The Great Battle of 1915

In January 1951 the French launched an attack on the German trenches at champagne; they won 500 meters of land and lost 50,000 men.The British attack at Neuve Chapelle in March and wasn’t  successful.It lasted two months and gained only a tiny area of land and cost 11,000 lives.

In April 1915 the second battle of Ypres took place. This was a German offensive which started with a gas attack.Clouds of chlorine killed two whole brigades of Frenchmen,almost 10,000 soldiers,before the German breakthrough was halted.

In September 1915, 100,000 British soldiers went ‘over the top’ at  Loss. By the end of the month 60,000 of them were dead. Overall in 1915 the Allies captured a total of 10 square kilometers of land along the western Front and lost almost 400,000 men.

Attacks subsided during the winter of 1915 – 16. But in February 1916 the German General Falkenhayn launched a huge attack on the city of Verdun, which was protected by thirteen concrete forts.The German artillery fired 23 million shells, killing 315,000 on the French side. But General Philippe Petain had been orderd to save the city. He told his men, ‘They shall not pass.’ After five months and looses of 280,000 men, the Germans gave up the attack.