The French advance towards Lens from the south-west was supported by a British attack on a front facing east-south-east and aimed through Festubert and Aubers towards La Bassée and Lille. We noted just now the triangle which is formed with Lille at the apex, Douai at the eastern and Lens at the western foot. On the Lille-Lens line of that triangle, another and smaller triangle will be found, of which La Bassée forms the westernmost angle. The French, we are aware, came up on a front converging on Lens from Arras and the valley of the Scarpe. The British advanced from the north-west with a view to investing La Bassée, and if Lens and La Bassée had both fallen, as the issue of these heroic endeavours, the double triangle, or kite, would have been rolled up to its apex at Lille. The British assault, like the French, opened on Sunday, May 9th. The task of the IV Corps in the battle was assigned to the 7th and 8th Divisions, while the 49th Division took over the greater part of the trench-line held by the Corps. Their first object was to gain Fromelles, but their main and ultimate objective was the Aubers Ridge. The general scope of the attack was disclosed confidentially to the troops about to be engaged. It was ‘not a local effort for the capture merely of Fromelles and Aubers villages,’ but was ‘part of a much larger operation designed to break the enemy’s line on a wide front.’ The importance of the forces employed was also emphasized. ‘Not only is the offensive being undertaken by the First Army’, we read, but a force of ‘the best French troops, amounting to 300,000 or 400,000 men, is likewise advancing to the attack north of Arras.’ The disposition of the British troops made their objective quite clear. They faced the Lille-La Bassée road, curving round La Bassée at the extreme right. Their line was extended on the left to cover about half the road to Lille. The furthest point of that line from Le Bridoux to Cordonnerie Farm was held by the 49th (West Riding[32]) Division, and two of its Infantry Brigades, the 147th and 148th, were detailed to occupy the German trenches which the 8th Division, followed by the 7th, and thus supported by the 49th, was to compel the enemy to vacate[33]. Unfortunately, the whole plan miscarried. The first artillery attack could not be sustained in sufficient strength to wipe out the barbed-wire entanglements and free the way for the Infantry. It followed that the 8th Division could not press its heroic advance home, and the West Riding Infantry Brigades were never called upon to discharge their allotted task. The first day’s programme was thrown out from the start. Its features on the British front bore a tragic and curious resemblance to those of the later days further south, when the advantage won by the French bombardment had been neutralized by German local fire. The advance was broken, that is to say, into little pockets and blood-spots of fighting, which sank into the soil where they occurred.