By the middle of February our General Staff felt itself strong enough to take the offensive. In Chapter IX. I told you how the French in Champagne had punctured the German line by means of an intense bombardment of the opposing trenches. We were now ready to make a similar attempt. If you look at the map on page 132, you will see a thick black line showing the position of our trenches about midway between La Bassée and Estaires. In front of the village of Neuve Chapelle this line makes a distinct sag to the westward. It was upon this section of the line that we meant to operate, and we hoped that we might not only capture the village and straighten out our line, but push the Germans off the Aubers ridge, from which coign of vantage the La Bassée-Lille railway line could be commanded. If fortune were kind, we might even reach Lille itself.
Though Neuve Chapelle is only a small village, its fame is now world wide, and it will figure in the history books of the future. It is an unimportant collection of houses and small farms scattered about a junction of country roads, with a church in its centre. Our soldiers looking eastward from the British front could see the long, straggling line of houses among gardens, and the white church standing up tall and clear from the flat, marshy land. Let us suppose that we are aviators flying over the pretty village. What do we see? First, we notice the broad highway running from La Bassée to Estaires (AA), and from this road see two other roads, less than a mile apart, running parallel in a north-easterly direction (BB and CC). A road (DD) almost parallel to the broad highway (AA) connects these roads, and thus forms a diamond-shaped figure which is divided into two by a winding cross road (EE). Neuve Chapelle lies within the northern half of the diamond. Along the road (DD) the houses are small, and stand close together; those along the roads CC and EE are surrounded by gardens and orchards. At the north-east of the village (F) there is a small piece of ground filled with enclosures, and bounded on three sides by roads. Here the Germans have made a strong post so as to flank the approaches to the village from the north. Between the houses and the La Bassée-Estaires road are meadows and ploughland, seamed with German trenches. At the northern angle of the diamond our own trenches are but 100 yards away from those of the Germans. In other parts of the line the distance is greater.