6

THE FIRST DAY (II): 25 SEPTEMBER 1915

By mid-morning on 25 September 1915, First Army’s main attack south of the La Bassée canal had reached its high-water mark. Although the British had not managed to make a complete breakthrough, considerable success had been achieved. As has been discussed in the previous chapter, 2^nd Division and the left-hand brigade of 9^th Division had been unable to make any progress, but matters had improved elsewhere with most of the other brigades being within sight of the German second line at this time. And while German resistance at the second line hardened with every passing hour, the British still had considerable fighting power left on the battlefield. Indeed, if First Army’s ambitious objectives were to be achieved, the gains of the morning would need prompt exploitation. But the continuation of this partial success would prove largely beyond the capabilities of the BEF and many of the problems that had been experienced at Neuve Chapelle – such as poor communication, lack of artillery support, the movement of reserves and the difficulty of mounting of renewed attacks – would again be encountered. While the BEF could achieve a break-in, it could not yet manage a break-out.

Notwithstanding the mixed success of the opening assault, with five brigades being stopped in their tracks, the excellent artillery preparation in the south had allowed 15^th and 47^th Divisions to make major gains and provide the battle with perhaps its most famous episode as columns of kilted Scottish soldiers streamed through Loos and ascended Hill 70. According to the British Official Historian, Sir James Edmonds:

The fighting in Loos had drawn together the mass of the 44^th and 46^th Brigades, so that soon after 8a.m. on a narrow front of about six hundred yards near the eastern exits of the village there was a great gathering of Scottish units. As they streamed out thoroughly intermingled, and began the ascent of Hill 70 in a somewhat leisurely manner they had had, in the words of a battalion diarist,‘the appearance of a bank holiday crowd’. For the moment there was a lull in the noise of battle, and their advance appeared to be unopposed.¹

What happened once 15^th (Scottish) Division reached the crest of Hill 70 is well known. Instead of going directly eastwards towards Cité St Auguste as planned, when the leading elements of 44 Brigade, about 1,500 men in total (which had began to ascend Hill 70 at 8.30a.m.)² reached the high ground, they began moving southwards towards the northern outskirts of Lens. By this time groups of German survivors had managed to rally and after being reinforced by a battalion of 178 Regiment (123^rd (Saxon) Division) and a battalion of 22 Reserve Regiment (117^th Division), they were able to man the second line around Cité St Laurent and Dynamitière and prevent the attackers from reaching their positions.³ The situation only worsened as the morning wore on and by around 10a.m. German resistance began to increase alarmingly. Seeing the attackers swarming around Hill 70, enemy gunners began shelling it and sweeping it with machine gun fire. The position of 15^th Division could have collapsed completely were it not for the equally exhausted state of the enemy and the steady influence of a number of British senior officers, who realised how serious the situation had become.⁴ Although it was difficult to stop the crowds of mixed-up Scottish soldiers from continuing past Hill 70, a line was dug on the near side of the crest in an effort to avoid the murderous fire on the hill.

In retrospect, it seems that although much was made of the advance of 15^th Division on 25 September, both at the time and ever since, it was not the clean breakthrough that had been envisaged by General Sir Douglas Haig. Admittedly, Loos has been popularly associated with a breakthrough and German sources certainly betray the sense of shock and panic at the deep penetrations that had been made. The German Official History recorded that by mid-morning the situation in Loos was ‘extremely serious’, with the British seemingly on the verge of a complete breakthrough. ⁵ A German regimental history concurred, noting that Lens ‘was in great danger’ and that parts of the town had to be evacuated.⁶ Certain British writers have echoed this ‘near-victory’ thesis. According to Captain Basil Liddell Hart, the attack of 15^th Division was ‘a near approach to a breakthrough’,⁷ and Alan Clark believed the attack of 8/Royal Berkshire (1 Brigade) to have been ‘the cleanest break on the whole front of the offensive’.⁸ More recently, Paddy Griffith has written that the ‘infantry actually came close to complete victory’.⁹

How true was this? While the German High Command was certainly initially alarmed by the speed of the British attack in the south (the northern half of the battlefield did not cause such concern), it soon regained its balance as reinforcements were rushed to the threatened sectors. Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson are unimpressed by the notion of a breakthrough at Loos, concluding with regard to 15^th Division that even by as early as 10.30a.m. there were between 700 and 800 German soldiers ‘in the area from Lens North to Cité St Auguste’. This was, of course, more than enough to pin down the 1,500 mixed-up Scottish soldiers that reached Hill 70.¹⁰ Indeed, on a close reading of the available sources, it seems that the idea of a breakthrough at Loos is largely a chimera, perhaps even a post-battle justification for such an ambitious plan of attack. While a scattered party of 1/Cameron Highlanders (1 Brigade) entered Hulluch briefly, this was exceptional.¹¹ It is clear that in many cases, once the attacking battalions had crossed the German front line, they were in no state to go much further. According to Brigadier-General Hon. J.F.H.S.F. Trefusis (GOC 20 Brigade), the ‘thrust’ of his brigade ‘had spent itself’ by 10a.m.¹² Supporting battalions found it equally difficult to get into the German second position. Captain P.S. Brindley (9/Devonshire, 20 Brigade) remembered how once his battalion had reached Gun Trench, it consisted of a ‘mere handful of men’ and he regarded any attempt to attack Cité St Elie as being ‘useless’.¹³ Even full strength battalions fared little better. By as early as 11a.m. Haisnes was ‘strongly held’ by the enemy, with both 11 and 12/Royal Scots being unable to take it.¹⁴

To understand why there was no ‘decisive’ breakthrough at Loos, it is necessary to examine how the British attempted to support the gains that had been made in the opening assault. Despite the great emphasis placed in the operation orders on the importance of battalions attacking ‘all-out’, it was clear that they could not go unsupported forever and would, sooner or later, require reinforcement. And until large reserve units (XI Corps) were on the battlefield, it was the task of the supporting battalions and reserve brigades of I and IV Corps to continue the attack. But this was not easy. Merely getting to the old British front line – let alone crossing no-man’s-land – was fraught with difficulty. Persistent enemy shelling, long-range machine gun fire and the all-pervading ‘fog of war’, which at Loos literally meant lingering gas and smoke, hampered the attempts of not only the infantry but also the artillery, to get forward. Indeed, it seems that this secondary phase of the battle, with the British attempting to support their initial gains, was the point when First Army ‘lost’ the Battle of Loos.

Immediately after the leading waves had left their assault trenches, the movement of support and reserve battalions began. For these units, moving up initially to the vacated front-trenches and then trying to reinforce the leading troops could be a trying experience. As one regimental history recorded,‘all the carefully drawn-up plans for the regulation of traffic in the communication trenches broke down during the stress of battle’.¹⁵ It usually took between three and four hours for the reserve brigades to reach the old British front line. After being ordered forward soon after 6a.m., 21 Brigade reached its assigned position at 9.30a.m.¹⁶ Similarly, 45 Brigade had arrived at the vacated British front line trenches by about this time.¹⁷ But for other units, however, the journey forward was not as straightforward. It took four hours for Brigadier-General C.D. Bruce’s 27 Brigade to reach the vacated British front lines, in what was described as a ‘dreadful nightmare’.¹⁸ Lieutenant-Colonel H.H. Northey (CO 6/Royal Scots Fusiliers) recalled how the trenches were ‘absolutely choked with dead and wounded’.¹⁹ It took 1/8^th London (140 Brigade) three hours to move the one and half miles to the old German front line,²⁰ and 3 Brigade also recorded slow progress through the cluttered communication trenches of 1^st Division.²¹

Crossing no-man’s-land was an extremely perilous business. Because not all of the German strongpoints had fallen in the initial attack, enfilade fire swept across certain sectors of the front, particularly on the north of the battlefield. When the battalion headquarters of 5/Cameron Highlanders (26 Brigade) went forward at 7.30a.m. the officers present found out that ‘the whole line of advance was enfiladed by heavy machine-gun and rifle fire from Mad Point’.²² By the time one of its supporting battalions (8/Black Watch) had got past this obstacle, it was ‘seriously diminished’.²³ So congested were the communication trenches behind 7^th Division’s front with wounded soldiers that 9/Devonshire (20 Brigade) was forced to move across the open towards Gun Trench. By the time it had got there, enfilade fire had caused heavy losses in officers and men.²⁴ Also because a number of the wounded, lying out in no-man’s-land, occasionally fired their rifles to attract attention to their plight, the battlefield could be a bewildering place for those battalions moving up.²⁵

It would take many more hours before the supporting and reserve battalions were in a position to continue the attack. And by the time they could do so, German reinforcements, especially machine gun detachments, had often arrived just in time to man parts of the second line and to hold up the advance. The leading battalions of 27 Brigade (11 and 12/Royal Scots) reached Pekin Trench at about 8.45a.m.²⁶ After skilfully trying to move forward, fierce fire from the upper stories of buildings in Haisnes and Cité St Elie prevented any further movement.²⁷ It was a similar situation in 20 Brigade. Its supporting battalions tried to cross the German second line, but the belts of protective wire had not been cut and accurate machine gun fire from Stützpunkt II and Hulluch prevented any attempts at this. And 21 Brigade, to the chagrin of some, was split earlier in the morning.²⁸ Instead of being used as a whole brigade, one half was sent to support the attack on Cité St Elie, while the other was to try and get into Hulluch. The left half of 21 Brigade (2/Yorkshire and 1/4^th Cameron Highlanders) reached the Quarries at midday, while the right half of the brigade (2/Bedfordshire and 2/Wiltshire) sustained many casualties from machine guns in Cité St Elie and eventually ended up along Stone Alley and Gun Trench.²⁹ Although scattered elements of 1 Brigade entered Hulluch through a small gap in its protecting wire, they were held up by two companies of the reserve battalion of 157 Infantry Regiment (117^th Division).³⁰ The remnants of the brigade then reformed on the southern end of Gun Trench and Alley 4, with a senior officer not considering it advisable to attack the village until more support was received. The attack on the second line would have to wait.

If the British were to press the attack on the second line it was essential that the forward troops were supported with accurate artillery fire. But it seems that once the main assault had gone in, British artillery was unable to provide the infantry with the support they required. As had been the case throughout the preliminary bombardment, dust and bad light, as well as gas and smoke, made observation ‘practically impossible’.³¹ Heavy enemy shelling – a sure sign of the failure of British counter-battery fire – also compounded familiar communication difficulties. XXII Brigade RFA (7^th Division) reported that the telephone wires for its FOOs were ‘repeatedly cut’ during the day.³² Although XXXVI Brigade RFA (7^th Division) only had one of its telephone cables cut, this still interrupted communication between all its units.³³ LI Brigade RFA (9^th Division) was equally unsure of the situation in front of it and despite numerous attempts to ascertain how the attack had progressed, little information could be gained during the morning.³⁴

The task of finding out what was going on and trying to correct British shelling was down to the liaison officers attached to the infantry. The difficulties these officers faced were legion. For example, L Brigade RFA (9^th Division) spent most of 25 September anxiously awaiting orders to move forward. By 8a.m., when no information about the infantry attack had been received, an officer and two telephonists were sent forward to ‘pick up’ any information. Unfortunately, two of the party were killed as they laid out the line.³⁵ The diary of a young subaltern, P.H. Pilditch, attached to 1/6^th London (140 Brigade, 47^th Division), describes such difficulties. Although he was supposed to observe the progress of the shelling and send back information on targets, because he had not been supplied with either telephone equipment or signallers, there was little he could do. He spent the day ‘helping to reconstruct the [captured German] parapet’.³⁶ On the following day when he had received the necessary equipment, his efforts to help British guns destroy a number of German machine gun posts on the Double Crassier were largely in vain. According to Pilditch, the battery ‘shot deplorably’. He ascribed this either to worn-out guns or ‘else the gun laying [must have been] shockingly poor’.

A vivid example of the failure of British artillery to support the infantry attack is contained in the Middlesex regimental history. Before the opening assault went in all artillery batteries were to shell the German first line, before lifting onto targets deeper into the enemy position. The system worked well enough if initial resistance was not too heavy, but if the attack went awry and the infantry were unable to progress, things rapidly fell apart, as the summary of messages between 19 Brigade and 1/Middlesex testify. At 6.57a.m. 19 Brigade asked for ‘any news? How far have you advanced?’ This was followed by a spate of messages from Lieutenant-Colonel F.G.M. Rowley (CO 1/Middlesex) detailing his battalion’s plight.

6.50a.m.	Much opposition to our front. Please ask guns to shell Les Briques Trench.
7a.m.	Reserve Company has got on, but we are being very heavily fired at.
7.16a.m.	Line held up. Very heavy fire.
7.20a.m.	Ask guns to shell German front-line trench. Railway Trench I mean.
7.26a.m.	Don’t think gas is affecting us or Germans. They are holding their front-line trench. Our battalion is all out in area between their front trench and ours. 2/Royal Welsh Fusiliers are now up. It is essential now to shell hostile front trenches.
7.30a.m.	Reported casualties probably 400, but impossible to tell. Have observed an enormous number fall.
7.55a.m.	Must shell German first line. Our men are all out in front. Almost all must be killed or wounded. Please shell first line.37

In just over one hour, Rowley had asked his supporting artillery to shell the German front line five times. Problems with artillery staff work were obviously being experienced because it proved so difficult for guns to be diverted from their prearranged fire-plans. But this precise scenario had been detailed in I Corps’ Operation Order No. 106, which had been issued on 20 September, so it could not have been a totally unexpected proposition.³⁸

Even if the attacks went according to plan, good artillery support was far from assured. As the reserve infantry brigades had already found out, it was often a time-consuming and taxing business to move past the series of trenches into open ground. LXXII Brigade RFA (15^th Division) had trouble getting past a number of trenches because not all had been properly bridged.³⁹ The ground itself was also not conducive to good gunnery positions. Lieutenant-Colonel R.M. Ovens (CO 1/South Staffordshire, 22 Brigade) complained that because the ground was so open it was ‘well nigh impossible to get the artillery to useful shelling range of Cité St Elie and its defences’.⁴⁰ So swept by fire were the open fields north of Loos that LXXIII Brigade RFA (15^th Division) lost ten horses during the day.⁴¹ While batteries that remained in the positions they had occupied throughout the preliminary bombardment did not suffer too heavily from enemy shellfire, for those that moved forward, severe casualties could be sustained. The artillery of 1^st Division seems to have been hit particularly hard on 25/26 September. Five of the senior officers within XXVI Brigade RFA were all hit, ‘and the command of both its batteries devolved on young subalterns’.⁴²

But even so, it is clear that some intrepid gunners did manage to provide useful support for the infantry. The war diary of 12^th Battery (XXXV Brigade RFA, 7^th Division) recorded that after moving closer to the front line, ‘Effective fire was opened on Puits Trenches and houses in [Cité] St Elie’.⁴³ On seeing the enemy front line fall, Lieutenant-Colonel H.H. Tudor (CO XIV Brigade RHA) ordered a section of ‘T’ Battery to advance eastwards along the Vermelles–Hulluch road. According to Tudor, ‘T’ Battery went ‘down the road at a steady gallop’, and although the leading driver and several horses were shot, the guns were positioned in a slight hollow near the German front line. They then opened fire on hostile infantry seen entering Cité St Elie.⁴⁴ Considering how lethal and confusing the battlefield was during the day, it is surprising just how many artillery batteries limbered up and made their way forward.⁴⁵ But because the battlefield was such a difficult environment, especially following the loss of the Quarries during the night, most of the batteries were withdrawn to their previous positions under the cover of darkness.

Despite the disappointing failure of the British to support and enlarge upon the advances of the morning, it is clear that further gains were not impossible, but would depend upon the arrival of large-scale reinforcements. It was during the afternoon that the bulk of the two leading divisions of XI Corps (21^st and 24^th Divisions) arrived on the battlefield; tired, bewildered and suffering from an ‘appalling ignorance of the situation’.⁴⁶ It will be recalled that XI Corps had not had an easy march forward and had been delayed by the combined effects of overcrowding, poor traffic control and a lack of prior planning. Once on the battlefield, however, its problems multiplied rapidly. Not only were the battalions unsure about what lay ahead of them and had difficulty crossing the muddy battlefield in the darkness, which was ‘intersected with trenches and barbed wire’,⁴⁷ but also owing to a complete lack of suitable maps, they found it impossible to locate their exact position and had to march on a compass bearing of 112 degrees.⁴⁸ According to Lieutenant-Colonel Cosmo Stewart (GSOI 24^th Division) the crossing of the battlefield was fraught with difficulty. He later remarked that ‘the animals slipped on the boards of hastily made bridges and several vehicles tumbled into the trenches’.⁴⁹ A more unpromising introduction to war can hardly be imagined.

Eventually, however, the reserve divisions reached their allotted deployment areas. Within 24^th Division, 71 Brigade had concentrated just south-east of Le Rutoire by 9p.m.⁵⁰ and 72 Brigade reached the old trenches of 1^st Division at Lone Tree at 11.05p.m.⁵¹ After a long, tiring night marching through the trenches, 73 Brigade, which had been sent to bolster the situation around the Hohenzollern Redoubt, gradually relieved 26 Brigade around 1a.m.⁵² It was, however, more difficult for the brigades of 21^st Division, which were to march a considerable distance further across the battlefield. 63 Brigade had taken over its positions in Chalk Pit Wood around midnight, relieving the remnants of 2 and 44 Brigades, but the situation remained extremely confusing for the other formations of 21^st Division.⁵³ So bad did things get that two battalions of 62 Brigade (8/East Yorkshire and 10/Yorkshire) became lost, moved south-east and came under heavy enemy machine gun fire from Chalk Pit Copse, suffering a number of casualties before being pulled back.⁵⁴ Although this was an unfortunate (and singular) incident, it did not bode well for the following day.

But what were these tired, soaked-through brigades to do now that they were on the battlefield? In view of the heavy casualties sustained on 25 September and the difficulties the British had experienced when trying to reinforce and support the gains made during the morning, it is difficult to understand why Haig wanted to use XI Corps to mount an ambitious attack on the German second line for the following morning. According to Edmonds, the decision to attack with 21^st and 24^th Divisions was simply the result of indifferent communication and inaccurate reporting. This has been accepted by historians ever since.⁵⁵ Edmonds believed that early and generally optimistic messages emanating from the battlefield had convinced Haig that ‘First Army was on the crest of the wave of victory; that it had broken through the German second and last line of defence in two central and vital places, Cité St Elie and Hulluch; and that a break-through at Haisnes and Cité St Auguste was imminent.’ But he went on to write:‘The reports, as we know, had overestimated the successes, and the great losses suffered were scarcely mentioned.’⁵⁶ Admittedly, Edmonds had a point. The morning’s reports had indeed reflected the sweeping success achieved on certain sectors of the front, but they had not all been so sanguine, and as the day dragged on, an increasing number of messages began to appear that told of units being ‘held up by machine-gun fire’ and the like. Indeed, from a close reading of the First Army war diary for this period, it is difficult to agree with Haig’s breezy assertion in his diary that 25 September had been ‘a very satisfactory’ day ‘on the whole’.⁵⁷

Much of the writing that deals with the nature of command and control on the Western Front has tended to emphasise those factors that inhibited communication on the battlefield. Because of the unprecedented scale of the fighting, combined with the limitations of existing technology, the First World War was the only war in history fought without effective voice control.⁵⁸ In trench warfare, as Martin van Creveld has written, ‘effective command often ended where the wire did’.⁵⁹ This meant that once troops had left the shelter of their own trenches, commanders in the rear found it very difficult to get an accurate assessment of the progress of the attack. Telephone wires were often cut by shellfire; visual signalling was generally ineffective (especially in bad weather) on smoky, shell-swept battlefields; runners were vulnerable to shell and small arms fire; and wireless sets were not yet available in sufficient numbers (and able to withstand the rigours of the field) to make a major difference to the flow of information. A combination of these factors had a deadening effect on the ability of British units to achieve a higher operational tempo than the enemy on a number of occasions, most notably the Battle of Neuve Chapelle (10–12 March 1915) and several times during the Battle of the Somme (for example on 1 and 14 July 1916).

Was this the case during the Battle of Loos? As soon as the main British assault south of the La Bassée canal began, First Army’s command and control arrangements came under pressure from enemy shells and long-range machine gun fire. On certain sectors of the front communication broke down as telephone wires were cut, runners were killed and signalling proved useless in the poor weather conditions. For example, news of 28 Brigade’s failed attack against Madagascar Trench filtered up the chain of command only slowly. A German shell hit the headquarters of 10/Highland Light Infantry, which killed most of the signalling staff, and as many officers had become casualties, exact information on what had happened only reached brigade headquarters when Major H.C. Stuart staggered in at noon.⁶⁰ Attacking on the other side of the Hohenzollern Redoubt was 5/Cameron Highlanders (26 Brigade). It attack may have been successful but its commanding officer (Lieutenant-Colonel D.W. Cameron of Lochiel) later wrote that ‘There was practically no communication of any sort’ on 25 September.⁶¹ Indeed, the events of the coming days would show the Hohenzollern Redoubt to be a particularly lethal sector of the battlefield, under direct enemy observation and pounded by shellfire.

As British units, particularly those in the centre of the attack, moved away from their ‘jumping off’ positions, communication became, in many cases, progressively worse. Once 15^th (Scottish) Division had broken through the first line of German trenches, communication between the front troops and divisional headquarters began to falter. Lieutenant-Colonel H.R. Wallace (CO 10/Gordon Highlanders) sent a message to 44 Brigade at 9.06a.m., reporting all the telephone wires had been cut,⁶² and Brigadier-General M.G. Wilkinson (GOC 44 Brigade) also confirmed that during the afternoon communication was ‘to a great extent lost and only kept up to a limited extent by runners’.⁶³ Similarly, Major R.H.D. Tompson (acting AA&QMG 7^th Division between 12 and 22 September 1915) noted that it was ‘Very difficult to get any information, and [the] situation [was] obscure everywhere’.⁶⁴ Little assistance could be gained from the RFC. The weather conditions, which were generally unfavourable for aerial observation, were aggravated by the gas discharge, with observers recording large clouds of smoke stretching some three miles from the German lines.⁶⁵ Indeed, while the smoke and gas discharge had helped to conceal the movement of troops through no-man’s-land, it had also hindered the observation of the infantry.

However, not all areas of the battlefield were hit equally hard and communication functioned much better on other sectors. Having received messages reporting the failure of the attacks of 6 and 19 Brigades south of the La Bassée canal, and the unlikelihood of any further attempts succeeding, by as early at 9.45a.m. Major-General H.S. Horne (GOC 2^nd Division) had decided to abandon operations for the day.⁶⁶ In part this was due to the fact that 2^nd Division had not made any major gains, its operations were not vital to the success of the main assault, and it could also rely on buried cable from its own front line. Similarly, despite being unable to take the German position at Lone Tree, 2 Brigade remained in good communication with 1^st Division all day.⁶⁷ On the southern sector of the battlefield, communication between 47^th (London) Division headquarters and its brigades was ‘well maintained’ throughout the battle.⁶⁸ And even for the hard-pressed 44 Brigade, runners could still reach brigade headquarters in only thirty-four minutes.⁶⁹ It will be seen, therefore, that although getting accurate information to and from the front at Loos was never an easy matter, communication held up surprisingly well on 25 September. Those sectors where it had completely broken down (for example 28 Brigade) were largely irrelevant to the future of the British offensive. Admittedly, messages from 15^th Division around Loos and Hill 70 may have been forced to rely on runners, but it seems that enough news made its way back from the battlefield for a rough appreciation of the situation to emerge.

How did the progress of the battle appear to General Sir Douglas Haig and his staff, anxiously awaiting news at the Chateau of Hinges? News of the fighting had been filtering in soon after the initial attacks began and they made encouraging reading.⁷⁰ At 6a.m. I Corps reported that the ‘gas was going splendidly in front of 9^th Division’, and thirty-five minutes later the attack of 5 Brigade (2^nd Division) had apparently advanced ‘unopposed’. IV Corps experienced a similar situation and apart from what seemed like a temporary setback on the front of 2 Brigade, all attacks were progressing well. At 6.40a.m. IV Corps wired that the ‘gas appeared to be effective’ and five minutes later 1^st Division was reported to be ‘advancing rapidly’. By 7.05a.m. it was known that 47^th Division had ‘got off well’ and forty minutes later it was confirmed that 15^th Division too was ‘getting on well’, having reached the German support trenches. At 9.45a.m. IV Corps informed First Army that Loos and Puits 14 had been taken, and an hour later 7^th and 9^th Divisions were reportedly in Cité St Elie. By midday elements of 1^st Division were apparently in Hulluch. Although the reports of British troops in the villages on the German second line were untrue (with the exception of a party of 1/Cameron Highlanders in Hulluch), most of the information received at Hinges was generally accurate and the great logistical operation that had preceded the battle enabled a considerable flow of information to be maintained even in the face of heavy shelling and long-range machine gun fire.

With the encouraging news of British success, the issue of XI Corps now resurfaced. The first mention of the reserves on 25 September seems to have come from Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Rawlinson (GOC IV Corps) who, in the first flush of success, put a telephone call through to Hinges at 8.30a.m. suggesting that XI Corps be moved up at once.⁷¹ Rawlinson was obviously anxious to exploit the great success of 15^th Division. He had apparently been told, rather optimistically, that he ‘need keep nothing in reserve as the moment we had been successful another corps would be pushed through us’.⁷² General Sir Douglas Haig agreed with his corps commander and immediately sent a staff officer to find the Commander-in-Chief and urge him to make sure XI Corps was ready to advance. But instead of being at GHQ in St Omer, Sir John French had spent the morning at Chateau Philomel, three miles south of Lillers, where, because of poor communications – there was only the normal French telephone system to rely on – he was much less able to direct operations.⁷³ Although French was eventually found and swiftly agreed to move 21^st and 24^th Divisions up, by this time it was around 9.30a.m. and precious time had been lost.⁷⁴ Sir John eventually arrived at Hinges two hours later. It was agreed that when the first brigade of 24^th Division (73 Brigade) arrived on the battlefield it would come under I Corps’ orders and make for Vermelles.⁷⁵ It was hoped that these troops would allow 9^th Division to push on through the German second line. The leading brigade of 21^st Division (62 Brigade) was attached to 15^th Division and ordered to support the positions around Hill 70. Therefore, by the early afternoon of 25 September two brigades of the reserves divisions had already been parcelled off to I and IV Corps, leaving only four brigades still directly under the control of XI Corps. The Guards Division remained in GHQ reserve.

Events, however, rapidly ran away from Haig and First Army as the tide of battle began finally, and irrevocably, to turn against the British during the afternoon. It is clear that Haig knew (or should have known) great setbacks had occurred, especially on the north of the battlefield. Even on the more favourable terrain in the south, where 15^th (Scottish) Division had done so well, Haig could not have failed to realise that the enemy was counterattacking in some strength. As early as 7.45a.m. reports had arrived from I Corps warning that the attacks had broken down north of the La Bassée road and ten minutes later a message from IV Corps told of 1^st Division’s problems with the gas. By 1p.m. I Corps admitted that the situation around Hulluch was unclear, and IV Corps reported that the Scottish battalions on Hill 70 were being heavily counterattacked and ‘it was questionable whether 15^th Division would be able to hold it’.⁷⁶ An hour later Haig was informed that the renewed attack of 28 Brigade had failed. By 3.50p.m. confirmation was received from 1^st Division that it had finally cleared the enemy from Lone Tree, but this was the last of the good news. At 5.20p.m. a wire informed First Army that the attack on Cité St Elie had failed, and soon after this 2^nd Division admitted that it had been unable to make any progress.

Despite the increasingly unsatisfactory news, the orders to XI Corps do not seem to have changed, indeed if anything, they became more ambitious. At 2.35p.m. 21^st and 24^th Divisions were ordered to ‘push forward at once between Hulluch and Cité St Auguste and occupy [the] high ground between Haisnes and Pont à Vendin’. At 3.30p.m., despite knowing for two and a half hours that German counter-attacks were being made against Hill 70, and making no mention that two brigades had already been detached from its command, XI Corps was informed that:

The IV Corps have captured Hill 70 east of Loos. The I Corps have entered Hulluch. The XI Corps (less Guards Division) will advance with a view to securing the crossings over the Haute Deule canal at Loison-sour-Lens – Harnes and Pont à Vendin.

News from the battlefield did eventually begin to curtail the scope of XI Corps’ attack plans. At 7.50p.m., just as the leading reserve units were finally entering the battlefield, XI Corps received another set of instructions. This time it was a little more cautious. XI Corps was ordered to ‘Secure and entrench a line from Hill 70 to the western end of Hulluch and link up with troops on the right and left’; to send out strong patrols towards the Haute Deule canal; and to bring up divisional artillery and be ready to continue the attack at daybreak in conjunction with neighbouring troops.

The orders for all three corps were finalised in the early hours of 26 September.⁷⁷ The plan that emerged eventually was a two-step staged offensive that would initially (at 9a.m.) take Hill 70 and Hulluch, thus clearing the flanks, so that the reserve divisions could then break the German centre. IV Corps would take Hill 70 and Hulluch, while I Corps pushed onto Cité St Elie. XI Corps’ order called for 21^st and 24^th Divisions to be pushed through the German second line once the flanks had been secured. What would happen if this failed was not mentioned. But even this relatively straightforward (if somewhat sketchy) plan suffered from confusion and contradiction. It seems that Rawlinson thought he was commanding both 21^st and 24^th Divisions and the orders for I Corps made no mention of 73 Brigade, despite it being placed under Gough’s command on the morning of 25 September.⁷⁸ It was surely obvious that the complete lack of clearly understood and definite orders, combined with a command structure that was rapidly collapsing under the strain of battle, did not bode well for the following day.

Why had Haig given the reserve divisions such ambitious orders in the face of the mixed news from the battlefield? There does not seem to have been any systematic, let alone detailed, plans for what the reserve divisions would do once they had reached the front. Haig did, however, have one rough idea. After the enemy had been sufficiently weakened, XI Corps would go forward and complete the victory. This uncertain situation was reflected in the orders issued to the reserve divisions throughout 25 September, and although these were modified several times in response to developments on the battlefield, there was no fundamental re-think about what they should do despite the increasingly grim news that arrived at Hinges. They were simply to attack, break the German second line and reach the Haute Deule canal. As had been a feature of much of the pre-battle preparation, Haig’s chronic over-optimism was allowed to cloud his judgement and, if not ignore, then certainly suppress, much of the uncomfortable information he received at Hinges. Seemingly unable to get the early, encouraging reports of success out of his mind, as soon as Haking’s corps entered First Army’s area of operations, Haig pushed them forward as aggressively as possible, with apparently little thought about what they would do, except march eastwards and push through any lingering resistance in line with his belief in the structured battle.

According to Prior and Wilson, Haig’s plan for 26 September was ‘possessed of not a single redeeming feature’,⁷⁹ but there has been little explanation of why such attacks went ahead. Communication between the firing line and the headquarters in the rear was undoubtedly problematic during the battle, but as shown, First Army had a fairly accurate – if delayed – picture of events on the battlefield. Yet from the orders issued to XI Corps, it is clear that this news had less of an impact on Haig than his pre-battle expectations, his belief in the structured battle and what a general reserve should (theoretically) accomplish. He decided, therefore, upon a very big second day, with poor artillery support and limited intelligence, in the knowledge that German reinforcements had arrived and were menacing British forward positions. And even given the mixed success of the first day, the plan for 26 September bordered on the reckless. Such a complex, inter-related and rushed attack was unworkable, and the reserve divisions had little understanding of the situation.

Before moving on to discuss the second day at Loos, when the reserve divisions finally went into action, it is necessary to review the events of 25 September more widely, including the casualties that had been suffered and the performance of the German Army. Nothing illustrates the industrialised slaughter at Loos better than the high level of British casualties. Exact figures for 25 September are difficult to assess, with the Official History recording a round figure of 470 officers and 15,000 other ranks.⁸⁰ If anything this estimate errs on the side of caution. Indeed, the average number of soldiers that died per division on 25 September 1915 was actually higher than the number sustained on the worst day of British military history, 1 July 1916.⁸¹ According to the CD-ROM, Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919, total recorded deaths for the six attacking divisions at Loos were 6,350. Using the accepted ratio of one death for every three soldiers who were wounded or missing, it is clear that casualties for the first day could have been as high as 19,000. Because they were almost continually in action between 25 and 27 September, statistics for those divisions in the central sectors of the battlefield are not specific for the first day, but they were certainly heavy. During the Loos operations 9^th Division sustained 5,868 casualties.⁸² There were 5,199 casualties in 7^th Division.⁸³ 1^st Division suffered 4,316 casualties.⁸⁴ Losses in 15^th Division were very high, and as the divisional history noted, out of a total fighting strength of over 19,000 men, 6,606 died or were wounded in the battle. ⁸⁵ The divisions on the flanks suffered far fewer losses, and because of their limited roles, exact figures for 25 September are much easier to come by. Casualties in 47^th Division only amounted to sixty officers and 1,352 other ranks,⁸⁶ although 2^nd Division suffered more heavily with ninety-one officers and 2,234 other ranks being recorded as killed, wounded or missing.⁸⁷

Because Scottish divisions were making the main attacks, they suffered particularly heavily. By the evening of 25 September some battalions had been virtually destroyed. 5/Cameron Highlanders (26 Brigade) could muster only eighty soldiers and no more than forty-six men from 6/KOSB could be assembled.⁸⁸ 8/Black Watch (26 Brigade) also lost approximately seventy per cent of its strength during the main attack.⁸⁹ When Lieutenant-Colonel G.S. Cartwright (CRE 15^th Division) went forward a little later in the day, he noticed how no-man’s-land was ‘carpeted with their [9/Black Watch] dead, lying so thickly that they almost touched all the way across’.⁹⁰ But it was not just Scottish units that suffered and some English battalions were also hit hard. While 10/Gloucestershire (1 Brigade) had barely 130 survivors by nightfall, 8/Devonshire (20 Brigade) lost nineteen officers and 600 men out of a total strength of 750.⁹¹ Similarly, 2/Royal Warwickshire (22 Brigade) could muster only 140 men by nightfall.⁹² Lone Tree was a particularly lethal sector of the battlefield, and when it was relieved later in the day, the strength of 2 Brigade only amounted to 1,550 all ranks.⁹³

The nature of these losses was particularly shocking. Officer casualties were nothing short of disastrous. Even in relatively successful attacks, losses in certain units could be devastating. Despite being part of the most well-conducted divisional attack on 25 September, of the eighteen officers who went into action with 1/7^th London (140 Brigade), ten were killed and four were wounded.⁹⁴ It was a similar situation within 15^th Division and all company commanders in 9/Black Watch (44 Brigade) became casualties.⁹⁵ Equally grim statistics emerged from the central and northern sectors of the battlefield. The war diary of 10/Gloucestershire (1 Brigade) recorded that sixteen officers out of twenty-one had been hit,⁹⁶ and every officer – save three – were either killed or wounded within 8/Devonshire (20 Brigade).⁹⁷ Even 9/Devonshire, the reserve battalion of 20 Brigade, which did not actually take part in the initial attack, sustained grievous losses. According to its war diary:

The CO, the second-in-command, and four company commanders all fell within a few yards of our front line, no-man’s-land being swept by overhead machine-gun fire and shrapnel.⁹⁸

21 Brigade sustained grievous losses trying to reinforce the forward positions. By the time it had reached Gun Trench, 2/Wiltshire had lost seven officers and 200 other ranks, while in 2/Bedford, the CO, Adjutant and all four company commanders, as well as over 200 men had been hit.⁹⁹ 9^th Division also suffered appallingly. 26 Brigade’s war diary recorded that ‘a large number of our officers were killed and wounded’,¹⁰⁰ and the ill-fated 28 Brigade fared as bad. While 10/Highland Light Infantry lost eighty-five per cent of its officers, twelve of the nineteen officers who went into action with 6/KOSB were killed and seven were wounded.¹⁰¹

But it was in the realm of senior officer casualties that Loos gained an almost unassailable place in the pantheon of British military disasters. It has not often been realised just how severe officer casualties were at Loos, and the devastating effect this had on the units concerned. Nine lieutenant-colonels (or acting battalion commanders) had been killed and twelve had been wounded.¹⁰² And again, even in units that took part in attacks that were relatively successful, casualties could be very heavy. Owing to a burst of machine gun fire, Lieutenant-Colonel H.D. Collison-Morley (CO 1/19^th London, 141 Brigade), his second-in-command and adjutant were all killed.¹⁰³ So bad were officer losses in 8/Seaforth Highlanders (44 Brigade) that only the adjutant remained to write up the report on the battalion’s attack. He confirmed that:

The losses were disastrous to the battalion with regard to senior officers. The colonel [Lieutenant-Colonel N.A. Thompson] and second in command, who had gone over the parapet well-forward, were left not far from our own trenches, and the four [company] commanders were in a similar case.¹⁰⁴

In 10/Highland Light Infantry (28 Brigade), Lieutenant-Colonel J.C. Grahame was carried off the field suffering from the effects of the gas, his adjutant was killed and a German shell hit the battalion headquarters, which killed most of the signalling staff.¹⁰⁵ Perhaps reflecting the aggressive character of the divisional commander, high-ranking officer casualties suffered in Major-General Sir Thompson Capper’s 7^th Division were the worst of any division for the entire battle.¹⁰⁶ No less than five lieutenant-colonels had been killed and three wounded. Of Brigadier-General Trefusis’s five commanding officers in 20 Brigade, two had been killed in action and another two seriously wounded. Afterwards he lamented that Lieutenant-Colonel E.I. de. S. Thorpe (CO 2/Border) was the ‘only one left’.¹⁰⁷ Within 22 Brigade, Lieutenant-Colonel B.P. Lefroy (CO 2/Royal Warwickshire) was mortally wounded at the wire, while both 2/Royal Warwickshire and 1/South Staffordshire lost a number of company commanders.¹⁰⁸

Why were regimental officer casualties so high? Common to all battalions, both Regular and New Army, were widely held notions on what duties officers were supposed to undertake. They were expected not only to be paternalistic towards their men and look after their welfare, but also to embody the ideal of an unselfish Christian gentleman.¹⁰⁹ According to one recent historian, one of ‘the most important methods used by the British regimental officer… was to act as a leader in the most literal sense’.¹¹⁰ And in the field these ideas rapidly turned into a ‘model of heroic leadership’ whereby officers were expected to lead by example, which in trench warfare, often meant that they were first ‘over the top’.¹¹¹ On such a murderous battlefield as Loos it is of no surprise that a significant percentage of junior officers were killed or wounded. Indeed, so strong were these ideas of ‘heroic leadership’ that even senior regimental officers risked their lives by making themselves highly visible to their men. Lieutenant-Colonel F.W. Ramsay (CO 1/9^th King’s, Green’s Force) even walked across no-man’s-land carrying his distinctive white wand!¹¹² An even more eccentric episode concerns Lieutenant-Colonel E.B. Macnaughten (CO XXXIX Bde RFA, 1^st Division). In order to reassure his batteries, Macnaughten apparently ‘had a table set with linen, cloth, napkins, and plates and put up at ‘Lone Tree’… fully exposed to shellfire… where he took his lunch just as if in his mess in billets.’¹¹³

As well as the many examples of heroic leadership, another factor that increased officer casualties was the British uniform. While other ranks were issued with a khaki serge jacket with trousers and puttees, officers wore a jacket that had an open collar with lapels and numerous pockets, they were also expected to wear a dark khaki tie.¹¹⁴ As might have been expected, German snipers found these differences especially helpful and were able to target British officers relatively easily. Captain L. McNaught-Davis (8/Lincolnshire, 63 Brigade) remembered how enemy snipers were hidden in the upper branches of trees in Bois Hugo and were ‘picking off our men’.¹¹⁵ Although British officers would gradually lose their distinctive uniforms in the trenches, by donning a private’s uniform and arming themselves with a rifle and bayonet, it is evident that a majority of officers in this period wore traditional uniforms and suffered accordingly.

How had the Germans fared? Despite operating under considerable numerical inferiority, they had proved formidable adversaries. IV Corps had fought exceedingly well, doing just enough to blunt the initial British attack long enough for reinforcements to arrive and solidify the line. But this success had been bought at heavy cost, with the battalions defending the first line being in many cases wiped out. The Germans, however, had suffered far less than their attackers. Between 21 and 29 September, Sixth Army recorded casualties of 657 officers and about 29,000 other ranks.¹¹⁶ Losses were particularly heavy in 117^th Division, with 5,600 casualties, and 123^rd (Saxon) Division, which lost 2,500 men. 26 Reserve Infantry Brigade (117^th Division), heavily involved at Loos, suffered over 2,000 casualties. Perhaps reflecting the relatively high instances of the murder of prisoners, it seems that relatively few German soldiers were captured at Loos. For example, 9^th Division captured barely five officers and 168 other ranks¹¹⁷ although 47^th Division did slightly better, recording eight officers and 302 other ranks, with three field guns being taken.¹¹⁸

Most German units had suffered heavily by the end of the day, but their defensive tactics had proved effective. It seems that relatively few defenders were left in the trenches when the British attacked, with only enough to crew the machine guns, the majority sheltering in the support trenches. This was particularly noticeable on the front of 2^nd Division. According to the divisional history:

All along the line it had been noticed that the enemy’s front-line trenches were but lightly held until the attack began; then after opening a very heavy fire from his support trenches, he rushed men up to the front line in time to meet the assaulting parties and decimate them almost on the wire.¹¹⁹

Although artillery would become the major man-killer in later years of the war, the machine gun was still the most deadly weapon on the battlefield in 1915. Heavy machine gun fire could be devastating against lines of unprotected infantry, especially those in clumsy linear formations. According to the historian of 8/Black Watch (26 Brigade), ‘probably at no other time during the whole war did the 8^th ever come under machine gun fire so intense and deadly as that at Loos’.¹²⁰ Most of the German machine guns were firing on prearranged lines, and as was experienced by the British the following year on the Somme, a great number of these were sited low. The war diary of 19 Brigade recorded how many of its wounded were hit in ‘the lower part of the legs or ankles’.¹²¹ But even so, resistance was often much stronger at the support line. This was the case with 22 Brigade,¹²² and 19 Brigade recorded communication trenches that were ‘packed with men. It would seem that [the] enemy fires from his support trenches at the first assault while other troops rush up the front line.’¹²³ This could be slightly surprising. Once it had crossed no-man’s-land, 8/Royal Berkshire (1 Brigade) found the German front line ‘practically deserted’.¹²⁴

Sixth Army had launched several counter-attacks across the open during the day. Most of them, apart from the recapture of the Quarries during the night of 25/26 September, were unsuccessful, simply melting away against heavy British rifle fire. They seem to have been characterised by the weight of numbers; perhaps a reflection of rushed preparations or simple ignorance of British forward positions. A counter-attack against 9/Devonshire (20 Brigade) ‘came on in several thick lines’.¹²⁵ Colonel L.G. Oliver (CO 13/Middlesex, 73 Brigade) remembered a similar situation. According to him, a German counter-attack marched, ‘in columns of platoons and were mowed down like grass’.¹²⁶ Similarly, on 26 September, 2/Welsh (3 Brigade) watched German forces readying to counter-attack. At 10.50a.m., ‘Masses of Germans came out of Bois Hugo and advanced in one great mass but five heavy shells fell right in the middle of them and the whole lot turned around and bolted.’¹²⁷ When counter-attacks were properly supported and well planned, however, they were very difficult to resist. At 10.30a.m. the reserve battalion of 178 Regiment, billeted in the northern part of Lens, received an order to march for Cité St Laurent to stop British troops from getting through the second line.¹²⁸ By the skilful use of enfilade fire from the railway embankment, combined with a rush forward, the crest of Hill 70 was captured in the early afternoon and the mixed-up Scottish battalions were sent reeling back in disorder. But although rushed attacks across the open were usually repulsed, German infantry outmatched and consistently outperformed the British in bombing operations. This was largely due to their superior model of grenade, which was available in far greater numbers than the primitive British varieties. German rifle grenades were also notably effective.¹²⁹ For example, on the morning of 25 September, when 6/Cameron Highlanders (45 Brigade) tried to bomb up the German trenches towards Lone Tree, it barely progressed 60 yards before being stopped by a strong barrier, ‘manned by hostile bombers with a machine gun’.¹³⁰ This was not an untypical experience. The depressingly familiar experiences of British troops in and around Fosse 8 and the Hohenzollern Redoubt in the coming days would prove how inferior the British were in this respect.¹³¹

When examining the events of 25 September, it will be seen that the real failure of the British was in being unable to achieve a higher operational tempo than the German defenders and move their support and reserve units forward quicker than enemy reinforcements. This meant that by the time First Army had marshalled enough strength to advance upon further objectives, long-range machine gun fire effectively stopped the infantry in their tracks. Why had First Army been unable to bring its supporting battalions forward quick enough? The failure of the preliminary bombardment was an important factor. Because a number of German strongpoints (particularly Mad Point and Lone Tree) were relatively unscathed by British shellfire, they were able to enfilade any movement on either side. The complete failure of British counter-battery fire also left German artillery free to shell the battlefield. Considering the large number of British troops crammed into the lines south of the La Bassée canal, German shells, more often than not, found a target. Moreover, the failure to support the gains of the first day also stemmed from the way the battle had been planned. Because it was envisaged that the attacking battalions would go a considerable way into the German position, little attempt had been made to institute a careful and methodically organised system of reinforcement and relief. Battalions were told – in somewhat vague terms – to simply attack ‘all-out’. Whereas in later years troops would go forward according to a detailed plan of ‘leapfrogging’, with the movement of units being highly-structured and well-known, the situation at Loos was chaotic. Communication trenches were in many cases small, cramped, too few in number and often under heavy German shellfire. This meant that a number of battalions, frustrated at the lack of progress, simply climbed out of them and advanced across the open, often with devastating results. As has been shown, once the initial attacks had broken down, very few officers and men had any idea about where they were supposed to be, or what they were supposed to be doing. It was a disastrous situation and one that would only get worse as the British continued their attacks in the following days.