Let me now tell the story of the main battle of Loos as I was able to piece it together from the accounts of men in different parts of the field—no man could see more than his immediate neighborhood—and from the officers who survived. It is a story full of the psychology of battle, with many strange incidents which happened to men when their spirit was uplifted by that mingling of exultation and fear which is heroism, and with queer episodes almost verging on comedy in the midst of death and agony, at the end of a day of victory, most ghastly failure.
The three attacking divisions from left to right on the line opposite the villages of Hulluch and Loos were the 1st, the 15th (Scottish), and the 47th (London). Higher up, opposite Hulluch and Haisnes, the 9th (Scottish) Division and the 7th Division were in front of the Hohenzollern redoubt (chalky earthworks thrust out beyond the German front-line trenches, on rising ground) and some chalk-quarries.