The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1915Doyle, Arthur Conan
History
The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 1915
Doyle, Arthur Conan
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Western Front
The battalions of the Ninth Division which had got as far as the
outskirts of Haisnes held on there until evening. By that time no
reinforcements had reached them and they had lost very heavily. Both
their flanks were turned, and at nightfall they were driven back in
the direction of the Quarries, which was held by those men of the
Seventh Division (mostly of the 22nd Brigade) who had also been
compelled to fall back from Hulluch. During the night this position
was wired by the 54th Company of Royal Engineers, but the Germans, by
a sudden and furious attack, carried it, driving out the garrison and
capturing some of them, among whom was General Bruce, the Brigadier
of the 27th Brigade. After the capture of the Quarries, the flanks
of the 27th Brigade were again turned, and it was compelled to return
as far as the old German front line. The 20th Brigade had fallen
back to the same point. These misfortunes all arose from the
radically defective position of the {196} northern British line,
commanded as it was by German guns from its own left rear, and
unprotected at the flank.
Whilst this set-back had occurred upon the left of the attack, the
right had consolidated itself very firmly. The position of the
Forty-seventh Division when darkness fell was that on their right the
140th Brigade had a strong grip of part of the Double Grassier. On
their left the 19th Battalion (St. Pancras), which had lost its
Colonel, Collison-Morley, and several senior officers, was holding
South-east Loos in the rear of the right flank of the Fifteenth
Division. The 20th was holding the Loos Chalk Pit, while the 17th
and 18th were in the German second-line trenches.
There is reason to believe that the rapid dash of the stormers
accomplished results more quickly than had been thought possible.
The Twenty-first and Twenty-fourth Divisions were now brought up, as
Sir John French clearly states in his dispatch, for a specific
purpose: "To ensure the speedy and effective support of the First and
Fourth Corps in the case of their success, the Twenty-first and
Twenty-fourth Divisions passed the night of the 24th and 25th on the
line of Beuvry-Noeux-les-Mines."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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