The Story of the Great War, Volume 2: History of the European War from Official Sources
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume 2: History of the European War from Official Sources
World War, 1914-1918
But on Friday, January 29, 1915, early in the morning, the Germans again
opened with severe artillery fire which directed its attention
particularly to the British line, where the First Army Corps lay between
La Bassee Canal and the Bethune road near Cutchy. After an hour's
shelling the Germans sent one battalion of the Fourteenth Corps toward
the redoubt, and two battalions of the same corps were sent to the north
and south of this redoubt. Now upon this point and to the north of it
stood the Sussex Regiment and to the south of it the Northamptonshire
Regiment. The attack was severe, but the defense was equal to it and the
net results were summed up in the casualty lists on both sides. An
attack upon the French, south of Bethune, on the same day met with like
results. The great German objective was to open another road to Dunkirk
and Calais, and had they been successful in the engagements of the past
few days it is probable that they would have succeeded.
To the north in the coast district the Belgians had succeeded in
flooding a vast area, which served for the time to separate the
combatants for a considerable distance, obliging the Germans to resort
to rafts, boats and other floating apparatus to carry on a somewhat
haphazard offensive and resulting in nothing more than a change from
gunfire slaughter to drowning. The immense inconvenience attendant to
this mode of warfare decided the Germans to drain this area and they
succeeded in doing this by the end of January, 1915.
On the other hand the Belgians captured two German trenches in the north
on January 17, 1915, and the British sent a force to attack Lille on
January 18. The Belgian trenches were reoccupied by the Germans and the
Lille attack was successfully repulsed.
Then, for a week, there was nothing of importance until January 23,
1915, when the Germans made a strong attack upon Ypres which was
repulsed. On January 24 the Germans recaptured St. Georges and bombarded
a few of the towns and villages harboring allied troops.
The Belgians continued in their endeavor to flood the German position
along the Yser, on January 25, 1915, and succeeded in obliging their
opponents to vacate for a time at least, and on the last day of January
allied forces consisting of Zouaves, Gurkhas and other Indian companies
made an attack upon the German trenches upon the dunes at Lombaertzyde,
gaining a temporary advantage at an expense of considerable loss in
casualties.
In reviewing the activities during the month of January, 1915, the
disagreeable state of the weather must be taken into consideration; this
resulted in terrible suffering, to which the battling forces were
subjected during the actual fighting and even more so while at rest,
either on the open field or in the questionable comfort of an
inhospitable and leaky trench.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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