The London Irish

Meanwhile, the Highlanders of the New Army, the glorious 15th Division were making their wonderful charge through Loos and over Hill 70 to the Cite St. Auguste, a northern suburb of Lens. This fierce and rapid spring across four miles of fortified ground, is probably the finest thing the Highlanders of Scotland have done throughout their splendid history. The thing was accomplished moreover by men who knew little or nothing of warfare till the fateful month of August 1914. They had volunteered for service and had begun their training when our little Regular Army was tramping from Mons to the Marne, and from the Marne to Aisne. It was scarely to be expected that Lord Kitchener could in a single year turn civilians into soldiers of the very finest class. Yet such were the Highlanders.

Below, map detailing the country between La Basse and Lens
showing the ground covered by the Battles of Loos and Hulluch.

At ten minutes to six on the historic Saturday morning the heavy cloud of white - yellowish gas slowly rolled from our trenches. The launchers of a battleship could not be more anxious than were the British troops over the result of their first important gas attack. But unfortunately, the great cloud was carried too far northward, with the result that the enemy's second line was not overpowered by the stupefying fumes. At half past six two brigades of the Highland Division swept out towards the " Tower Bridge ", It was arranged that one brigade should make a direct attack on the Loos front, while the second brigade executed an enveloping movement to the north, bending round towards Loos and Hill 70. The third brigade was held in reserve to be used as occasion required in either direction. There were thus only two bodies of newly trained troops, numbering each under four thousand bayonets engaged in the main attack on Lens. The achievment of this small force was marvellous. The first two brigades advanced in line against the first German position on the low downs. Going forward by short, swift rushes through a perfect tempest of shrapnel intensified by streams of bullets from machine-guns and rifles, the Highlanders took the whole of the first line in about half an hour. Then leaving some of their bombers to clear out the dug-outs, they smashed their way along the communicating trenches, or advanced in open order through the lon grass and quickly won a series of foot-holds in the German second line in front of Loos. Spreading out in furious fighting from each breach they had made, the Highlanders conquered the advanced defences of Loos as easily as they had stormed the first swell of chalk. The enemy was surprised by the speed and violence of the assault, and in less than an hour after the two brigades left their trenches they were fighting round the ' Tower Bridge ' and the outskirts of Loos.

The fleeing Germans had crowded towards the the village where their officers got them well in hand and put up a stern rearguard fight. But owing to the Scotsmen's plan of attack, which then came fully into operation, the enemy's stand at Loos did not greatly benefit him; for the brigade on the right began to work well north of Loos, where the enemy's resistance had weakened, and after getting without much difficulty well behind the village, the advanced brigade suddenly turned and stormed through some fir plantations to the summit of Hill 70. As the men charged they came under a terrible fire from a strong German position on their left flank at pit 14-A, just betwween the chalk quarries and the hill. At the same time their right flank, as they climed the down, was swept by German machine-gun fire from the eastern houses at Loos. But instead of stopping and seeking cover, the furious Highlanders, under the lash of death, increased their pace till their Brigadier-General lost control of them. He was a youngish man with an agile habit of body, but when he arrived near Loos all that he could see was his men vanishing in the distance over the hill. The brigade crossed the road from La Bassee to Lens, captured the German third line on the opposite slope; and at twenty minutes past nine the survivors of the four battalions stormed Cite St. Auguste, a pitmen's village forming the north-western suburb of Lens.
Four thousand Scotmen had broken clean through the German front-through three fortified lines placed on dominating he heights and strengthened by strong redoubts. The advance 6f the Highlanders had been so fast no other body of troops was able to co-operate with it. By half past - nine the brigade had turned at right angles and had got into the suburbs of Lens. The Germans hastily brought machine-guns along the railway embankment
north-east of Lens and continued to concentrate on the adventurous brigade a wasting fire from all points of the compass. There was machine-gun and rifles fire from Cite St. Auguste in the north, from the outskirts of Loos in the west, from Lens in the south and from pit-A and a row of pitmen's cottages in the east. In this circle of death the unsupported, half shattered brigade checked its headlong charge, and sowing the ground with dead and wounded withdrew in good order on Hill 70, and there entrenched just below the crest to get cover from the enemy's eastern line of fire. The Germans reoccupied the redoubt they had abandoned on the summit, but the Highlanders held on to the hill. After four hours of wondeful fighting the brigade, in spite of its check at lens, had achieved one of the great things of the war. It held most of the hill that dominated the country. With the help of two more battalions it could have retaken the redoubt on the summit, and with proper ordinary support it could have got back into Lens by afternoon, and have opened that gate into the plain which was the objective of all the million men under Foch and French.
Meanwhile the Division which had attacked Loos in front received the support of its 3rd Brigade. The village was partly surrounded by two battalions, while the rest of the men undertook the difficult job of capturing the place by house-to-house fighting, with machine-guns playing on them from the first-storey windows, and splutters of musketry fir from the doors. By this time the Germans were squeezed badly on both sides of the village, with the London Territorials hammering them at the western cemetary, and the Highland brigade working round from the north and driving through the High Street.