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Page 3
[Illustration: THE BATTLE GROUND OF NEUVE CHAPELLE]
The action came as a pendant to the attack by General de Langle de
Cary's French army during February, 1915, at Perthes, that had been a
steady relentless pressure by artillery and infantry upon a strong
German position. To meet it heavy reinforcements had been shifted by
the Germans from the trenches between La Bass�e and Lille. The
earthworks at Neuve Chapelle had been particularly depleted and only a
comparatively small body of Saxons and Bavarians defended them. Opposite
this body was the first British army. The German intrenchments at Neuve
Chapelle surrounded and defended the highlands upon which were placed
the German batteries and in their turn defended the road towards Lille,
Roubaix and Turcoing.
The task assigned to Sir John French was to make an assault with only
forty-eight thousand men on a comparatively narrow front. There was only
one practicable method for effective preparation, and this was chosen by
the British general. An artillery concentration absolutely unprecedented
up to that time was employed by him. Field pieces firing at point-blank
range were used to cut the barbed wire entanglements defending the enemy
intrenchments, while howitzers and bombing airplanes were used to drop
high explosives into the defenseless earthworks.
Sir Douglas Haig, later to become the commander-in-chief of the British
forces, was in command of the first army. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien
commanded the second army. It was the first army that bore the brunt of
the attack.
No engagement during the years on the western front was more sudden and
surprising in its onset than that drive of the British against Neuve
Chapelle. At seven o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, March 10, 1915,
the British artillery was lazily engaged in lobbing over a desultory
shell fire upon the German trenches. It was the usual breakfast
appetizer, and nobody on the German side took any unusual notice of it.
Really, however, the shelling was scientific "bracketing" of the enemy's
important position. The gunners were making sure of their ranges.
[Illustration: THE GLORIOUS CHARGE OF THE NINTH LANCERS
An incident of the retreat from Mons to Cambrai. A German battery of
eleven guns posted in a wood, had caused havoc in the British ranks. The
Ninth Lancers rode straight at them, across the open, through a hail of
shell from the other German batteries, cut down all the gunners, and put
every gun out of action.]
At 7.30 range finding ended, and with a roar that shook the earth the
most destructive and withering artillery action of the war up to that
time was on. Field pieces sending their shells hurtling only a few feet
above the earth tore the wire emplacements of the enemy to pieces and
made kindling wood of the supports. Howitzers sent high explosive
shells, containing lyddite, of 15-inch, 9.2-inch and 6-inch caliber into
the doomed trenches and later into the ruined village. It was eight
o'clock in the morning, one-half hour after the beginning of the
artillery action, that the village was bombarded. During this time
British soldiers were enabled to walk about in No Man's Land behind the
curtain of fire with absolute immunity. No German rifleman or machine
gunner left cover. The scene on the German side of the line was like
that upon the blasted surface of the moon, pock-marked with shell holes,
and with no trace of human life to be seen above ground.
An eye witness describing the scene said:
"The dawn, which broke reluctantly through a veil of clouds on the
morning of Wednesday, March 10, 1915, seemed as any other to the
Germans behind the white and blue sandbags in their long line of
trenches curving in a hemi-cycle about the battered village of
Neuve Chapelle. For five months they had remained undisputed
masters of the positions they had here wrested from the British in
October. Ensconced in their comfortably-arranged trenches with but
a thin outpost in their fire trenches, they had watched day succeed
day and night succeed night without the least variation from the
monotony of trench warfare, the intermittent bark of the machine
guns--rat-tat-tat-tat-tat--and the perpetual rattle of rifle fire,
with here and there a bomb, and now and then an exploded mine.
[Illustration: _Illustrated London News_.
CHARGING THROUGH BARBED WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS
In one sector at Givenchy, the wire had not been sufficiently smashed by
the artillery preparation and the infantry attack was held up in the
face of a murderous German fire.]
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