five months they had remained undisputed masters of the positions they
had here wrested from the British in October. Ensconced in their
comfortably-arranged trenches with but a thin outpost in their fire
trenches, they had watched day succeed day and night succeed night
without the least variation from the monotony of trench warfare, the
intermittent bark of the machine guns--rat-tat-tat-tat-tat--and the
perpetual rattle of rifle fire, with here and there a bomb, and now and
then an exploded mine.

"For weeks past the German airmen had grown strangely shy. On this
Wednesday morning none were aloft to spy out the strange doings which,
as dawn broke, might have been descried on the desolate roads behind the
British lines.

"From ten o'clock of the preceding evening endless files of men marched
silently down the roads leading towards the German positions through
Laventie and Richebourg St. Vaast, poor shattered villages of the dead
where months of incessant bombardment have driven away the last
inhabitants and left roofless houses and rent roadways....

"Two days before, a quiet room, where Nelson's Prayer stands on the
mantel-shelf, saw the ripening of the plans that sent these sturdy sons
of Britain's four kingdoms marching all through the night. Sir John
French met the army corps commanders and unfolded to them his plans for
the offensive of the British army against the German line at Neuve
Chapelle.

"The onslaught was to be a surprise. That was its essence. The Germans
were to be battered with artillery, then rushed before they recovered
their wits. We had thirty-six clear hours before us. Thus long, it was
reckoned (with complete accuracy as afterwards appeared), must elapse
before the Germans, whose line before us had been weakened, could rush
up reinforcements. To ensure the enemy's being pinned down right and
left of the 'great push,' an attack was to be delivered north and south
of the main thrust simultaneously with the assault on Neuve Chapelle."

[Illustration: Map bounded by Armentieres on the North, Lille on the
East, Estaires on the West and Carvin on the South.]
MAP OF THE BATTLE FRONT BETWEEN ARMENTIERES AND LA BASSEE
On the left, half way up the map, may be seen Neuve Chapelle; a little
to the right of it is Aubers, where some of the sternest fighting
occurred.

After describing the impatience of the British soldiers as they awaited
the signal to open the attack, and the actual begin