Starting Out with Java From Control Structures

through Objects 6th Edition Gaddis Test Bank

download pdf

http://testbankbell.com/product/starting-out-with-java-from-control-
structures-through-objects-6th-edition-gaddis-test-bank/

Visit testbankbell.com to explore and download the complete

collection of test banks or solution manuals!
We have selected some products that you may be interested in
Click the link to download now or visit testbankbell.com
for more options!.

Solution Manual for Starting Out with Java: From Control

Structures through Objects, 5/E 5th Edition : 0132989999

http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-starting-out-with-
java-from-control-structures-through-objects-5-e-5th-
edition-0132989999/

Solution Manual for Starting Out with C++ from Control

Structures to Objects, 9th Edition, Tony Gaddis

http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-starting-out-with-
c-from-control-structures-to-objects-9th-edition-tony-gaddis/

Solution Manual for Starting Out with C++: From Control

Structures through Objects, 7/E 7th Edition : 0132774178

http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-starting-out-with-
c-from-control-structures-through-objects-7-e-7th-edition-0132774178/

Test Bank for Human Biology, 10th Edition : Starr

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-human-biology-10th-
edition-starr/
Computational Materials Science An Introduction 1st Lee
Solution Manual

http://testbankbell.com/product/computational-materials-science-an-
introduction-1st-lee-solution-manual/

Test Bank for Sociology, 11th Edition : Shepard

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-sociology-11th-edition-
shepard/

Solution Manual for Connect With Smartbook Online Access

For Managerial Accounting 11th Edition

http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-connect-with-
smartbook-online-access-for-managerial-accounting-11th-edition/

Solution Manual for Separation Process Engineering:

Includes Mass Transfer Analysis, 3rd Edition Phillip C.
Wankat
http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-separation-
process-engineering-includes-mass-transfer-analysis-3rd-edition-
phillip-c-wankat/

Children and Their Development Kail 7th Edition Test Bank

http://testbankbell.com/product/children-and-their-development-
kail-7th-edition-test-bank/
Solution Manual for Macroeconomics Principles and Policy,
12th Edition

http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-macroeconomics-
principles-and-policy-12th-edition/
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

Starting Out with Java From Control Structures through

Objects 6th Edition Gaddis Test Bank
Download full chapter at: https://testbankbell.com/product/starting-out-with-java-
from-control-structures-through-objects-6th-edition-gaddis-test-bank/

Chapter 2

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. Which one of the following would contain the translated Java byte code for a program named Demo?
a. Demo.java
b. Demo.code
c. Demo.class
d. Demo.byte

ANS: C

2. To compile a program named First, use the following command:

a. java First.java
b. javac First
c. javac First.java
d. compile First.javac

ANS: C

3. A Java program must have at least one of these:

a. Class definition
b. Variable
c. Comment
d. System.out.println(); statement

ANS: A

4. In Java, the beginning of a comment is marked with:

a. //
b. ""
c. ;
d. #

ANS: A

5. The term typically refers to the device that displays console output.
a. Standard output device
b. Central processing unit
c. Secondary storage device
d. Liquid crystal display

ANS: A

6. In Java, must be declared before they can be used.

a. Variables
Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education
b. Literals
c. Key words
d. Comments
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

ANS: A

7. If the following Java statements are executed, what will be displayed?

System.out.println("The top three winners are\n");

System.out.print("Jody, the Giant\n");
System.out.print("Buffy, the Barbarian");
System.out.println("Adelle, the Alligator");
a. The top three winners are
Jody, the Giant
Buffy, the Barbarian
Adelle, the Alligator
b. The top three winners are
Jody, the Giant\nBuffy, the BarbarianAdelle, the Alligator
c. The top three winners are Jody, the Giant\nBuffy, the BarbarianAdelle, and the Albino
d. The top three winners are
Jody, the Giant
Buffy, the BarbarianAdelle, the Alligator

ANS: D

8. This is a value that is written into the code of a program.

a. literal
b. assignment statement
c. variable
d. operator

ANS: A

9. When the + operator is used with strings, it is known as the:

a. Assignment operator
b. String concatenation operator
c. Addition operator
d. Combined assignment operator

ANS: B

10. What would be printed out as a result of the following code?

System.out.println("The quick brown fox" +

"jumped over the \n"
"slow moving hen.");
a. The quick brown fox jumped over the \nslow moving hen.
b. The quick brown fox jumped over the
slow moving hen.
c. The quick brown fox
jumped over the
slow moving hen.
d. Nothing. This is an error.

ANS: D

11. Which of the following is not a rule that must be followed when naming identifiers?
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

a. The first character must be one of the letters a-z, A-Z, and underscore or a dollar sign.
b. Identifiers can contain spaces.
c. Uppercase and lowercase characters are distinct.
d. After the first character, you may use the letters a-z, A-Z, the underscore, a dollar sign, or digits 0-
9.

ANS: B

12. Which of the following cannot be used as identifiers in Java?

a. Variable names
b. Class names
c. Key words
d. All of the above
e. None of the above

ANS: C

13. In Java, it is standard practice to capitalize the first letter of:

a. Class names
b. Variable names
c. Key words
d. Literals

ANS: A

14. Which of the following is not a primitive data type?

a. short
b. long
c. float
d. String

ANS: D

15. Which of the following is valid?

a. float y;
y = 54.9;

b. float y;
double z;
z = 934.21;
y = z;

c. float w;
w = 1.0f;

d. float v;
v = 1.0;

ANS: C

16. The boolean data type may contain values in the following range of values
a. true or false
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

b. -128 to + 127
c. - 2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647
d. - 32,768 to +32,767

ANS: A

17. Character literals are enclosed in ; string literals are enclosed in .

a. single quotes; single quotes
b. double quotes; double quotes
c. single quotes; double quotes
d. double quotes; single quotes

ANS: C

18. What is the result of the following expression?

10 + 5 * 3 - 20

a. -5
b. 5
c. 25
d. -50

ANS: B

19. What is the result of the following expression?

25 / 4 + 4 * 10 % 3

a. 19
b. 5.25
c. 3
d. 7

ANS: D

20. What will be displayed as a result of executing the following code?

int x = 5, y = 20;
x += 32;
y /= 4;
System.out.println("x = " + x + ", y = " + y);

a. x = 32, y = 4
b. x = 9, y = 52
c. x = 37, y = 5
d. x = 160, y = 80

ANS: C

21. What will be the value of z as a result of executing the following code?
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

int x = 5, y = 28;
float z;
z = (float) (y / x);

a. 5.60
b. 5.6
c. 3.0
d. 5.0

ANS: D

22. What will be the displayed when the following code is executed?

final int x = 22, y = 4;

y += x;
System.out.println("x = " + x +
", y = " + y);

a. x = 22, y = 4
b. x = 22, y = 26
c. x = 22, y = 88
d. Nothing, this is an error

ANS: D

23. In the following Java statement what value is stored in the variable name?

String name = "John Doe";

a. John Doe
b. The memory address where "John Doe" is located
c. name
d. The memory address where name is located

ANS: B

24. What will be displayed as a result of executing the following code?

int x = 6;
String msg = "I am enjoying this class.";
String msg1 = msg.toUpperCase();
String msg2 = msg.toLowerCase();
char ltr = msg.charAt(x);
int strSize = msg.length();
System.out.println(msg);
System.out.println(msg1);
System.out.println(msg2);
System.out.println("Character at index x = " +
ltr);
System.out.println("msg has " + strSize +
"characters.");

a. I am enjoying this class.

I AM ENJOYING THIS CLASS.
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

i am enjoying this class.

Character at index x = e
msg has 24 characters.

b. I am enjoying this class.

I AM ENJOYING THIS CLASS.
i am enjoying this class.
Character at index x = e
msg has 25 characters.

c. I am enjoying this class.

I AM ENJOYING THIS CLASS.
i am enjoying this class.
Character at index x = n
msg has 24 characters.

d. I am enjoying this class.

I AM ENJOYING THIS CLASS.
i am enjoying this class.
Character at index x = n
msg has 25characters.

ANS: D

25. What will be displayed as a result of executing the following code?

public class test

{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
int value1 = 9;
System.out.println(value1);
int value2 = 45;
System.out.println(value2);
System.out.println(value3);
value = 16;
}
}

a. 9
45
16
b. 94516
c. 9 45 16
d. Nothing, this is an error

ANS: D

26. Which of the following is not a valid comment statement?

a. // comment 1
b. /* comment 2 */
c. */ comment 3 /*
d. /** comment 4 */
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

ANS: C

27. When saving a Java source file, save it with an extension of

a. .javac
b. .class
c. .src
d. .java

ANS: D

28. Every Java application program must have

a. a class named MAIN
b. a method named main
c. comments
d. integer variables

ANS: B

29. To print "Hello, world" on the monitor, use the following Java statement
a. SystemOutPrintln("Hello, world");
b. System.out.println{"Hello, world"}
c. System.out.println("Hello, world");
d. Print "Hello, world";

ANS: C

30. To display the output on the next line, you can use the println method or use this escape sequence in the
print method.

a. \n
b. \r
c. \t
d. \b

ANS: A

31. This is a named storage location in the computer's memory.

a. Literal
b. Constant
c. Variable
d. Operator

ANS: C

32. What would be displayed as a result of the following code?

int x = 578;
System.out.print("There are " +
x + 5 + "\n" +
"hens in the hen house.");

a. There are 583 hens in the hen house.

 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

b. There are 5785 hens in the hen house.

c. There are x5\nhens in the hen house.
d. There are 5785
hens in the hen house.

ANS: D

33. Variables are classified according to their

a. value
b. data type
c. names
d. location in the program

ANS: B

34. The primitive data types only allow a(n) to hold a single value.
a. variable
b. object
c. class
d. literal

ANS: A

35. If x has been declared an int, which of the following statements is invalid?
a. x = 0;
b. x = -58932;
c. x = 1,000;
d. x = 592;

ANS: C

36. Given the declaration double r;, which of the following statements is invalid?
a. r = 326.75;
b. r = 9.4632e15;
c. r = 9.4632E15;
d. r = 2.9X106;

ANS: D

37. Variables of the boolean data type are useful for

a. working with small integers
b. evaluating true/false conditions
c. working with very large integers
d. evaluating scientific notation

ANS: B

38. What is the result of the following expression?

25 - 7 * 3 + 12 / 3
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

a. 6
b. 8
c. 10
d. 12

ANS: B

39. What is the result of the following expression?

17 % 3 * 2 - 12 + 15

a. 7 b.
8 c.
12
d. 105

ANS: A

40. What will be displayed after the following statements have been executed?

int x = 15, y = 20, z = 32;

x += 12;
y /= 6;
z -= 14;
System.out.println("x = " + x +
", y = " + y +
", z = " +z);

a. x = 27, y = 3.333, z = 18
b. x = 27, y = 2, z = 18
c. x = 27, y = 3, z = 18
d. x = 37, y = 14, z = 4

ANS: C

41. What will be the value of z after the following statements have been executed?

int x = 4, y = 33;
double z;
z = (double) (y / x);

a. 8.25
b. 4
c. 8
d. 8.0

ANS: D

42. This is a variable whose content is read only and cannot be changed during the program's execution.

a. operator
b. literal
c. named constant
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

d. reserved word

ANS: C

43. What will be displayed after the following statements have been executed?

final double x = 99.0;

x = 54.3;
System.out.println("x = " + x );

a. x = 54.3
b. x = 99
c. x = 153.3
d. Nothing, this is an error.

ANS: D

44. Which of the following is a valid Java statement?

a. String str = 'John Doe';
b. string str = "John Doe";
c. string str = 'John Doe';
d. String str = "John Doe";

ANS: D

45. What will be displayed as a result of executing the following code?

int x = 8;
String msg = "I am enjoying java.";
String msg1 = msg.toUpperCase();
String msg2 = msg.toLowerCase();
char ltr = msg.charAt(x);
int strSize = msg.length();
System.out.println(msg);
System.out.println(msg1);
System.out.println(msg2);
System.out.println("Character at index x = " +
ltr);
System.out.println("msg has " + strSize +
" characters.");

a. I am enjoying java.
I AM ENJOYING JAVA.
i am enjoying java.
Character at index x = j
msg has 20 characters.

b. I am enjoying java.
I AM ENJOYING JAVA.
i am enjoying java.
Character at index x = o
msg has 20 characters.

c. I am enjoying java.
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

I AM ENJOYING JAVA.
i am enjoying java.
Character at index x = o
msg has 19 characters.

d. I am enjoying java.
I AM ENJOYING JAVA.
i am enjoying java.
Character at index x = y
msg has 19 characters.

ANS: C

46. Which of the following does not describe a valid comment in Java?
a. Single line comments, two forward slashes - //
b. Multi-line comments, start with /* and end with */
c. Multi-line comments, start with */ and end with /*
d. Documentation comments, any comments starting with /** and ending with */

ANS: C

47. Which of the following statements correctly creates a Scanner object for keyboard input?

a. Scanner kbd = new Scanner(System.keyboard);

b. Scanner keyboard(System.in);

c. Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);

d. Keyboard scanner = new Keyboard(System.in);

ANS: C

48. Which Scanner class method reads an int?

a. readInt() c. getInt()
b. nextInt() d. read_int()

ANS: B

49. Which Scanner class method reads a String?

a. readString() c. getString()
b. nextString() d. nextLine()

ANS: D

50. Which one of the following methods would you use to convert a string to a double?

a. Byte.ParseByte c. Integer.ParseInt
b. Long.ParseLong d. Double.ParseDouble
 Gaddis: Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6/e © 2016 Pearson Education

ANS: D

TRUE/FALSE

1. A Java program will not compile unless it contains the correct line numbers.

ANS: F

2. All Java statements end with semicolons.

ANS: F

3. Java is a case-insensitive language.

ANS: F

4. Although the dollar sign is a legal identifier character, you should not use it because it is normally used for
special purposes.

ANS: T

5. Assuming that pay has been declared a double, the following statement is valid.
pay = 2,583.44;

ANS: F

6. Named constants are initialized with a value, that value cannot be changed during the execution of the program.

ANS: T

7. A variable's scope is the part of the program that has access to the variable.

ANS: T

8. In Java the variable named total is the same as the variable named Total.

ANS: F

9. Class names and key words are examples of variables.

ANS: F

10. Both character literals and string literals can be assigned to a char variable.

ANS: F

11. If the compiler encounters a statement that uses a variable before the variable is declared, an error will result.

ANS: T

12. Programming style includes techniques for consistently putting spaces and indentation in a program so visual
cues are created.

ANS: T
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
disappearance of a well-known hedge, or the sudden apparition of
an orchard of full-grown trees in the middle of a ploughed field, or
even a stately plantation of elms on what was formerly a pavé road.
The hedge was removed to provide something with a field of fire, or
to allow somebody to see a particular part of our line; the game is
now to discover the whereabouts and nature of that something or
somebody. The orchard and the elm trees were required as cover,
probably for guns; the surest plan is to shell them and await
developments. It may be possible to drive the detachments out into
the open, when every weapon that can be brought to bear will sing
its own particular song of triumph.
A certain redoubt was located by our aeroplanes, and its position
indicated to us by the fact that it lay right in front of the seventh
from the northern end of a row of trees such as occur at intervals
along the side of most French Routes Nationales. For many days we
used this mark, until it suddenly struck one of our observation
officers that the trees looked somehow different to what they did
when first he noticed them. Suspicion being thus aroused, further
aeroplane reconnaissance was undertaken, when it was found that
the third tree of the row now marked the position of the redoubt.
The enemy, seeing that they had been "spotted" by the first
aeroplane, had dug up the four trees at the northern end of the row
and replanted them at the southern end, and must consequently
have watched, with a delight not very difficult to imagine, our shells
raising a little inferno of their own a couple of hundred yards away
from them.
All this is a part of the great game of war that it is most difficult to
learn in times of peace. "Pretending to look for something you know
isn't there," as I have heard it described, is an occupation that palls
upon the dullest mind. Well do I remember many years ago forming
one of a class of young officers under instruction in the use of the
"Observation of Fire Instrument," which consists of a telescope
fearfully and wonderfully mounted on a gigantic tripod—it is now, in
the language beloved of the text-books, "becoming obsolescent,"
may it soon be relegated to the limbo of forgotten things! Our
instructor, a highly capable but choleric major (majors always were
apt to be petulant, I thought, in those days), had spent the best part
of a warm June morning explaining the use of the cumbrous toy,
until the whole class were sick at heart. At last he sent one of our
number some distance away with orders to observe and report upon
some object in the distance out to sea, the while he discoursed to
the remainder. The minutes slipped by, and no word came from the
keeper of the lonely vigil. "Go and see what that dam! fool is up to,
sergeant-major," said our instructor. Anon the sergeant-major
returned, with a face as impassive as the metal of the instrument
itself. "Well?" rapped out the major. "If you please, sir, Mr. Robinson
is a-studying observation on the ladies' bathing-place!"
Observation, it may be repeated, is an art, but every art requires
considerable training, if only in technique, before the artist can
acquire perfect and instinctive expression. Where, as in the case of
the art of the gunner, art leans for its support upon the strong arm
of science, the probationary stage requires even more time and
application on the part of the tyro. It has been said that it takes
three years to teach an artillery officer the elements of his
profession. It will doubtless be claimed as a triumph of foresight for
our military administration that, although at the outbreak of war our
heavy artillery matériel was, in equipment and numbers, such as
would not inspire pride in a Central American Republic, we had a
large reserve of highly-trained artillery officers and men languishing
in the enforced sloth of our coast fortresses all over the world. Well
it is for us that this was so, for this is a war of heavy artillery, and
without these men to train, command and leaven the newly formed
batteries that we were forced so hurriedly to raise, our artillery
would never have attained its present admitted dominance. Splendid
indeed is the new material; the artillery manage to secure officers of
the higher and better educated classes, and men, thanks to rigidly-
enforced physical standards, of the sturdier build; all ranks are full of
the interest of their new profession, enthusiastic, keen to learn,
absorbing in the sharp days of war knowledge that others required
the leisurely weeks of peace to acquire. Still, may the country, in its
just pride in the performances of these men, never forget the debt
that it owes to that little band whose pay it loved to curtail and
whose ambitions to discourage in the old forgotten years of peace!
But this is a digression, typical of the observation officer, whose
thoughts stray into strange channels during the course of the long
days of watching. How keenly he longs sometimes for "something to
happen," especially during his first experiences of the work, before
he realizes that something is always happening under his eyes, if he
can only detect it. My own pet longing was to see my first real live
Hun in his natural surroundings, a longing conceived in much the
same sort of inquiring spirit that inspires the naturalist. I saw him at
last, he sprang from a trench in which a shell had just fallen, ran
literally as if his life depended on it, which, in grim earnest, it did,
and dived like a rabbit into a support trench a few yards away,
followed by cheers and bullets from our own lines. My observation
post was at that time not more than a hundred yards behind our
front line, but, owing to the intricate nature of the country, no signs
of immediate war could be seen except from the little slit in the wall
from which I observed. One day I was stretching my legs in the road
outside, when a staff officer, somewhat of a rara avis in so advanced
a spot, came by, having evidently lost his way. Now a staff officer
was once defined to me by a very distinguished regimental officer as
"a being whose natural common sense was buried for ever beneath
the vast mountain of his own ignorance." This magnificent
gentleman—he had probably been a distinguished grocer, the pride
of the local volunteers, before the war—informed me that
observation was impossible from where I then was, and, indicating a
ruin, the remains of whose roof could just be seen above the
hedges, expressed his intention of surveying the country from its
more favourable eminence. Bowing before his superior wisdom, I
saluted and we parted, he to pursue the even tenor of his way, I to
my seat behind the window to watch the fun, knowing that his
objective was about half a mile behind the German lines. With an
unholy delight, I saw him blunder into our trenches, exchange a
hurried word with an officer who came forward to meet him, and
then beat a precipitate retreat pursued by a most audible titter that
ran swiftly along the line.
He took care to avoid on his return the Bath Club, as we called that
O.P., from the number of flooded cellars it contained.
The study of nomenclature at the front is a very fascinating one, if
only for the light that it throws upon the psychology of nostalgia.
Every road, every communication trench is christened with some
name around which hang the memories of the men who gave it, so
that the native origins of these shrewd godfathers is never for a
moment in doubt. Who but a native-born Londoner would have
evolved a Harrow Road, off which, in an orgy of local geography,
branch Edgware Road, Finchley Road, Maida Vale and a dozen other
familiar names? Who but a young subaltern—his heart still
unforgetful of the old joie de vivre, having established an O.P. at the
end of a muddy ditch already known as Burlington Arcade, would
have proudly labelled it "The Bristol," or who, but his envious friends
near Shaftesbury Avenue, would have emulated him with "Maxime's"
and "The Villa-villa"! Moray Avenue, Prince's Street, Deansgate, Dale
Street, College Green, all tell their own story. And where association
ends, description begins. Stink Farm, is, I believe, now marked as
such on the official maps. Quality Street has already a place in
history that may one day be shared by Mud Cottage, Canadian
Orchard, la Maison des Mitrailleurs, Rue d'Enfer, and Le Tirebouchon.
Sometimes the names of places have been anglicized almost out of
recognition. Wingles and Hinges are pronounced as they appear to
an English eye, Choques is Chokes, Gris Pot is Grease Pot,
Lozinghem is Lozenges, to quote a very few examples. The same
may be found on the German side. The Hohenzollern Redoubt is
familiar by name to everybody. Near it is Breslauer Chausée Loos
contained Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse, and, rather curiously,
Ringstrasse; Vendin le Vieil is Alt-Vendin, Lens, Lenze. But this is yet
another digression, the wandering thoughts of the idle observer; let
us suppose him suddenly recalled to the affairs of the moment by
the insistent voice of the telephone.
"Message for you, sir—from headquarters," says the telephonist,
bearing a piece of pink paper in his hand. I take it, and read, "Fire
twenty rounds at intersection of communication trenches at——"
Here follow a combination of figures and letters that denote the
position on the map. "Very well, call up the battery and give 'action.'
Tell them to report when ready." Out comes the map, and the point
mentioned in the message found. A road runs east and west close
by it, yes, I know that road, have often noticed it. A communication
trench runs along it for some way, then turns off at right angles by a
hedge, which it follows for a couple of hundred yards till it meets its
fellow, which place of meeting I am ordered, in the parlance of the
front, to "strafe." Can I see that hedge, I wonder? Prolonged
inspection through the glasses assures me that I cannot. There is
nothing for it but to take a bearing. One hundred and seventeen
degrees from my position, five degrees left of the church tower.
Compass and sextant agree, giving me the line to the corner of a
wood on the horizon, on which line my target must somewhere be
situated. Out come the glasses again. There certainly is a mound
right in line with my mark in the centre of that meadow, but it might
be anything. Yes, the telescope shows it to be earth thrown up from
some excavation or other, it must be the trench junction. It looks
hopelessly foreshortened, nothing like the map, but then the map
seems to look down on things with a calm judicial air, whilst I can
only peer at them from their own level. A very little practice in
observation soon shows one that the human eye is utterly unreliable
as a gauge of the length of anything that stretches away from it.
"Battery reports ready for action, sir," says the telephonist. "Thank
you. No. 1 gun ranging, elevation nineteen degrees, etc., etc." Back
comes the warning, "No. 1 reports ready to fire, sir." "Fire No. 1!"
"No. 1 fired, sir!" and then an eternity of breathless anxiety, during
which all the fabled deadly sins of gunners long since condemned to
everlasting execration rush upon my memory. Suppose I have read
the map wrong, and that is not the place at all? An instant's piercing
scrutiny, which fails to reassure me in the least. Even if that is the
place, it is not very far from our own trenches. Did I give the right
elevation? Did I allow enough for wind? Were my orders perfectly
clear to the section commander? Did the layer lay correctly? Shall I
be "broke" if I slaughter a whole platoon in our own trenches, or
only shot?... Eternity comes to an end at last after a life of some ten
seconds, and I hear the whistle of the shell coming ever nearer—
safely over my head, anyhow, thank heaven! Yes, she must have
passed the trenches by now; where's she going to fall? The whistle
ends abruptly, but nowhere is there any sign of smoke, nor does the
sound of the burst reach me. A blind, I suppose, the shell must have
fallen into something soft, but I'd give ten years of my life to know
where. Well, there is nothing for it—"No. 1, repeat, fire!" "No. 1
fired, sir!" The whistle again, then right in line with the target, and
hiding it, a bright flash, a spout of earth and a cloud of black smoke,
followed by a peculiar, sharp crash, and the hell of doubt gives way
to the heaven of satisfaction. Such are the delights of observation.
And variously the excitement infects the blood of the observer. One
will sit far back from his window, lest prying eyes should detect him
through it, and give his orders slowly and methodically, weighing
each carefully and making elaborate calculations the while, and
occasionally exhorting the battery to care and deliberation. Another
will thrust a telescope through a chink between two sandbags so
that it shines like a heliograph in the morning sun and one wonders
if some well-disposed angel has smitten the enemy with blindness
for that every battery within range does not open fire on him. He,
meanwhile, oblivious of such minor dangers, roars contradictory
orders as through a megaphone, calling on the inhabitants of Tophet
with strange formulæ because his orders are not obeyed before he
gives them. I have seen a French Territorial battery in action for the
first time in their lives, Mons. le capitaine subdued, almost tearful,
but resolved to die in his O.P. as befits a soldier. His telephonists and
assistants (he appeared to have dozens) equally anxious to see the
fray, festoon themselves all over the building, hanging out of
windows, clambering on to the roof, expressing their delight at the
top of their voices. Eventually he restores some degree of order,
and, rushing to the telephone, sweeps aside the operators, and
gives the word himself. "Tirez, tirez, pour l'honneur de la belle
France!" The shot falls apparently in a totally different direction to
where he anticipates. Again he rushes to the instrument, more
perhaps in sorrow than in anger, and demands the presence of the
section commander. "Mon lieutenant!" he says, "ce n'est pas juste,
c'est épouvantable! Je me sens brisé! Nom d'un nom, que vous êtes
maladroit! Dirigez la pièce encore vous même!" He finishes his series
at last, and as he turns to go, he salutes me gravely, saying, "Au
revoir, monsieur, j'aimerais bien travailler ici à coté de vous, mais,
hélas! c'est fort impossible. Dans cette observatoire il y en a toujours
de bruit!" It must not for a moment be supposed that I speak
disparagingly of the French gunners. They are, as a matter of fact,
far better artillerists than ourselves, and we have much to learn from
them. Possibly they lack something of our insular calm, as we
certainly lack the vivid power of imagination and discernment that
contributes very largely to their success. For this same calm the
British gunner is hard to beat. On one occasion a heavy shell hit an
O.P. fair and square, bringing it down in a heap of ruins. The
observer, who by some miracle was not hurt, extricated himself from
the pile of rubbish under which he found himself, and rushed down
to the cellar, where he expected to find the mangled remains of his
telephonist. There was the man, his hands full of fragments that had
once been a telephone, standing with a puzzled expression on his
face. "I 'ardly know what to do with this 'ere instrument, sir," was his
greeting. "I don't see as 'ow I'm goin' to mend it without goin' back
to the battery for some spare parts."
Observation by night is sometimes useful, as then the flashes of
hostile batteries can be seen most distinctly. It is, however, a
peculiarity of modern propellants that the actinic power of the flame
produced on their combustion is such as to attract attention in broad
daylight. I have had my eye caught by the flash of a ten-centimetre
gun about four miles away at four o'clock on a sunny afternoon in
September, and there is no doubt that this distance has frequently
been exceeded. Still, night of course is the best time, although then
it is very much easier to mistake the flash of a bursting shell for that
of a gun, and even if flashes are observed, nothing can be noted
except their direction, their surroundings being invisible. And a few
hours at night in an O.P. have their compensations. Over the
trenches rise continually the searching lights, throwing everything
into sudden contrast of light and shade, making of the familiar scene
whose every stone and blade of grass one thought to know by heart,
a strange land of white snow islands standing sheer out of yawning
black gulfs. Every now and then sharp tongues of flame dart out
from the parapet, a sudden lurid flash in the air shows a bursting
shrapnel, or a brighter one on the ground the more violent
detonation of high explosive. Perhaps a rocket signal of green and
red goes up, followed by a quicker succession of flashes of all kinds
as a patrol between the trenches is discovered. Perhaps one may be
lucky enough to see a chance shell start a huge fire, such as burnt
once for three days and three nights in Cité St. Pierre, producing a
glow as of twilight two good miles away. Whatever may be seen,
night has its fascination in this strange world of sleepless activity as
much as in a land of quiet, but here its fascination is a stirring into
life of eager pulses, a whispering in the ear of that ever-ready lust of
battle that makes of war the finest sport that man ever devised.
Somehow at night all deeds seem possible.
 IV
THE FOUR DAYS
(September 21-24, 1915)
Although many descriptions and maps of the country round about
Loos have been issued, it may not be out of place to attempt one
more brief outline, from which the general trend of the operations
from September 25, 1915, onward can be followed. Descriptions of a
country that one does not know being invariably flat and
unconvincing, it may suffice to lay down the main features in a very
few words. From the La Bassée Canal southward to Souchez is a
purely coal-mining district, one of the most important in France, an
undulating country devoid of natural features, but abounding in
artificial ones, such as chimney-stacks, mine-shafts and dump-
heaps. The miners' villages, locally termed corons, group themselves
about the pit-heads, and form two long lines of almost continuous
brick and mortar, separated by a shallow valley, normally under
cultivation, but now lying fallow and deserted, varying in width from
a few hundred yards to a couple of miles or so. In the centre of this
valley lies Loos, a village of some two thousand inhabitants,
conspicuous for miles round from the huge double shaft, the famous
Pylons, that rise nearly three hundred feet above the surface of the
plain.
Of the two lines of villages, that surrounding the mines owned by
the Compagnie des Mines de Béthune, and consisting of Cambrin,
Vermelles, Philosophe, Mazingarbe, Les Brebis, Grenay, Maroc, and
Aix Noulette, was, about the middle of September, held by the Allies.
The eastern line, consisting of Auchy, Haisnes, Cité St. Elie, Hulluch,
Benifontaine, Vendin, Cité St. Auguste, Lens and its countless
suburbs, and Liévin, was, at the same period, held by the enemy.
Along the course of the valley, but well up the western slope of it, so
that the village of Loos lay a mile within them on the German side,
ran the two opposing lines, with their maze of support and reserve
trenches, their sinuous lines of communication trenches leading up
the slopes of the valley to the villages in rear. From our observation
posts in Maroc the whole of the southern sector of these parallel
works could be plainly seen, the line of each trench through the
green overgrowth of weeds being conspicuously marked by the
white chalk thrown up in excavating them. Behind these again, two
long black arms stretched out towards us, with a sinister look as
though inviting us to leave the comparative security of our trenches
and rush to the attack of the body from which they grew, the city of
Lens. In reality nothing but embankments formed by the continual
deposition of refuse from the mines, these two arms, the northern
known as the Double Crassier, the southern as the Puits XVI
embankment, had been transformed by the enemy into exceedingly
strong positions, mined, entrenched, fortified by every known
means, the westernmost ramifications of the fortress into which Lens
had been converted. Opposite the extremity of the Puits XVI
embankment the Allied armies met, the right of the British line
resting upon the Tenth French Army, the first of that great chain of
armies that spreads, with one short gap, to the faraway Swiss
mountains.
All through August and September the roads behind the Allied front
had been covered by infantry and artillery, and even towards the end
by cavalry, all moving eastwards through the all-pervading chalk
dust. Rumour, as ever, was busy with conjecture. This was merely a
feint, maintained the pessimists, the real advance is to lie with the
French in Champagne. Nonsense, replied the optimists, this is at last
the long-looked-for general advance, the death-blow of trench
warfare, the dawning of the millennium when the Battle of Position
shall give way to the Battle of Movement, the beginning of the final
struggle that will end only with the death-throes of the enemy on
the Rhine! Whatever were one's individual opinions, the scent of
battle, the glorious prospect of a "scrap," was in the air, and spirits
rose accordingly.
Slowly, from the august sources wherein the strategy of armies has
its birth, the true intentions of the Allies percolated. Looking back
now, it seems that too much was allowed to be known from the first.
Documents containing detailed programmes of the proposed
operations were circulated in some cases as much as a fortnight
before the selected day, and in the field it is impossible to prevent
the contents of such documents becoming common knowledge
within an incredibly short time, which is practically equivalent to
sending the originals across to the enemy with one's compliments. It
was subsequently established by the examination of prisoners that
the German General Staff had full knowledge of our plans many days
before the attack took place, and had, indeed, made dispositions to
meet it. It is undoubtedly essential to circulate beforehand exact
instructions as to the part that each unit is to perform in
contemplated operations, but it is extremely doubtful if it is
expedient to do so until the last possible moment. Apart from the
danger of leakage to the enemy, it is always found, as indeed in this
case, that the interval that elapses between the receipt of
instructions and their execution is filled with a storm of
amplifications, contradictions and amendments, poured out by
intermediate commanders, until the unfortunate commander of a
unit is faced, when called upon to act, by an accumulation of
mutually incompatible orders. If a strong man, he throws them all
indiscriminately into the fire, and, acting by the light of his own
commonsense and initiative, stands a fair chance of succeeding; if a
weak man, he endeavours to act upon them all, and, with deadly
certainty, fails.
The ultimate intention of the General Staff will not be revealed until
long after the end of the war, if even then, nor need we concern
ourselves with anything but the general instructions issued to the
Fourth Corps, the southernmost portion of the First British Army, the
army that held the line from the canal southward to the junction
with the French. Briefly, these were to seize Loos, Hill 70, which is
merely the eastern slope of the valley behind Loos, and to establish
themselves on this slope in such a position as to command Lens
from the north. It was understood that the French were to make a
simultaneous attack from the direction of Souchez, occupy the Vimy
ridge, and similarly threaten Lens from the south.
In order to attain these objects, a four days' bombardment of the
enemy's position was to be undertaken, to be immediately followed
by an assault upon the fifth day. Of the actual details of the targets
to be engaged by each battery it is unnecessary to speak in a sketch
of this nature. Our own battery, in common with the rest, was
allotted targets to be engaged at different periods of each of the
four days, these days being not specified, but described as days V,
W, X, and Y. Throughout a breathless week we elaborated our plans,
each day bringing as a rule some modification of our original
instructions. We spent our daylight hours peering out of our
observation slits, and our evenings measuring ever new angles and
ranges on our maps, until each one of us knew every stone in the
country that lay in front of us by some pet name, and our maps
developed strange diagrams in every possible combination of
coloured chalks, for all the world like the diagram of the London
Tubes. Thus we possessed our souls in a greater or less degree of
impatience, till at last the message came: "To-morrow is day V," and
on the night of September 20 I at least sought the genial warmth of
my valise feeling that the curtain was about to rise upon the finest
spectacle that the world had ever seen.
That night was the lull before the storm. All along our line the
restless field guns woke but fitfully, as a watch-dog to bark at the
moon, and then fell off to sleep again. Even the incomparable
French soixante-quinzes on our right, whose voices are hushed
neither by day nor night, seemed restless, impatient, restrained,
keeping long silences, until in sheer desperation they burst into
uncontrollable passion, ceasing again as suddenly as they began, as
though appalled by their own act. Only the vivid lights soared
brilliantly as ever above the trenches, failing, however, to evoke the
usual salutation from their unsleeping wardens. So the morning
dawned, unheralded by the noisy "morning hate" with which the
opposing armies invariably greeted one another, the still air seeming
to cower silently, awaiting the shocks that were to come.
The spirit of expectancy had penetrated into the battery itself. The
gun detachments stood to their guns, polishing and oiling for the
twentieth time each smallest detail. The men off duty stood about in
groups, talking in hushed voices, broken suddenly now and then by
a loud laugh quickly checked, as men will when something is
expected to happen. In the telephone dug-out sat the officers, silent
save for spasmodic efforts at general conversation, starting
nervously at each note of the buzzer. At last a sudden stiffening of
the telephonist on duty, "Yes, I'm battery, yes—battery action, sir!"
and the tension ceased. Instantly the battery leapt into life. "Right
section, lyddite, full charge, load! Switch angle four degrees right
——" Strings of order pour from the section commanders, echoed by
the "numbers one" in the gun-pits, dying away to silence again.
Then the voice of the senior subaltern, "Report battery ready to
fire!" a breathless minute, seemingly interminable; at last a faint
buzz from the telephone, the sharp cry "Fire No. 1 gun!" and before
the last sound of the order dies away the flash and roar of the
howitzer proclaim that for us, at least, the Battle of Loos has begun.
So as the day passes on we fall into our usual routine. The battery is
seemingly uninhabited but for the strident section commanders
standing between their hidden guns, except when reliefs descend
into the pits as into Avernus, out of which presently appear a knot of
men dusty, grimy and incredibly thirsty. Sometimes an officer comes
up to the section commander, stands reading his notebook over his
shoulder for a few seconds, nods as he receives a terse word or so
as to rate of fire, takes over the notebook, pencil and megaphone
and carries on the ceaseless clamour. All the time, at regular
intervals, the guns fire and the orders pass. Sometimes a keener
note is heard, "Left section, cease loading! Fresh target——" and a
new string of orders, soon followed by a resumption of the periodic
roaring, as of a thunderstorm controlled by an angel with a stop-
watch. Or perhaps "Fire No. 3 gun!" and no instant report. "What's
the matter, No. 3?" "Missfire, sir!" "All right, look sharp!" "All ready,
sir!" "Fire No. 3, then!" and the rhythm commences again. After a
time it all has a strangely soothing effect on the senses. First one
loses the din of the surrounding batteries, then fails to notice the
report of one's own guns a few feet away, giving orders
mechanically notwithstanding. Perhaps a stifled yawn and a glance
at the watch—is that infernal fellow never coming to relieve me?
Then the warning voice of the telephonist, "Fresh target coming
through, sir!" and the wandering attention leaps into watchfulness
again.
Up at the observation post things are very different. There the
observing officer sits, watching the black and yellow smoke clouds of
the bursting high explosive, or the cotton-wool-like puffs of the
shrapnel. "No. 1 fired, sir!" The words of the telephonists seem to
come as from some other world. Here she comes, far away behind,
the whistle of the shell shrieking louder as she passes right overhead
—splendid! in the very trench itself; see the black smoke spread out
and rise slowly from a long section of trench, whilst the green
vegetation grows white with the falling chalk. No correction can be
made to that, "No. 1, repeat!" "No. 2 fired, sir!" Here she comes, ah,
a little to the right—"No. 2, ten minutes more left, fire!" So it goes
on, until this particular section of trench has practically disappeared,
leaving only a white scar. Then a change of target and a repetition of
the destruction. A fascinating business this on so fine an autumn
day, so fascinating that all sense of time is lost, all conjecture as to
whether the enemy will take it into his head to select our
observation post as a target is forgotten. The only thing in the world
is the measured fall of the shell and the swift framing of the
consequent order, the only pleasure the deep satisfaction of a well-
placed round, the only despair the haunting memory of a shot
wasted that might have been saved by a different procedure.
During those four days of ceaseless bombardment, the enemy made
very little reply except at certain points; we subsequently discovered
why. He made no attempt to distribute his fire along our front line,
nor did he make a systematic search for our observation posts, the
vital organ of every battery and its most vulnerable one. Certain
spots he selected, and with magnificent gunnery rendered them
utterly untenable. Shell after shell fell with mathematical accuracy
into Vermelles, Le Rutoire, Quality Street, but when once we had
learnt these favoured spots, our casualties were very few, being
avoided by the simple expedient of removing to places that
appeared to be more suitable in the capacity of health-resorts, or,
where that was impossible, taking to the cellars and remaining
there.
Through four long days, from early in the morning until it became
too dark to observe the fall of the rounds, the pitiless shelling
continued, nor was the enemy allowed any respite at night. In the
batteries we were then busy replenishing ammunition and
overhauling every detail of the equipment, but still one gun per
battery at least fired steadily throughout the hours of darkness, not
now on the enemy's positions, but on his billets and on certain
places through which his reinforcements must pass on their way to
the firing line. A few rounds per hour only, sufficient to keep men
crouching huddled in cellars wherein was no possibility of sleep, or
to shake the morale of working parties faced with the necessity of
running the gauntlet of that steady rain. The moral effect upon
troops already shaken by bombardment is enormous, as we
ourselves have had bitter cause to know in the earlier months of the
war. The effect of these days and nights upon the enemy is vividly
shown in the diary of a private in the Second Reserve Infantry
Regiment (Prussian) which fell into our hands later. A few extracts
will suffice. On the 21st he writes: "Towards mid-day the trenches
had already fallen in in many places. Dug-outs were completely
overwhelmed ... most of them fled, leaving rifles and ammunition
behind ... the air was becoming heated from so many explosions."
On the 22nd: "Shells and shrapnel (granatschuss) are bursting all
round ... in places where the trench had disappeared I crawled on
my hands and knees amid a hail of bullets." On the 23rd: "Our look-
out post was completely destroyed, and my comrades killed in it ...
even the strongest man may lose his brain and nerves in a time like
this." On the 24th: "The fourth day of this terrible bombardment.... I
am sorry to say that there is no reply from our artillery."
Other prisoners, on being interrogated, testified to the awful effects
of our fire. Upon one in particular, an artillery officer, was found an
order that revealed the secret of the ineffectiveness of the enemy's
reply. After briefly setting out the measures to be taken in case of a
British offensive, it goes on as follows: "Owing to the fact that the
preponderance of hostile artillery in this sector is probably more than
two to one, and owing to the vital necessity of economy in
ammunition, battery commanders will confine their fire to targets
whose importance is known to them, and upon which they can count
on producing a good effect. They will under no circumstances allow
themselves to be drawn into anything approaching to an artillery
duel." It was also stated by many captured officers that during the
night September 23-24 a deserter from our line had conveyed to the
German Staff the time and date of the coming assault, and that to
this fact they owed much of the effectiveness of the measures taken
to resist it. Yet another captured document was of somewhat
disconcerting interest to us gunners, namely, a map upon which was
very accurately shown the position of every allied battery, with only
two exceptions, in the whole of our sector. It seems fairly certain
that this was due to the most efficient espionage, and not to aerial
observation.
The material effect of such a bombardment is harder to judge, for it
must be remembered that, despite the high science of modern
gunnery, the percentage of direct hits upon a given objective is still
comparatively small. When, however, a heavy shell detonates under
favourable conditions, its destructive power is enormous. For
instance, on the third day I saw a direct hit by one of our largest
howitzers upon the boiler-house of Puits XVI. The shell penetrated
the roof and burst inside the building, sending up an enormous
cloud of black smoke tinged with the pink of pulverized brick, that
hung for several minutes. When it cleared, nothing but a gaunt and
twisted framework of steel girders remained, a heap of rubbish alone
showing where the walls had stood. A smaller howitzer was ordered
to fell a brick wall, some thirty feet high and many courses thick.
The shell burst in regular sequence at its foot, at roughly ten yards
interval, each round bringing down an equivalent section of the wall,
until nothing remained but a long pile of smoking rubble. And, more
impressive, perhaps, than all is the sight of a medium lyddite shell
bursting in a narrow trench. Out of the centre of a vivid flash fly
heavy timbers, sandbags, revetments, all that once formed the
trench, sometimes the mangled fragments of its occupants, whilst to
right and left rolls the choking smoke, driving its way into the
deepest dug-outs, overcoming men many yards away from the point
of impact, spreading death in every form. Is it to be wondered at
that when our infantry reached these trenches they found a few
survivors, living indeed still, but struggling and raving as the inmates
of some ghastly Bedlam?
 V
THE DAY OF ASSAULT
(September 25, 1915)
During the night of September 24-25, infantry patrols left the
trenches to explore the condition of the enemy's wire
entanglements, upon the destruction of which our field batteries had
been engaged during the previous day. Artillery fire was therefore
reduced as much as could be done with safety, and was chiefly
directed upon reserves and billets, in order to make the chance of
rounds falling short injuring the patrols as small as possible. During
the evening the batteries opposed to us had shown far greater
liveliness than they had hitherto. Possibly the enemy had got
information as to where the decisive attack was to be made, as it
seems to be the fact that owing to the four days' bombardment
having taken place along the whole of the British front, they had
hitherto hesitated to reinforce any particular sector, but had kept
their reserves in a state of immediate readiness at their various
railway centres. If this was the case, it is very probable that during
the 23rd and 24th fresh batteries were placed in position between
Vendin-le-Vieil and Lens, and that these came into action on the
afternoon and evening of the 24th. This supposition is borne out by
the fact of the enemy's ability to bring a terrific fire to bear on Loos
as soon as we entered it.
Until the light failed, we had been busily engaged dropping shell
along the Double Crassier, upon whose grim black crest the enemy
were suspected of having mounted a number of machine guns. I
had been in the observation post nearly the whole day—it is, by the
way, worthy of remark as showing the immunity from retaliation that
we had enjoyed in our sector, that we used to walk to and from our
O.P. at all hours of the day through country literally covered with
batteries, none of whom up till now had suffered any casualties—but
at about seven o'clock duty recalled me to the battery. So absorbed
had I been in the difficult business of observing in the failing light,
that although I was conscious that shells were bursting all round, I
had no idea that anything out of the ordinary was taking place until
one of our telephonists, who had been out repairing the line,
returned somewhat shaken, having been blown off his feet and
thrown some distance by a high-explosive detonating close to him.
His only complaint, I may say, was that he had lost a pair of wire-
cutters in the adventure!
However, as soon as I started my walk homewards along the
"Harrow Road," I found things still fairly lively. Several houses had
been destroyed since the morning, and some very fine examples of
shell-holes in the middle of the road added to the joys of the
transport drivers, whose wagons of all descriptions were now
beginning to pour along it. At one point a medium shell burst about
twenty yards away from me—I had heard it coming and found
friendly refuge in the ditch—and before the smoke had fairly cleared
an armoured car and a motor cyclist orderly drove simultaneously
into it from opposite directions. Nobody was hurt, but the road was
most effectively obstructed, and the effect produced was exactly like
that of a block in Piccadilly, including the language. I reached the
battery safely, to find that the shelling had not reached so far back,
but that another form of excitement had supervened. We had
received orders to be ready to move at the shortest possible notice,
in case a general advance upon the morrow should render a change
in our position necessary. Of course, we had been prepared for this
for days, but even so this official pronouncement of our hopes sent a
thrill through every one of us. This was, then, the decisive struggle,
the Waterloo of the campaign at last!
Moving a battery of heavy guns is, however, no small matter, and
one that involves a vast amount of labour, not to be lightly
undertaken. A story is told of a certain major, distinguished alike for
his capability and his piety, who, knowing from bitter experience the
difficulties that attended a change of position of his battery, added
on this night to his usual formula of prayer these heart-felt words,
"O Lord, grant us victory in the coming struggle—but not in my
sector!"
I think that despite the fact that the guns were silent for the first
time since the beginning of the bombardment, very few of us slept
much that night. Our schemes were perfect, certainly, every detail of
our actions of the morrow had been long worked out, each phase
starting a definite time after an empiric zero, which we now learnt
was fixed for 5.50 a.m. But—would the enemy consent to fall in with
those schemes? Suppose they anticipated our offensive by an attack
of their own? The wire in front of their trenches was already
destroyed, even now our infantry were busy cutting wide passages
through our own. How strong were they in reality? Was their passive
endurance of our fire only a blind to lull us into security? These and
a thousand other conjectures troubled our minds all night, and it
was with a deep feeling of relief that we stood in the battery, no
untoward incident having marred our plans, at 5.30 a.m. on the 25th
—the eagerly awaited Day Z!
Then were the scenes at the opening of the bombardment repeated.
Along our line all was again quiet, only from our right came the
distant echoes of the fighting round Souchez and the Labyrinth, a
deep roar that had now been continuous for over a week. Again we
sit in the telephone dug-out, tense and expectant. "Official time
coming, sir!" Watches are taken out in readiness. "Five thirty-five—
now!" Quarter of an hour to go! One by one we creep out to see for
the last time that all is ready. One minute more—"Hook your
lanyards!" slowly the hand ticks round—time zero—"Fire!" This was
no deliberate bombardment, every gun must in the short interval
allowed it work to its utmost capacity, every man sweating in the
dust-laden pits must toil as he never toiled before to feed it; into the
luckless trenches in front of us must pour such a blasting hurricane
of fire that the resistance prepared for our attack shall wither away
in its deadly breath. But soon our own troops will be pouring out of
their trenches, charging over the dividing ground to hurl themselves
upon the trenches into which our wrath is now being poured, and
then our fire must be lifted lest we do more harm than good. All is
arranged for in the time-table. At forty minutes past zero, or 6.30
a.m., every battery lifts its fire from the front line to the second line,
and still the furious fire continues. But now we know that the blow is
being struck—what would we all not give to be in action in the open
as in old days so that we could see the assault, watch the joining of
the battle? Unprofitable thoughts! let us rather devote every fibre of
our beings to the only task by which we can help, the task of
pouring an ever-increasing weight of shell upon the defenders. That
morning dawned grey and dull. From the observing post it was
hardly possible to see further than the front line trenches at half-
past five, and until the moment of the assault visibility did not
greatly increase. However, this was to be the battlefield, we knew, at
all events in the first stages of the struggle. The expectancy of
viewing the greatest battle in history was to our little party in the
O.P. strangely banal; I, for one, could not grasp the reality of it; I felt
as though I were in a box waiting for the actors to come upon a
stage before which the curtain had risen prematurely. There was no
sign of battle, no movement that the eye could detect over the
whole of the wide prospect before us. And then suddenly came time
zero, bringing with it a scene that could never be forgotten. From
the whole length of our front trench, as far as the eye could reach,
rose, vertically at first, a grey cloud of smoke and gas, that, impelled
by a gentle wind, spread slowly towards the enemy's trenches, very
soon enveloping the whole of our range of vision in its opaque veil.
This was our view of the assault, this dismal vapour the aura that
was to surround a thousand sacrifices, the cloak that was to hide a
thousand gallant deeds, the winding-sheet that was to enwrap so
many a hero. Modern war holds no dramatic spectacles to enchant
the brush of a Meisonnier, no drama is wrought upon a lime-lit stage
to arrest the pulses of the watching nations. Yet none the less is its
fascination omnipotent; its magnetic attraction, that draws into its
vortex every man that owns a soul to plague him, is none the less
irresistible; its influence still has the power to weld a chain of heroes
out of a dirty, blasphemous, footsore crowd of sinners. War tends to
the uplifting of the race, not to its debasement, let him who has
faced it deny it if he can!
At 6.30 a.m. the infantry left their trenches and, so far as we were
concerned, vanished into the smoke. All we could see were the
columns scaling the ladders and starting to double across the open.
Some seemed to trip as they ran, and fell in various attitudes from
which they did not trouble to rise. At first we thought that our wire
had not been thoroughly cut, and that these men had fallen over
some unseen strands. But the red pools that slowly surrounded each
soon undeceived us, the while that the roar of rifle-fire from the
enemy's side grew ever more menacing. We could not see what
success attended those who went on, but we heard subsequently
that practically no resistance was encountered on the enemy's first
and second line, but that the third line was very strongly held and
considerably delayed, in some sectors permanently arrested, our
advance.
The battery and the O.P. were equally desirable as far as vision
went, the battery being blind by nature and the O.P. by science. It
has, incidentally, yet to be proved that the hindrance to the enemy
caused by the use of smoke is not more than counterbalanced by
the paralysing of the initiative of one's own artillery, who are entirely
dependent, when this method of warfare is employed, upon time-
tables and such messages as the advancing infantry may be able to
send back. However, that is not a question meet for discussion
except in works devoted to the abstruse study of strategy and
tactics. Let us return to the passage of events in the battery.
Here hopes and fears fought for the mastery throughout the
morning, in accordance with the portents of the day. An order to lift
fire on to a more distant point seemed to mean that our attack was
developing against it, and the men in the pits paused to cheer in the
midst of their unceasing labour. Then suddenly fire would be swept
back on to a point that we had determined in our own minds to have
been captured long ago, and our spirits fell, the detachments setting
their teeth and straining at the heated guns to force by sheer weight
of metal the taking of the disputed point. Or, saddest sight of all,
down the road flowed an ever-widening stream of casualties,
ambulances laden with stretchers upon which twisted forms lay very
still, others with the less severely wounded, and a motley crowd on
foot with minor injuries, supporting one another as one imagines the
scriptural halt, maimed and blind to have done. I think that none of
us realized till we saw the magnitude of this stream, how fierce a
fight was raging in front of us. If this sight hardened our
determination, the next procession went far to cheer us. A few
hundred prisoners were marched past us on the way to the rear, fine
upstanding men enough, looking perfectly fit and in the prime of life,
disposing effectually, in my mind at least, of the fable born of our
national love for self-deceit that the enemy were hard put to it to
find men fit for service.
The German batteries were now devoting their attention to our
advancing infantry, endeavouring at the same time to create a
barrage behind them on our main arteries of communication. The
Harrow Road suffered to a certain extent, but the greatest slaughter
took place on the Lens-Béthune and Vermelles-Hulluch roads. On the
former the whole of a divisional train was overwhelmed by shrapnel,
blocking the road for a quarter of a mile with shattered wagons and
dead horses (a picture of which debris subsequently went the round
of the illustrated Press under the heading "Captured German Battery
at Loos"). Two of our field batteries that endeavoured to come into
action in the open between Quality Street and La Chapelle de Notre
Dame de Consolation suffered very heavily and were silenced. Of the
losses of the infantry, nobody who did not see the procession of
casualties and, worse still, the burial parties of the next few days,
can form an adequate picture. "British Offensive in the West," we
read, "Gain of five miles of trench." Each foot of that five miles cost
us a life and a sum of human agony such as this world has never
known. Watch that communication trench marked "Stretchers to rear
only." Here they come, two stretcher-bearers, one limping painfully,
the sleeve of the other growing ever darker with a purple stain that
spreads slowly over it. Between them they carry a poor wretch with
both legs broken, whose low moan of agony rises to a sharp wail at
each jolting step. Supporting themselves on the shoulders of the
stretcher-bearers are two more, one with his breath gurgling
through a throat choked with blood, one with a shattered shoulder
and side. Through the treacherous clay that covers the bottom of
the trench they make their way of agony, reeling from side to side as
their feet fail to find a foothold, cursing their Maker for the horror of
their torture. See, the first stretcher-bearer slips—his wounded foot
will bear him no longer—and down falls the whole party in one
screaming, writhing mass. Two miles more: is there no end to
human suffering? is heaven so pitiless? There is the answer, a sharp
whistle, a low report, a puff of smoke just over the trench, and all is
quiet, save for one form that crawls very slowly on hands and knees
through the yellow clay that grows dark crimson in his track. In
these terms must we reckon the price of victory.
This is not the place, nor is it within my ability, to give an historical
study of the varying phases of the battle. Suffice it to say that by
noon the 15th Division had swept through the northern end of Loos,
and were engaged upon that part of the eastern slope of the valley
known as Hill 70. There had been considerable street-fighting in the
village, but the enemy had evidently realized that this was not the
place to make a determined stand. Their strategy appears to have
been to concentrate their forces on the edge of the valley, leaving
within it only detachments of such strengths that the loss occasioned
by their sacrifice would be altogether outweighed by the gain in time
that they secured to the main defence. And nobly these
detachments performed the task allotted to them. One battery took
up a position along the Loos-Benifontaine road, and remained in
action under a fire whose intensity it is impossible to describe until
our troops were almost upon it, when its fire ceased, not from lack
of courage to continue, but because no single man was left alive to
serve the guns. Let us give the enemy his due, we are not fighting a
nation of cowards and assassins, as we are so fond of trying to
believe, but of brave and determined men, whom to defeat will call
from us our utmost energies.
As soon as we had taken Loos, the enemy opened a steady artillery
fire upon the village, in order to prevent its use by us as a point
d'appui for further attack, and to hinder observation from the various
landmarks it contained. There is so little natural cover that this must
have been a serious disadvantage to us, as by this time the
communication trenches leading from the German front line trenches
that we now held up the slopes of the valley were choked with dead,
and reinforcements had to run the gauntlet of a well-directed fire in
order to reach our line of attack. This may have something to do
with that fatal delay that left the attacking divisions unsupported and
checked an advance that might well have resulted in the capture of
Lens, which would probably in turn have sealed the fate of Lille. We
have learnt from prisoners that the enemy anticipated the worst in
the early hours of the morning, and that the feebleness of the final
blow amazed them. Had fresh divisions poured down the Lens road
through Cité St. Auguste and Cité St. Laurent, rolling the enemy
back upon the French who were advancing towards Vimy, who
knows what might not have happened? Conjecture is useless, regret
of a lost opportunity must take its place.
The facts so far as known—and no two accounts, even of those who
took part in the struggle, quite agree—are as follows: The 47th
Division, London Territorials all of them, the heroes of the day, but of
whose performances, because less showy, little has been heard, had
by 9.30 a.m. surmounted a series of obstacles, the storming of any
one of which would have earned them lasting fame. Like a tide they
poured over the western end of the dreaded Double Crassier, utterly
regardless of withering machine-gun fire, and swept to the attack of
the walled cemetery that stands to the south-west of Loos. From
here, after a titanic struggle, they dislodged the strong party of its
defenders, and, gaining fresh impetus from the check, irresistibly
fought their way through the outskirts of the village, in which every
point of vantage was held against them, right up to its heart, the
mine buildings that cluster at the foot of the Pylons. This fortress
they stormed and won, and the rush of their assault carried them on
its crest over the Loos Crassier—another high embankment of refuse
and slag—over the exposed surface of the plain, into the copse that
stretches westward from Loos Chalk Pit. Here at last for a while they
rested, and here for the present we may leave them. May the great
city be for ever proud of the achievements of her sons this day, the
thousand forgotten deeds of heroism of which her ears will never
hear!
Meanwhile the 15th Division, having captured the Lens Road
Redoubt that straddled the Lens-Béthune road, were engaged in
clearing the northern portion of the village of Loos. The 1st Division,
the left wing of the Fourth Corps, had met with varying fortune. The
1st Brigade had penetrated to the enemy's reserve trenches in front
of Cité St. Elie and Hulluch, roughly upon the line of the Lens-La
Bassée road. The 2nd Brigade, impeded by a mass of concealed wire
that our fire had failed to destroy, were held up in the direction of
Lone Tree and Bois Carrée. This necessitated the bringing up of the
divisional reserve, who managed to advance between the left flank
of the 15th Division and the Loos Road Redoubt, a strong point in
the German line on the track leading from Loos to Vermelles. This
relieved the pressure on the 2nd Brigade, and the Loos Road
Redoubt, attacked from the front and both flanks, fell into our
hands, compelling some six or seven hundred of the enemy to
surrender. But the delay had enabled the Germans to reinforce
Hulluch and the Crassier of Puits XIII bis to such an extent that the
attack was diverted to the right, in which direction it advanced as far
as the Bois Hugo and Puits XIV bis, both being situated on the
eastern slope of the valley to the north of Hill 70. Of the events of
the afternoon it is impossible to speak with any degree of certainty.
It seems most probable that the paths of the three divisions having
brought them all on to the rising ground to the eastward and north-
eastward of Loos, an attack was made upon the redoubt that existed
on Hill 70 at the point where a track from Loos to Cité St. Auguste
crosses the Lens-La Bassée road. It also seems probable that after
many vicissitudes this redoubt was captured and subsequently held,
though by a force utterly inadequate for the purpose. About 8 p.m. a
messenger reached one of our batteries, having lost his way in the
dark, bearing a message addressed to the headquarters of one of
the Brigades forming the 15th Division, to the effect that the sender
was holding Hill 70 with a mixed handful of men, numbering a
thousand in all, and urgently requesting the immediate supply of
sandbags and other material for defence.
In the battery we were, of course, ignorant of all these things at the
time, and the progress of events could only be conjectured by the
position of the spots upon which we were ordered to fire and the
reports of wounded passing by us on their way to the rear. We knew
of the fall of Loos by the forlorn procession of refugees who had
been living in the village all through the German occupation, but
who were sent back immediately upon the capture of the place by
our troops. Be it noted in parenthesis that much consternation was
caused in a certain office by the arrival of a telephone message to
this effect: "The loose women are expected shortly, please arrange
for their accommodation!" From the observation post came the news
of the taking of the Double Crassier and the Cemetery, but beyond
that, and the information that no attack had been launched towards
the Puits XVI ridge, the observing officer had nothing further to tell
us. But I think that in the ominous absence of any further reference
to our projected advance, we all felt something of the chill breath of
disappointment, that whispered that our high hopes had somehow
failed of their realization.
 VI
STRAIGHTENING THE LINE
Straightening out the line is an expression frequently found in official
dispatches, and it may usually be understood to cover the operations
that take place after a definite attack. In the case of the Battle of
Loos, these operations extended into the third week of October, and
as a corollary to an account of this great event, and as a study of
what was in effect a series of minor battles, the following sketch is
intended. There were many events during these days that are not
yet fully understood, the time has not yet come when a
dispassionate history may be written. Controversy is yet busy with
the names of many disputed positions. I make no attempt at
contribution to any opinion expressed, but merely endeavour to
convey some faint idea of such portions of the drama as were played
before the eyes of the artillery observers.
During the night of September 25-26, the general position was
something as follows. The enemy, from a point not far south of
Fosse 8 to the Double Crassier, had been driven out of his front line
to a greater or less distance in rear. Here, many months before this
time, he had already constructed a second line of defence in
anticipation of such a possibility. We, finding ourselves confronted by
this line, were obliged to make some sort of cover for our advanced
infantry, using the abandoned German front line and communication
trenches as far as they could be adapted for our reserves and
supports. Along the whole of this front of advance, therefore, both
sides were busily engaged upon strengthening their respective
positions, covering meanwhile their working parties with rifle fire.
The artillery could not render much direct assistance, the light had
failed before the final positions of the infantry on either side were
determined, and the risk of injuring friends as much as foes was too
great. The function of the guns was to keep a steady fire directed
upon the possible lines of approach of hostile reinforcements, which
were pouring up on both sides during the whole of the night. The
front of advance was something as follows: From the south of the
canal we remained in our old trenches to a point just north of the
quarries, and from here the position we held ran through the front
line of the Hohenzollern Redoubt, of which we held the front and the
enemy the rear, thence somewhat to the west of the Lens-La Bassée
road in front of Cité St. Elie and Hulluch, through Chalk Pit Wood
and Puits XIV his, somewhere over the western slopes of Hill 70,
then abruptly back to the Double Crassier, where it joined our old
line again.
Up till midnight both sides worked comparatively undisturbed, except
on Hill 70, where attacks and counter-attacks followed one another
without intermission. But at about 12.30 a.m., the enemy, having
apparently succeeded in bringing up sufficient troops for the
purpose, made a series of local attacks, the fiercest of which seems
to have been on our line from the Bois Hugo to Hill 70. This attack
was repulsed, as were the remainder of the series made at the same
time. The weather now became even more misty than before, and
the cold drizzle that had been falling all the evening increased in
intensity. Shortly after dawn, at 5.30 a.m., the enemy made a more
determined attack from much the same part of his line, in which he
scored some initial successes, afterwards retrieved, and by 6.30 a.m.
the position was the same as it had been all night. Observation was
extremely bad on the morning of the 26th, so much so that it was
fully 8 a.m. before artillery could be effectively used. But at this hour
we again assumed the offensive, and opened a furious
bombardment upon the redoubt on the summit of Hill 70, a work
already of extreme strength, and now doubly so after the feverish
energies of large working parties during the night. At nine o'clock
the bombardment ceased, and the infantry rushed to the assault,
but were unable to penetrate the hostile defences. They were re-
formed and the attempt was repeated, again unsuccessfully.
Towards mid-day the local offensive passed into the hands of the
enemy, who made a determined attack from the Bois Hugo and
succeeded in driving our line back a considerable distance and
recapturing Puits XIV bis. This was a distinct advantage to him, for it
gave him a point of vantage from which he could direct machine-gun
fire upon the flank of troops moving to the assault of Hill 70. No
further determined attacks were made by either side on the
afternoon of the 26th or the night 26th-27th, although desultory
fighting continued, and various reliefs and reinforcements were
made amongst our own troops. The 3rd Cavalry Division, who up till
now had been waiting for the chance that would have been theirs
had we succeeded in piercing the German line, were dismounted
and relieved the troops holding Loos, where they remained for a
couple of days, some of them taking part in the final assault upon
Hill 70 on the 27th.
On the afternoon of the 27th every gun that could possibly be
brought to bear opened a furious fire upon the Hill 70 Redoubt. For
two hours the bombardment continued in a light that nearly broke
the observers' hearts, so early did the evening close in, and so
persistently hung the mist. Then, with one earth-shaking salvo from
the massed batteries, it ceased, and the Guards Division rushed to
the assault. What they achieved will probably never be accurately
known, undoubtedly they penetrated the first line of the redoubt,
but the enemy, continually reinforced from his fortress of Cité St.
Auguste, contrived to expel them, and slowly they were swept back,
in the gathering darkness of night, to the positions from which they
had sprung. The attack had failed, Hill 70, the key of Lens, was still
in the enemy's hands.
The strength of this position lay perhaps not so much in its natural
advantages, as in the artificial means which had been employed to
render it capable of effective defence. Its position upon one of the
main arteries leading from the fortress of Lens made it easy to
reinforce from Cité St. Auguste, one of the outliers of that fortress.
The western slopes of the hill, up which the attack must come,
formed a sort of glacis to the redoubt, on to which observers in the
redoubt itself or in the woods around La Ferme des Mines de Lens
could direct fire from their batteries at Pont-a-Vendin, Cité St. Emile
and Cité St. Laurent. The work itself was of considerable extent and
exceptionally formidable, and was probably impregnable by frontal
attack when fully manned. Further, all possible approaches to it were
enfiladed from the northward by machine-gun fire from Puits XIV bis
and some ruined houses at the edge of a small wood, and from the
southward by the strong works at the edge of Cité St. Auguste,
namely Puits XI and a building known as the Dynamitière. Our
failure to capture this important strategical point was therefore
regrettable, but not incomprehensible.
A couple of days after the failure of our last attack upon Hill 70, a
redistribution of the front took place between the Allied Armies. The
Tenth French Army took over the new line up to a point near the
Chalk Pit Wood, the boundary of their territory, which included the
village of Loos, being now roughly a line drawn from this point
through Quality Street, and thence along the Lens-Béthune Road.
From this time Hill 70 ceased to be a British objective, and the whole
of the line in front of Lens came under one command, instead of
being divided right in front of the fortress, a change of considerable
administrative advantage.
During these days, from the 25th to the end of the month, there had
been spasmodic fighting along the rest of the front of advance,
especially about the quarries and the Hohenzollern Redoubt. This
latter work, in which we had gained a footing on the 25th, was
repeatedly reported lost and re-captured, but eventually it was found
to be untenable under the enemy's fire from Auchy and Fosse 8, and
to a lesser degree from Cité St. Elie and Hulloch. The actual new line
as now consolidated was therefore the same as on the evening of
the 25th, except that it ran to the westward of the Hohenzollern and
at the foot of the slopes of Hill 70.
During the succeeding week no events of outstanding importance
took place, the infantry were busy in the improvement of their new
trenches, and the artillery in keeping the hostile batteries quiet while
they did so. But on October 8, "the lid suddenly came off Hell," as
Gunner Wolverhampton aptly expressed it. During the early part of
the morning the enemy had been unusually quiet, but about ten
o'clock he opened a bombardment upon the whole of the new line,
more especially upon that part of it in front of Loos, upon the village
itself, and upon the trenches between Hill 70 and the Double
Crassier. This bombardment grew in intensity, and towards noon we
were ordered to retaliate upon certain parts of his line. A few
minutes later, the wind being in his favour, he let loose a dense cloud
of smoke and gas, and at the same time lifted his fire on to our
batteries and observation stations, employing a large percentage of
lachrymatory gas shell. Very shortly after this, his counter-attack was
launched. As on the 25th, very little was visible from our observation
stations, owing to the obscurity caused by the smoke. It appears,
however, that he developed two separate attacks, one issuing from
the Bois Hugo and the other from the directions of the Dynamentière
and Puits XI. These attacking columns were composed of waves of
men in close order, each wave, according to the French observers,
who were more suitably placed as far as noting details went than
our own, as the smoke did not blow in their direction, being
composed of a mass of men six abreast and twenty-five deep. The
French field batteries were at that time massed close together, and
their commander held their fire until the attackers were well clear of
the cover from which they issued. As soon as this was the case,
every battery was ordered to open fire at its maximum rate, which
they did with results that were nothing short of appalling. Our
battery happened to be just in front of them, and anything like their
fire cannot be imagined. For fully an hour the continuous roar was
such that telephones were useless, orders shouted through a
megaphone into the recipient's ear absolutely inaudible. The effect
of such a cannonade upon a slow moving mass of men in the open
may be imagined. It is said that the loss of one of the attacking
columns in dead alone was upwards of six thousand, and this
estimate was subsequently largely increased. The hopeless position
of these unfortunates, was, curiously enough, enhanced by an
accident. One French battery had suffered severely a few days
before, having been badly shelled, whereby it had lost all its officers
and had had to change its position. Being at this time still somewhat
disorganized, it was late in opening fire, and when it did so, opened
at the same range as the other batteries had done some minutes
before, thereby directing its fire upon a point that the attackers had
already passed over, so placing a curtain of fire behind them. Caught
thus between two hail-storms of shell, the massed columns had no
escape, and were mown down where they stood.
The conditions in the battery during this affair were curious and
extremely interesting. Each gun was firing as fast as the shell could
be loaded and the round laid, orders being passed by gesticulation
as best they could. Behind us the roar of the French batteries grew
until it was only by watching for the flashes that we could tell when
our own guns had fired. All round the hostile shells were bursting,
filling the air with a sweet ether-like vapour that sent a sharp pain
shooting through one's eyes until it seemed as if complete blindness
must shortly supervene. The tears coursing down the men's faces
made strange white tracks through the grime of battle, till the
detachments became fierce, ghost-like and terrible, the reeking
demons of the pit, striving and sweating that they might slay ever
more and more, that the bitter screams of their mutilated victims
might swell ever louder into the livid heavens. And the endless
succession of ammunition wagons, their drivers clad in gas-helmets
till they resembled the Inquisitors of old, lashing their horses into a
yet more frantic gallop as they neared their goal, seemed as the
shell burst all about them like monstrous chariots of hell. And all the
time the French reserves were massing behind us, passing in turn
down the boyaux into the threatened trenches, each party as they
passed cheering the roaring guns, and winning from the
detachments a hoarse shout in return, as for a moment they rested
from their ceaseless labour.
Slowly the inferno of sound died away, and with its first ebb came
the voice of rumour. We had lost the Double Crassier, and the enemy
had gained a footing on the slag-heap of Fosse 5, he was close to
us, and we should have to save the guns as best we could! The
French had repelled the attack, and, following up their advantage,
had swept into Lens! The truth of the affair we did not discover till
later, when it appeared that a portion of our new line from the
middle of the Double Crassier northwards had been captured, re-
occupied and captured again, that the enemy had been finally driven
out, but that the trench was now so full of dead as to afford no
cover to the living. But for this minor success, if success it was, the
furious counter-attack had failed with great loss to the enemy. If our
total losses during the operations of September and October were
between eighty and ninety thousand, it is believed that the enemy
lost about ten thousand upon this one day alone. During the night of
the 8th-9th the Germans contrived to establish themselves in the
disputed length of trench, but otherwise the position remained for
the next two days the same as before the counter-attack.
On the 11th the French developed a fresh attack in this sector, with
the primary object of retaking the lost trench, and the secondary
object of pushing such successes they might achieve right up past
the end of the Double Crassier and Puits XI until they should rest
upon the mineral railway running past Puits XI and Cité St. Pierre as
far as Cité St. Elisabeth, thus forming an offensive line from which to
threaten the Dynamitière and the enemy's approaches to Hill 70. We
were called upon to assist in this enterprise, and at 2 p.m.
commenced to drop shell along the Lens-La Bassée and Lens-
Béthune roads, from their junction in Lens up to Cité St. Auguste
and Cité St. Laurent. We also kept the church in the latter place
under fire to prevent its use as an observation station. About 3 p.m.
the French launched their troops to the assault, and succeeded in
recapturing the lost trench, but owing to intense machine-gun fire
from Puits XI and XII and from Cité St. Pierre, they failed to advance
any further along the line of the Double Crassier towards the mineral
railway.
The primary object of the operations so far had been the capture of
Lens. The importance of the place can hardly be over-estimated. If
we imagine England with Lancashire and the West Riding in hostile
occupation, we shall have a parallel to the case of France deprived
of the Department du Nord and part of Pas de Calais, except that in
our own case we should still have left to us many manufacturing
districts, and France has but few. The importance to the economic
life of France of the three towns of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing is
comparable to the importance of Manchester to us, and the coal-
mining districts lying round Lens, which include such fields as those
of Courrières, Drocourt and Dourges occupy relatively a far more
important position than those of the West Riding. Lens itself is the
key to this productive area, whose energies are at least as valuable
to the enemy as to its rightful owners, and Lens has in skilful hands
become a fortress in the modern sense, far more difficult of capture
than older works at one time deemed impregnable. It is
comparatively easy to concentrate fire upon guns whose position is
known, as they must be when permanently mounted in the
fortifications of the text-books, and once a sufficient concentration of
fire has been obtained, guns so sited, being incapable of removal,
must sooner or later be put out of action, but it is impossible so
utterly to destroy a city and its suburbs that its ruins are no longer
sufficient to afford cover to mobile ordnance and machine guns. It
has been found that a building that in itself is merely a screen from
direct observation, becomes, when destroyed by artillery fire, a heap
of ruins amongst which may be concealed artillery and machine
guns, and which by its very mass is an excellent protection against
hostile fire. Bombard this type of fortress as you will, its defenders
are not tied by their gun-mountings to any one position, but can
move their batteries from place to place, knowing full well that the
attackers, with each round they fire, are preparing fresh situations
wherein they may be concealed. It will surely be found that this war
has sounded the knell of permanently fixed guns except for purposes
of coast defence, where alone the immobile gun has triumphed in
the face of many years' accumulation of scornful criticism.
The last phase of the operations was due to a desire on our part to
strengthen as much as possible our position from the quarries to the
new point of junction with the French. On October 13 our battery
was ordered to open a bombardment upon the German trenches
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

testbankbell.com