related that a sergeant, to whom two
Germans had surrendered, pulled a few pieces of string from his
pocket, tied their hands together, and passed them to the rear with
the request, "Please forward." Brigade "X" had meanwhile thrown its
enveloping net around Loos without meeting much resistance. The
British had reached the top of Hill 70 by nine o'clock. The climb was
a hard and rough accomplishment, with the right flank under
mitrailleuse fire from Loos, and with the left exposed to fire from
Pit 14A; but it was accomplished far too quickly. Serious disasters
frequently occur in war through tardiness; in this case a possible
great victory was missed through being too quick and arriving too
early. When the brigadier got up to Loos he saw his men vanishing in
the distance. A strong German redoubt, over the other side of the hill
crest, was not even defended. The brigade crossed the Lens-La Bassee
road, which runs along the height, carried the third German line on
the opposite slope, and at 9.20 it was outside St. Auguste.
Unfortunately for the British, the corps commander, who arrived at
this moment with his staff in hot haste, was unable to get his unit in
hand again. Overflowing with offensive ardor, he had thrown his men
forward with a most impetuous movement, and they got out of hand. The
brigade turned at right angles and got into the suburbs of Lens. It
seemed as though the gates of the northern plain were about to be
smashed in. Then the great danger appeared. There was still no great
converging movement from the south, where a British division and
French troops were engaged. Touch was also lost to the north. The
neighboring division in this direction was held up until the afternoon
by wire entanglements. The left flank of the brigade was at the mercy
of a German counterattack, but the Germans did not launch it, for they
had not the men. What they did, however, was to concentrate on the
brigade a murderous fire from Loos in the south, Lens in the east, St.
Auguste in the north, and Pit 14A and two or three neighboring houses
in the west. They were even seen hastily installing machine guns along
the railway embankment northeast of Lens.

Shattered by fire, uncertain of its direction, shaken by the very
quickness of its previous advance, the brigade hesitated, sowed the
ground with its dead, and retired in good order on Hill 70, where it
intrenched slightly below the redoubt abandoned by the Germans during
the atta