Behind Loos the ground rose to another ridge that carried a road from Lens to La Bassee, following the slope as the ridge dropped towards Hulluch and dropping with it to run arrow-straight to Auchy and the canal beyond.  But the unmistakable landmarks were the mine workings and the slag-heaps the French called ‘crassiers’ that reared up among the villages behind the German line. From the long black fingers of the Double Crassier, across the front of the 47th London Division, to the dumps of the mines round Auchy four miles to the north, it was plain that they would be formidable obstacles.”

Map shows front lines and divisional positions on the 25th September.  The position of 47 Division is obviously behind the British front line!

At this time the French army was much larger than that of the British and the British were fighting on French soil, using French roads and railways, the British had to cooperate with the French and accept them as the larger ally. When Field Marshal Sir John French took on the job of British Commander in Chief he had been told how important it was for him to cooperate, although his was an independent command.  Joffre was planning his two pronged attack to eliminate the German Noyon Salient, which came within 10 miles of Compiegne, to do this he intended a French attack from Champagne while there would be a joint French/British attack in Artois; the British First Army and the French Tenth Army. Joffre wanted two things from the British; they should take over part of the French front, from the Somme to south of Arras so freeing up the French Second Army for the Champagne, and they should attack on the left of the French Tenth Army between the La Bassee canal and Lens. His draft plan was sent to Field Marshal French on the 4th June, on the 19th June French met General Foch and agreed both requests.  Foch hoped that the British would be ready for their part in the attack by the 10th July.  General Haig disagreed with the proposed plan, the ground gave the advantage to the Germans as they had the rising ground east of Loos and so could observe British movements and lay down artillery barrages from this higher ground.  Haig preferred to launch his attacks north of the La Bassee canal, but Joffre would not hear of it. There followed a series of meetings to try to resolve the question, with consequent slippage in the date for any forthcoming attack.

Haig

French

Field Marshal French made a suggestion to Joffre for an attack by the British that would be primarily an artillery attack and sent an instruction accordingly to Haig; “The attack of the First Army is to be made chiefly with artillery, and a large force of infantry is not to be launched to the attack of objectives which are so strongly held as to be liable to result in the sacrifice of many lives.”  Joffre erupted, and he wrote to the French Minister for War and to Kitchener that while the British Army and the French were cooperating on French soil “....the initiative....devolves on the French Commander-in-Chief notably as concerning the effectives to be engaged, the objectives to be attained and the dates fixed for the commencement of each operation.” Kitchener upheld this viewpoint for this operation.  Field Marshal French, Haig and Kitchener believed the attack to be fruitless and that it would carry great loss of life, but Kitchener said that it had to go ahead anyway. Haig wrote in his diary on the 19th August that Lord Kitchener visited him and said he had decided that the British “..must act with all our energies and do our utmost to help the French even though by so doing, we suffered very heavy losses indeed.”  [Haig used italics in this entry] It was a shocking waste of British soldiers. For the French, who had lost many more men than the British the success of the British attack was not so important as that it should go ahead and draw off German forces.

It is worth noting that when Joffre went to look at the ground in front of the French Tenth Army he decided that it needed more softening up, and put the attack back until 25 September. He also decided to move the attack in Champagne to an area with fewer villages and farmhouses as he felt they would affect the attack, but he seemed not to have the same consideration for the ground in front of the British, which he had declared to be suitable.

The map above is from the IWM Trench Map CD. Lone Tree can be seen 2/3 up the map to the left of the Loos-La Bassee road.  ‘Tower Bridge’ is just above the red ‘A’ at the bottom of the map. Hill 70 Redoubt is by the red ‘B’, the Lens Road Redoubt is by the red ‘X’ and the Loos Road Redoubt is by the red ‘Z’.

From another IWM trench map, showing the Lens Road and Loos Road Redoubts.

So, following Kitchener’s intervention, the attack was to go ahead, and would also involve the use of gas.  The Germans had first used this weapon in April in their attack at Ypres, and now the British would give them a taste. It would be a dawn assault but the French, wanting to use a final daylight barrage, would attack on their front five and a half hours later at mid-day.  Haig had six divisions of I and IV Corps, some 75,000 men to attack the Germans who had some 11,000 men, some thirteen battalions. Of these the Germans would have had four battalions in the front line trenches, four in the second line with the rest in billets some way to the rear.  It was believed that the German reserves were too far away to take part in the battle, however, those Germans who were on the field were in good strong positions, especially the second line.  The British Corps reserves were committed to the battle, the only remaining reserve was XI Corps under General Haking, they were the GHQ reserve and were made up of two New Army divisions, the 21st (with our 10th Battalion) and 24th plus the newly formed Guards Divisions.

After the battle much of the controversy around the conduct of the battle would focus on the reserves; should experienced troops have been taken out of some other part of the line, their place being filled with the raw troops of the 21st & 24th divisions; should the reserve have been committed earlier so giving more chance of success and should they have been closer to the front allowing them to arrive earlier and fitter.

In the advance trenches          Now when we take the cobbled road    We often took before, Our thoughts are with the hearty lads    Who tread that way no more.   Oh!  boys upon the level fields,    If you could call to mind The wine of Cafe Pierre le Blanc    You wouldn’t stay behind.   But when we leave the trench at night,    And stagger neath our load, Grey, silent ghosts as light as air    Come with us down the road.   And when we sit us down to drink    You sit beside us too, And drink at Cafe Pierre le Blanc    As once you used to do.

A poem from the start of Patrick MacGill’s book ‘Great Push’,  a book on his experience in the battle of Loos.

The Times on 6 June 2005 had an obituary to Albert Marshall who died on May 16, 2005, aged 108.  Albert was one of the last of the soldiers who fought in the First World War. He started as a trooper in the Essex Yeomanry [see photo below], and spent the last year of the war in the Machine Gun Corps.  It was as a member of the Essex Yeomanry that he took part in the Battle of Loos; his unit was part of the 3rd Cavalry Division in Haigh’s First Army.  I am sure I have seen him on television in recent documentaries on the war.