The Battle of Loos

September 25, 1915

As the ghastly stalemate on the western front continued to drag on, General Joseph Joffre feared his men would begin to lose their morale in the face of a seemingly endless war. In order to remedy this, he decided it was time to launch a new assault in an attempt to break the German lines. To help him achieve this, he recruited the help of Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force. It would be a joint assault, with Joffre's men striking around the towns of Artois and Champagne, while French's men would launch the attack farther north, directed at the town of Loos.

French's attack began on the 25th of September with the release of chlorine gas. This horrific method of war, only recently criticized by the British, was now a means they were all too ready to exploit. Nonetheless, there was one underlying problem with their plan to release the gas: it didn't work. At least to a large extent. The Royal Engineers, who were tasked with releasing the chlorine gas, noticed that the wind wasn't fully blowing toward the enemy trenches. They reported as much to allied command, to which their superiors replied with a go-ahead to release the gas, regardless of the changeable wind. As a result, the gas that was released not only blew into the enemy trenches, but their own trenches as well, resulting in higher British casualties than German.

Despite this unfortunate occurrence, the attack was still launched on
schedule at 6:30 AM. However, because of chlorine gas lingering in no-man's-land, many of the British soldiers charging the German trenches were unable to see the enemy lines. Not only that, but in many places, the barbed wire just ahead of the enemy trenches had not been cut, leading to increased British losses from German machine guns and artillery. Notwithstanding all of this, the British were still able to break through some of the weaker parts of the German line. This was due to numerical superiority above anything else.

Just as it seemed their troubles were over, there arose another major dilemma. The allied troops that were able to break through the enemy lines had no support to continue the attack. The only reinforcements they could receive did not arrive until the next day, and by then, the German forces were able to launch a counterattack and push them back to their own lines. The situation is best surmised by Major-General Richard Hilton:

"There seemed to be nothing ahead of us, but an unoccupied and incomplete trench system. The only two things that prevented our advancing into the suburbs of Lens were, firstly, the exhaustion of the 'Jocks' themselves (for they had undergone a belly-full of marching and fighting that day) and, secondly, the flanking fire of numerous German machine-guns, which swept that bare hill from some factory buildings in Cite St. Auguste to the south of us. All that we needed was more artillery ammunition to blast those clearly-located machine-guns, plus some fresh infantry to take over from the weary and depleted 'Jocks.' But, alas, neither ammunition nor reinforcements were immediately available, and the great opportunity passed."

When the British reinforcements finally arrived the next day (their late arrival due to poor-constructed roads, as well as poor management), the allies were right back where they started. With fresh troops, they decided to launch another attack, but now the Germans were ready for it, and responded with a hailstorm of shells and bullets. It was a massacre. Without artillery support, the British suffered an 80% casualty rate in just four hours. There was such a concentration of mangled corpses, that the German gunners reported feeling nauseated at seeing the countless bodies, and ceased firing to allow the British to retreat with their wounded.

The disaster at Loos was only accentuated with the French failures at Artois and Champagne. In both cases, the French forces made early gains, breaking through the enemy front lines. However, their small victory was short lived when they came up against a second line of trenches with concealed machine-gun posts. Unable to advance any farther under the barrage of artillery and machine-gun fire, the French offensives both ground to a halt. 

In the end, the allies lost over 320,000 men in their combined offensives, advancing only as much as three miles in some places. In others, almost no ground was taken whatsoever. The German losses numbered around 150,000. The failure at the Loos was blamed almost entirely on Sir John French, as he was the one in charge of bringing the British reinforcements to the front at that critical moment. He was consequently dismissed as Commander-in-Chief, and was replaced by General Douglas Haig. Whether or not French was solely responsible for the allied failure at Loos is debatable. However, one can imagine the impact those British reinforcements would have made on the offensive, and possibly the war itself.

The Battle of Loos (September 25 - October 13)