A German description of the Battle of Loos says that during the preliminary gas attack the British artillery was hurling gas bombs upon the Germans. The latter coughed and held their ground as long as they could, but many fell, unable to resist the fumes. In the midst of all this the Germans were preparing for the expected infantry attack. Finally the British appeared, emerging suddenly as if from nowhere, behind a cloud of gas, and wearing masks. They came on in thick lines and storming columns. The first line of the attackers were quickly shot down by the hail of rifle and machine-gun bullets that rained upon them from the shattered German trenches. The dead and wounded soon lay like a wall before the German position. The second and third lines of the British suffered the same fate. It was estimated that the number of British killed before this German division alone amounted to 8,000 to 10,000. The fourth line of attackers, however, finally succeeded in overrunning the decimated front line of Germans, who stood by their guns to the very last; those of them who had not fallen were made prisoners. Not one of them returned to tell what happened in this terrific fighting. The British are stated to have attacked in an old-fashioned, out-of-date manner that made the German staff officers stare in open-mouthed wonder. "Eight ranks of infantry, mounted artillery, cavalry in the background--that was too much! A veritable battle plan of a past age, the product of a mind in its dotage, and half a century behind the times! Splendidly, with admirable courage, the English troops came forward to the attack. They were young, wore no decorations; they carried out with blind courage what their senile commanders ordered--and this in a period of mortars, machine guns and the telephone. Their behavior was splendid, but all the more pitiable was the breakdown of their attack." [Illustration: The Battle at Loos.] Connected with the Battle of Loos there was one little person who deserves a chapter in history--all to herself--and that is Mlle. Emilienne Moreau, a young French girl who lived--and probably still lives--with her parents in the storm-battered village of Loos. She was seventeen years of age at the time she became famous, and was studying to be a school-teacher. She was "mentioned in dispatches" in the French Official Journal in these terms: "On September 25, 1915, when the British troops entered the village of Loos, she organized a first-aid station in her house and worked day and night to bring in the wounded, to whom she gave all assistance, while refusing to accept any reward. Armed with a revolver she went out and succeeded in overcoming two German soldiers who, hidden in a near-by house, were firing at the first-aid station."