The Germans delivered an equally severe attack upon the allied position in the village of Givenchy, about a mile north of the canal, which bounded the scene of the attack just described.  As in the other attack, the Germans opened action by severe artillery fire, using high-explosive shells, and after due preparation, at about 8.15 in the morning, the infantry advanced, as is customary with the Germans, in close formation.  The British met this advance by somewhat weak artillery fire, which, it was afterward explained was due to continued interruption of the telephonic communications between the observers and the batteries in the fight.  However, as it was, this fire, added to the machine gun and rifle fire from the trenches, served to turn the German advance from their original direction, with the result that they crowded together in the northeast corner of Givenchy after passing over the first-line trenches of the Allies’ front.  Their momentum carried the Germans far into the center of the village, with remarkably few casualties considering the murderous fire to which they had been subjected throughout their impetuous advances.

In the village of Givenchy, however, the Second Welsh Regiment and the First South Wales Borderers, which had been stationed there and held in reserve, gave the Germans a warm reception, and when the First Royal Highlanders came up they delivered a fierce counterattack.  In this they were supported by the fire of the French artillery, which assistance, however, proved costly to the Allies, as the French fire and bursting shells killed friend and foe alike.  Street fighting became savage, amid the explosions of shells sent to enliven the occasion by the French.  This concluded the action for the day and when the smoke cleared away both sides found their position comparatively little changed and nothing but the thinned ranks of the combatants reminded the observer that the most severe kind of fighting had taken place for the best part of a day.

The following day, January 26, 1915, the action was resumed, and the attack opened along the Bethune and La Bassee road.  This soon died out, as though by general consent, each side reoccupying their position of the previous evening.

But on Friday, January 29, 1915, early in the morning, the Germans again opened with severe artillery fire which directed its attention particularly to the British line, where the First Army Corps lay between La Bassee Canal and the Bethune road near Cutchy.  After an hour’s shelling the Germans sent one battalion of the Fourteenth Corps toward the redoubt, and two battalions of the same corps were sent to the north and south of this redoubt.  Now upon this point and to the north of it stood the Sussex Regiment and to the south of it the Northamptonshire Regiment.  The attack was severe, but the defense was equal to it and the net results were summed up in the casualty lists on both sides.  An attack upon the French, south of Bethune, on the same day met with like results.  The great German objective was to open another road to Dunkirk and Calais, and had they been successful in the engagements of the past few days it is probable that they would have succeeded.