General Joffre had planned a series of attacks in the Artois area (along an 18 mile front between Arras and La Bassée) and had asked the British army to attack to the north of Lens. This was to be the 3rd Battle of Artois.

An artillery barrage preceded the attack on September 25th which led to the liberation of a part of Loos-en-Gohelle. After five days of artillery fire, the British troops, made up of Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish and Indian divisions, launched an attack on the front near Loos-en-Gohelle, commonly known as the “Battle of Loos”. Holed up in their cellars, the people of Loos emerged in the morning to discover that the allies had recaptured the village, the coal tip and the mineshafts of Pit 15. Only Hill 70 remained in the hands of the Bavarians.

The inhabitants of Loos were then evacuated to other regions, where people tended to look down on them. They were even referred to as “the Northern Huns”. Little by little, the village was then flattened by the constant bombardment. The German retaliation was followed by the resumption of trench warfare…

Nearly 16,000 British soldiers were killed or declared missing in the battle of Loos, as were almost 5,000 Germans.