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battle of loos
29
On visiting the battlefield some few days later, Brigadier-General
Henry F. Thullier, made the following observations.
‘In front of the remains of that work known as the ‘Lens
Road Redoubt’, the dead Highlanders, in Black Watch tartan,
lay very thick. In one place, about 40 yards square, on the
very crest of the ridge, and just in front of the enemy’s
wire, they were so close that it was difficult to step
between them. Nevertheless the survivors had swept on and
through the German lines. As I looked on the smashed and
riven ground, the tangled belt of wire still not completely
cut, and the thick swathes of dead, every man lying as he
had fallen, face to the enemy, I was amazed when I thought
of the unconquerable, irresistible spirit which those
newly raised units of the ‘New Armies’ must possess to
enable them to continue their advance after sustaining
such losses’.
47
44 Daily Record and Mail, Tuesday, 12 October 1915, 6.
45 Black Watch Castle and Museum, BWA 0171 Major J. Stewart, Diary, 30 September 1915
46 The Post, Sunday, 27 February 1916, 7.
47 J. Stewart and J. Bunchan, The Fifteenth (Scottish) Division 1914-1919
(Edinburgh, 1926), 49