only about
five per cent, of the men engaged. The troops in the first line,
victorious, were eager to go on, but they were halted on the western
outskirts of Aubers all afternoon and then told to dig themselves in.
Next day they were for some reason ordered back to the third line of
German trenches and told to prepare these trenches, strengthening and
consolidating the lines and to prepare for a German attack which did
not come. To-day being the third day they were ordered to carry
Aubers, the Rue D'Enfer and the ground extending to the Wood of Biez.
In these places a terrible resistance had been encountered. The
Germans Corps Reserves, several divisions of them, had arrived. They
had fortified Aubers by using the lower or basement storeys of houses
for machine gun emplacements, and a large redoubt with wire had been
constructed in the woods.

The commanding officers of both the battalions of the Gordons had been
killed, also Colonel Fisher-Rowe of the Guards, who had turned the
trenches at Fromelles over to us, was killed leading his battalion in
a charge. The Gordons had lost sixteen officers from each battalion,
killed and wounded, and about half their men. The Guards Brigade had
lost about the same. Again and again the unconquerable British
infantry this day charged across the open to carry ground that was
virtually theirs two days before, but the Bois de Biez and the Rue
D'Enfer bristled with machine guns that mowed them down in hundreds.
Guards, Ghurkas, Highlanders, Pathans charged again and again till at
last towards evening the attack was called off. The German counter
attack had taken the form of a pure defensive and we had sacrificed
ten or twelve thousand troops trying to retrieve what we lost through
lack of support two days before. There was no truth in the stories
subsequently circulated that our guns fired in mistake on the British
troops. A few Indian guns that had been worn out with constant firing
since the Battle of Mons fired stray shells but that is likely to
happen at any time. An error of a line or two on the indicating ring
of the fuse when set will cause the shell to burst short.

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle was a great victory for the British, but
we did not gather much of the fruits of victory. Everybody felt that
something had gone wrong, but what it was only history will disclose.
Our younger officers were beginning to think that the old Wellington
tradition of "support promptly" had be