An incident of the retreat from Mons to Cambrai. A German battery of
eleven guns posted in a wood, had caused havoc in the British ranks. The
Ninth Lancers rode straight at them, across the open, through a hail of
shell from the other German batteries, cut down all the gunners, and put
every gun out of action.]

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.

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 hemi-cycle about the battered village of
Neuve Chapelle. For five months they had remained undisputed
masters of the positions they had here wrested from the British in