The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12): The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12): The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne
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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