The Battle Of Neuve Chapelle

After the reverses of 1914, the French and British commanders were determined to turn the tables on the Germans and take the war to the enemy. A major combined offensive was planned in the Artois region of France but the French had to cancel their part in the operation. This did not deter the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir John French, and on 10 March 1915, the British attacked the German positions centred on the village of Neuve Chapelle. In what was the first British planned offensive of the First World War, the attackers overran the German lines and almost achieved an unparalleled breakthrough. Only a lack of artillery shells and a breakdown in communications prevented the British First Army under General Haig from taking full advantage of the unprecedented success. The battle demonstrated how trench systems could be penetrated and set the pattern of warfare on the Western Front for the next three years, with the Allies seeking to achieve that elusive breakthrough which slipped through their fingers at Neuve Chapelle. The shortage of shells was seen as a 'scandal' which brought down the Liberal Government.

A history of the World War I engagement between British and German forces in northern France, and a visitor’s guide to the battlefield site. Neuve Chapelle, a lost battlefield, is now opened up for the explorer to learn more about the actions that took place there. In early 1915, the British decided to take the offensive for the first time in the war against German positions in Northern France. The initial objective was a bulge, about one mile across, in their lines at Neuve. Events which took place here early in 1915 are described in detail and show why this almost forgotten battle set the course of the war.

Includes The First World War On The Western Front 1914-1915 Illustrations Pack with 101 maps, plans, and photos. Major-General Ernest Swinton had already had a long and illustrious career in the British Army before the advent of the First World War in 1914. Appointed as the official war correspondent by the war Minister Lord Kitchener in 1914, his reporting home was the only way for the British people to follow the war as journalists were at that time banned at the front. In these dispatches from the front Swinton told the public of the bloody fighting in Flanders and the heroic efforts of the Allies to stop the German Juggernaut. So even handed and realistic they were brought together in a series of books under the pseudonym “Eyewitness” for further publication. Swinton was not a “château” general by any means and visited the front with dangerous regularity write of the fighting with real authority, often including anecdotes of the ordinary soldiers that he interviewed. The miserable conditions and bloody siege warfare of the trenches left a lasting impression on him and he looked to a scientific solution to the muddy stalemate of the Western Front. He would gain lasting fame as the architect of the “tank” project that was to revolutionize warfare in the First World War and for many years thereafter.

Ever since the middle of November last there has been on the West front in the present war what many have called and considered a "deadlock." In the account which follows of that part of the campaign represented by the battles in Flanders the true character of the great and brilliant military scheme by means of which, and against apparently impossible odds, the Allied commanders succeeded in reducing the main fighting forces of Germany to impotence, and in defeating the purposes of the invasion, will, I hope, become clear. The success or failure of that scheme depended upon the issue of the Battle of Ypres. Not only was that great battle the most prolonged, furious, and destructive clash of arms yet known, but upon it also, for reasons which in fact disclose the real history of this struggle, hung the issue of the War as a whole. No accident merely of a despot's desires caused the fury and the terror of Ypres. It was the big bid of Prussian Militarism for supremacy. Equally in the terrible and ghastly defeat it there sustained Prussian Militarism faced its doom.

The battles fought by the British army in 1915, in the second year of the First World War, are less well known than those fought immediately after the outbreak of war in 1914 and those that followed in 1916 which culminated in the Battle of the Somme. But the fighting at Aubers Ridge, Festubert, Neuve Chapelle and Loos was just as severe as was the 1916 battle at Fromelles and the battlefields are just as interesting to explore today. This volume in the Battle Lines series is the perfect guide to them.Expert guides Jon Cooksey and Jerry Murland take visitors over a series of routes that can be walked, biked or driven, explaining the fighting that occurred at each place in vivid detail. They describe what happened, where it happened and why and who was involved, and point out the sights that remain for the visitor to see. Their highly illustrated guidebook is essential reading for visitors who wish to enhance their understanding of warfare on the Western Front.