The Battle of Loos

The Loos Memorial at Dud Corner

During 1914 and 1915, with the exception of Ypres 1, the BEF played very much second fiddle to the large French forces employed against the invading German hordes - as at the Marne, the Aisne, Neuve Chapelle and Festubert. This would change from 1916 onwards, after Verdun and at the Somme. However, in the autumn of 1915 the French launched a second large-scale, two-pronged offensive against the German positions, which were by this time well nigh impregnable. Joffre's Second Champagne Offensive from late September to early November had the objective of forcing the German Third and Fifth Armies in the Argonne sector to withdraw along the Meuse river towards Belgium. The Champagne offensive gained a few miles of ground and captured some 25,000 German prisoners, but with German reinforcements brought into the sector from the Eastern Front, the French could not withstand repeated German counter-attacks. French losses were over 145,000 casualties by the time the Champagne offensive eventually drew to a close. 
Nevertheless for the British - led by Haig - Loos was a major battle that involved 150,000 British and 20,000 Indian and Gurkha soldiers for a fortnight and cost the lives of nearly 16,000 of them. This Artois offensive witnessed the first use of a gas cloud weapon by the British Army on the Western Front.

The battle of Loos was part of a three weeks simultaneous attack by French and British forces from Vimy Ridge to La Bassée, called the Third Battle of Artois. After much disagreement and debate between British and French high commands through the summer, it was agreed to attempt to break through the German Front in Artois, as a left sided pincer behind the main French offensive north eastwards from Champagne. With success it would compel the German Second and Seventh Armies caught between the two attacks to pull back to the Belgian border in order to protect their road and rail communication routes on the Douai plain. There were two things that the British were asked to do to help. Firstly they were asked to take over twenty-two miles of the French sector of front astride the Somme river, in order to free up General Pétain’s French Second Army to take part in the Champagne offensive, and secondly they were invited to attack on the flank of General d’Urbal’s French Tenth Army, advancing east from Artois.  The French planned to take the dominating Vimy Ridge to give cover and support to the British push. In the event they got on to the ridge but did not succeed in pushing the Germans off it. Although Sir John French had agreed in principle, the BEF were able to attack only on a  fifteen miles front north of the Somme, from Curlu to Hebuterne.

In the months since the last British foray, German defences had grown in depth and sophistication. there were second, third and in some places fourth lines of trenches and fortifications. Along the first German line, which the British would hit 200-400 yards after leaving their own trenches, were a series of redoubts, or fortified positions, given names like Railway Redoubt, Hohenzollern Redoubt, The Pope’s Nose, Loos Road Redoubt and Lens Road Redoubt.

Tower Bridge, lifting station for the Loos Coal mine
dominated the Loos village skyline

 The whole area of the  British attack was heavily industrialised, and they would have to overcome the mining village of Auchy, situated between the two German defence lines in 2 Division’s sector, the Hohenzollern Redoubt and Fosse 8 in front of 9 Division, 'Tower Bridge' on the boundary between 15 Division and 47 Division, and the double crassier - two slag heaps side by side running west to east back from the German firing line and over 100 feet high. These higher defences could bring direct or indirect fire down anywhere in the area of the offensive, and until those objectives were in British hands, no artillery could be safely moved forward to support a British advance beyond the first German defence line. 
 

Difficult industrial terrain, more so even than
around Mons in Belgium

The British attack achieved some success north of Loos and by the end of the first day (25th September) they had passed through Loos village and reached the outskirts of the industrial, built-up town of Lens. Crucial time lost by the delayed arrival of the reserve divisions added to problems of command and control of the troops on the ground east of Loos. These had inadvertently headed south instead of east in the confusion of battle and the confusion created by similar pit-head landscape features in this mining area. This slow mobilisation of the BEF's reserves brought open disagreement between Douglas Haig and Sir John French, and was an important factor in the subsequent replacement of French by Haig. The pause in the attack gave the German Fourth Army time to bring in reserves to the area overnight to reinforced a new German second position located on higher ground with good views across the British attack area. The British did not succeed in making any headway against this position and suffered heavy casualties on 26^th September. A second British advance against the German Second Position in early October, as bad weather closed in, failed with heavy casualties and the Loos offensive was effectively over.

The lessons learned by the German defenders in these 1915 autumn battles was the value of “Defence in depth”, whereby the defenders man the front line lightly; the attacker is initially allowed to gain some ground beyond his own artillery cover in the opening phase of an attack, and then is counter-attacked by groups of well-placed defenders in second and third positions constructed behind the Front Line. 

One more costly failed offensive  by the Western Front allies.