Activities along the extended front in the Champagne district having proved successful for the German forces to a considerable extent, the General Staff turned its attention now to the La Bassee region.

There was good tactical reason for this move, because the British were seriously threatening the position, straddling La Bassee Canal where it flows between Cuinchy and Givenchy, and there was danger that they might capture La Bassee, where the Germans held a salient of considerable strategical importance, as it covered their line of communication to the south.

Previous successful operations by the British at Richebourg and Festubert north of Givenchy, and at Vermelles, south of Cuinchy, evidently prompted the Germans to attempt a counterattack.  Besides it was desirable for the Germans to test the strength of the Allies at this point, and to do this with some measure of success the Germans massed a considerable force for this purpose.

Beginning about January 14, 1915, the British met with varying and minor successes and defeats in this region, but no noteworthy action had taken place for upward of ten days, until January 25, under the eye of the German Kaiser, the principal attack, which had been carefully planned, took place.

On the morning of January 25, 1915, a demonstration along the front from Festubert to Vermelles and as far north as Ypres and Pervyse was inaugurated.

The Germans began to shell Bethune, which was within the allied lines about eight or nine miles west of La Bassee.  An hour later, in the neighborhood of nine o’clock, following up heavy artillery fire, the Fifty-sixth Prussian Infantry and the Seventh Pioneers advanced south of the canal, which runs eastward from Bethune, where the British line formed a salient from the canal forward to the railway near Cuinchy, and thence back to the Bethune and La Bassee road where the British joined the French forces.

This salient was occupied by the Scots and the Coldstream Guards.  The Germans were obliged to advance by the road, as the fields were too soft for the passage of the troops; even the roads were in a terrible condition, deep ruts and thick, sticky mud greatly retarding the onward march of the German forces.  But the Allies fared little better in this respect.  In fact the entire engagement was fought out in a veritable sea of mud and slush.

Well-directed artillery fire by the Germans blew up the British trenches in this salient, and the Germans at once penetrated the unsupported British line.  The Germans also had the advantage of an armored train, which they ran along the tracks from La Bassee almost into Bethune, sufficiently close to throw considerable shell fire into this town.

The Germans advanced in close formation, throwing hand grenades.  They came on so rapidly and with such momentum that the Guards, trying in vain to stem the tide with the bayonet, were overwhelmed, and the British, in spite of desperate resistance, were forced back step by step.