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By Root 1870 0

and I got a terrific fright then. It was pitch black and we were just feeling our way. Somebody had a glimmer of light ahead but where I was it was really dark, and I suddenly felt this arm grabbing me and pulling me flat in the dark. I toppled right over. I nearly died of fright. I must have yelled out because someone struck a light, and there was a wounded German, lying there in the dark. He was alive but somebody must have thrown a bomb down there. He got peppered all over and he was a mass of dried blood. He was calling for his mother and for water. He was muttering, ‘Mutter, Mutter, Wasser.’ Mother, Mother, water. We got him out and it was a hell of a job up those stairs, and when we got him out it was raining. We laid him out in the trench there and he was taken away after a while.

When we got back in the trench I saw the most extraordinary thing happen. I got up to look over – it was quite safe, because the fighting was a good bit ahead – and there were civilians knocking about. Loos village was on our left, and suddenly out came these civilians. I saw them myself! Of course they were shepherded away as quickly as possible but I remember seeing an old woman wounded, hobbling along and thinking that she must have been shot in the leg. There was a whole bunch of them, at least a dozen, maybe more.

The Scots had broken through so swiftly in the wake of the gas, pushed back the survivors with such determination and battered their way into Loos village with such ferocity that the German troops who endeavoured to make a stand were overwhelmed in the act of erecting barriers in the streets. Soon observers were delightedly reporting back that crowds of Germans were running up the hill towards their second line with the Scots in full pursuit. The village had been captured so rapidly and so unexpectedly that days later German soldiers were still being winkled out of hiding places in attics and deep cellars. The orders were for the troops to press on as far and as fast as possible while a second and third wave followed behind to consolidate the lines they had captured, and the Jocks were carrying out their orders to the letter. They had punched a great hole in the centre of the German line and there was no stopping them.

Further north, on the left of the main attack, things had gone less well and the German line that ran in front of the village of Hulluch, past the outskirts of Auchy to straddle the la Bassée Canal was almost intact.

Paul Maze, Interpreter att. I Corps HQ.

The actual front line was completely blurred. The middle-distance between the front line and our slag-heap was now in constant convulsion, rising in columns of black earth and smoke. The gas which we had released was drifting heavily down across the left of our front, obviously in the wrong direction. We peered and peered through our glasses, trying to catch sight of anything where the smoke had drifted away. Through a gap the horizon showed up like a sinister purple streak. Suddenly someone shouted, ‘What’s that near Fosse 8?’ We all focused our glasses on the slag-heap and for a second figures appeared, as one might see bathers surge up in the troughs of rough seas.

Our telephones buzzed feverishly; messages were coming in on the wires, all more or less confused. Someone caught a visual message and spelt the words out to another who took it down, repeating every syllable with that slow cadence that gives special significance to tidings, and leaves an indelible impression on the mind: ‘We – have – no – officers – left –…’ Then something happened. The shutter flashing the message had closed. Contact was lost.

Scots of the 9th Division had stormed the Hohenzollern Redoubt, some had even managed to reach a slag-heap beyond it, but on either side of them where the gas had blown back matters had gone badly.

Sgt. F. M. Packham, 2nd Bn., Royal Sussex Regt., 2 Brig., 1st Div.

Our Division’s directive was to reach the Loos-la Bassée Road by noon, also the Hohenzollern Redoubt, the village of Hulluch, and to get as far forward as possible by late afternoon.