absolutely unprecedented
up to that time was employed by him. Field pieces firing at point-blank
range were used to cut the barbed wire entanglements defending the enemy
intrenchments, while howitzers and bombing airplanes were used to drop
high explosives into the defenseless earthworks.

Sir Douglas Haig, later to become the commander-in-chief of the British
forces, was in command of the first army. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien
commanded the second army. It was the first army that bore the brunt of
the attack.

No engagement during the years on the western front was more sudden and
surprising in its onset than that drive of the British against Neuve
Chapelle. At seven o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, March 10, 1915,
the British artillery was lazily engaged in lobbing over a desultory
shell fire upon the German trenches. It was the usual breakfast
appetizer, and nobody on the German side took any unusual notice of it.
Really, however, the shelling was scientific "bracketing" of the enemy's
important position. The gunners were making sure of their ranges.

At 7.30 range finding ended, and with a roar that shook the earth the
most destructive and withering artillery action of the war up to that
time was on. Field pieces sending their shells hurtling only a few feet
above the earth tore the wire emplacements of the enemy to pieces and
made kindling wood of the supports. Howitzers sent high explosive
shells, containing lyddite, of 15-inch, 9.2-inch and 6-inch caliber into
the doomed trenches and later into the ruined village. It was eight
o'clock in the morning, one-half hour after the beginning of the
artillery action, that the village was bombarded. During this time
British soldiers were enabled to walk about in No Man's Land behind the
curtain of fire with absolute immunity. No German rifleman or machine
gunner left cover. The scene on the German side of the line was like
that upon the blasted surface of the moon, pock-marked with shell holes,
and with no trace of human life to be seen above ground.

[Illustration: Map: Neuve Chapelle and surroundings.]
THE BATTLE GROUND OF NEUVE CHAPELLE

An eye witness describing the scene said:

"The dawn, which broke reluctantly through a veil of clouds on the
morning of Wednesday, March 10, 1915, seemed as any other to the Germans
behind the white and blue sandbags in their long line of trenches
curving in a hemicycle about the battered village of Neuve Chapelle. For