Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great WarBuchan, John
History
Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War
Buchan, John
World War, 1914-1918
On the top, just below the northern crest, was a strong redoubt,
destined to become famous in succeeding days. The garrison
surrendered—they seemed scarcely to have resisted—but the Highlanders
did not wait to secure the place. They poured down the eastern side,
now only a few hundreds strong, losing direction as they went. They had
reached a district which was one nest of German fortifications. The
Highlanders were far in advance of the British line, with no supports on
south or north; in three hours they had advanced nearly four miles, and
had reached the skirts of the village called Cité St. Auguste.
The colonel of a Cameron battalion took command on Hill 70, now strewn
with the remnants of the two brigades, and attempted to recall the
pursuit, which was lost in the fog and smoke of the eastern slopes, and
to entrench himself on the summit. But very few of the Highlanders
returned. All down the slopes towards Lens lay the tartans—Gordon and
Black Watch, Seaforth and Cameron—like the drift left on the shore when
the tide has ebbed, marking out a salient of the dead which, under
happier auspices, might have been a living spear-point thrust into the
enemy’s heart.
The rest of the doings of the 15th Division—how they held the line of
Hill 70 for forty-eight hours longer till they were relieved by the
Guards—does not belong to this story. Our concern is with that wild
charge which from the beginning was foredoomed to failure, for the
Highlanders had no supports except the divisional reserves. The Guards
were then 11 miles away, and the two New Army divisions which were
brought up—divisions which later on won great glory—were then only raw
recruits. The brilliant advance was not war, but a wild berserk
adventure—a magnificent but a barren feat of courage.
And yet, looking back from the vantage ground of four years of
campaigning, that madness of attack had in it the seeds of the Allies’
future success. It was the very plan which Ludendorff used against them
with such fatal effect in March 1918. Of what did those German tactics
consist? Highly-trained troops attacked various sections of the front,
found weak spots, summoned their reserves by special signals, and forced
their way through. In this way the front was not only pierced, but
crumbled in long lengths. The Highlanders at Loos were the first to
employ this deadly process, which the French called "infiltration."
They were picked troops beyond question; but there was no serious plan
to follow up their success, and no support provided. Yet, even as it
was, that lonely charge struck fear into the heart of the whole German
line from Douai to Lille. There was no prophetic eye among us which
could see what was implied by it, and it was set down as a glorious
failure. Four years later, when we had learned all that the enemy could
teach us, the same method was applied by the master hand of Foch to
break down in turn each of the German defences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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