But apart from that the whole timetable of the battle was, as it now appears, fatally wrong. To move divisions along narrow roads requires an immense amount of time, even if the roads are clear, and those roads toward Loos were crowded with the transport and gun-limbers of the assaulting troops. To move them in daylight to the trenches meant inevitable loss of life and almost certain demoralization under the enemy’s gunfire.

“Between 11 a.m. and 12 noon the central brigade of these divisions filed past me at Béthune and Nœux-les-Mines, respectively,” wrote Sir John French. It was not possible for them to reach our old trenches until 4 p.m. It was Gen. Sir Frederick Maurice, the Chief of Staff, who revealed that fact to me afterward in an official explanation, and it was confirmed by battalion officers of the 24th Division whom I met.