Most Unfavourable Ground

The year of 1914 had been a difficult one for the British ExpEditionary Force the war that had started in August had not been over by the expected time of Christmas. Additionally many of its original members had become casualties and replacements were difficult to find. 1915 did not go much better the BEF was still a minor player with only a relatively small number of divisions compared to the many in the French Army. The culmination of several attacks by the BEF in 1915 was the attack in the Loos sector in September where in a mining area north of Arras the largest British offensive of the war thus far took place. Forced into an offensive in an area which as one senior commander put it was on 'most unfavourable ground' the BEF suffered heavy casualties and little material gain. Probably for these reasons the 1915 battles have been largely ignored and there has been a dearth of decent publications on Loos.