While the bombardment lasted our troops could walk outside their trenches in safety, for the Germans were so "pinned to the ground" that those of them who remained alive dared not lift their heads. From behind the ragged clouds in the sky where the aeroplanes were sailing the sun now began to shine, making still darker the black pall that hung over the German position, and flashing back from the rows of gleaming bayonets in the British trenches. At five minutes to eight our gunners lengthened their fuses, and shells began to fall fast and furiously on the village itself. Some of the houses were seen to leap into the air. Columns of dust like the sand spouts of the desert sprang up; trees went down like wheat before a sickle; bricks and stones fell in torrents. Then came the great moment. Whistles blew; our men swarmed over the parapets and rushed towards the German trenches.
[Illustration: The Rifle Brigade racing headlong through the Ruins of Neuve Chapelle during the Attack on the Village.
(_From the picture by Christopher Clark. By permission of The Sphere._)
"The village," says a writer who visited the scene a few days after the battle, "was a sight that the men say they will never forget. Once upon a time Neuve Chapelle must have been a pretty little place, big as villages in these parts go, with a nice clean church (whence it probably got its name), some neat villas, half a dozen inns, a red-brick brewery, and on the outskirts a little old white château. Now hardly stone remains on stone. It was indeed a scene of desolation into which the Rifle Brigade--the first regiment to enter the village, I believe--raced headlong. Of the church only the bare shell remained; the interior was lost to view beneath a gigantic mound of rubbish. Of all that once fair village but two things remained intact--the great crucifixes reared aloft, one in the churchyard, the other over against the château. From the cross that is the emblem of our faith the figure of Christ, yet intact, though all pitted with bullet marks, looked down in mute agony on the slaying in the village."]
Five separate infantry attacks were made on the village. The first attack was made by the 24th Brigade, to the north of the village; the second, by the 23rd Brigade, against its north-east corner; the third, by the 25th Division, against the village itself; the fourth, by the Garhwal Brigade of Indians, against its south-west corner; and the fifth, by the Dehra Dun Brigade, against Port Arthur. The 25th pushed into the wreckage of the German trenches without difficulty. They were only occupied by the shreds and tatters of the dead and a few dazed and stupefied men, their faces yellow with fumes, their clothes torn from their backs, and their equipment and weapons destroyed. In some places a few machine guns which had escaped destruction kept up fire from concealed positions, and snipers took toll of our men as they advanced. The first to reach the goal were the 2nd Lincolns and the 2nd Royal Berkshires, who opened out to let the Irish Rifles and the Rifle Brigade pass through them and take the village. From a trench in front of the Berkshires came the rattle of machine-gun fire. Two German officers, alone, were working the gun, and they continued to fire until they fell beneath the bayonets of our men. Equally gallant deeds were done on the British side. A lance-corporal who had been wounded three times and had been told to lie down insisted on advancing with his fellows. Nor was he the only wounded man who plied bayonet and grenade on that red day.