The Battle of Loos (1915): "The Scottish Battle" Examined

Strategic context: Loos and the 1915 autumn offensive

Loos was not a battle of Britain's choosing. It was fought in support of the larger French autumn offensive of 1915, designed by Joffre to pinch out the Noyon Salient with simultaneous French attacks in Champagne and Artois (including Vimy Ridge) and a British attack in Artois between Loos and the La Bassée Canal. Both Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig initially regarded the Loos ground — overlooked by German-held slag heaps (crassiers) and colliery towers, and studded with miners' cottages — as unsuitable for attack. Lord Kitchener over-ruled these reservations for coalition-political reasons: Britain had to be seen to support her French ally, "even if it meant heavy casualties." The attack was the largest British offensive to date and the first mass engagement of Kitchener's New Army divisions. It was referred to at the time as "The Big Push."

The "Scottish battle" characterisation — examined precisely

The characterisation is well-founded but should be stated with precision rather than as slogan. Two of the six attacking British divisions — the 9th (Scottish) and 15th (Scottish) — were New Army formations raised overwhelmingly from Scotland. Beyond them, further Scottish battalions served within the Regular and Territorial divisions. The most careful modern statement comes from Dr Derek Patrick of the University of St Andrews, writing in The Courier: "Thirty-six battalions, half the number that participated in the opening stages of the battle, were from Scottish regiments. In total, more than 30,000 Scots would take part," most in the two New Army Scottish divisions. Every Scottish infantry regiment was represented. The concentration is captured sharply by historian Patrick Watt (writing in The Herald, 27 February 2013): "At Loos, on September 25, 1915, 36 of the 72 attacking battalions were Scottish and of the 12 participating battalions which suffered more than 500 casualties, eight were Scottish."

Two honest caveats belong here, in keeping with the series standard. First, the ranks of "Scottish" battalions were not exclusively Scottish: the kilt and Scotland's martial reputation had broad recruiting appeal, and Englishmen served in Scottish regiments (as Scots served across the wider army). Patrick makes this point explicitly. Second, the round death toll of "over 7,000 Scots killed" — endorsed by the CWGC Foundation and repeated by the Scottish Government's centenary programme — is a modern consensus estimate rather than a precise archival count, and popular versions slip between "Scots killed" and "men in Scottish regiments killed." Notably, National Records of Scotland — the most authoritative Scottish institution on this — pointedly declines to endorse the "7,000 Scots killed" figure, giving instead the British total of "over 60,000" and battalion-level detail (that eight of the twelve British battalions suffering more than 500 casualties were Scottish). The characterisation "the Scottish battle" is therefore justified — by concentration of units and by the depth of impact on Scottish communities — but the precise death toll carries a legitimate caveat.

The first British gas attack and its failures

Loos was the first British use of poison gas in the war, following the German first use at Ypres in April 1915. The decision to use gas offensively was taken on 3 May 1915; Special Companies of the Royal Engineers under Major Charles Foulkes were formed, and a demonstration of a chlorine wave was given at Helfaut on 22 August 1915, attended by Haig and his commanders. Haig regarded gas as a way to compensate for what he considered insufficient artillery. His plan called for the release of some 5,100 cylinders — roughly 140–150 tons of chlorine — over about 40 minutes before the infantry assault, mixed with smoke.

The result was mixed to disastrous, and honesty requires saying so plainly. Release from cylinders depended entirely on a favourable wind. In the IV Corps (southern) sector the gas largely drifted toward the Germans; but in places, and especially on the left of the 9th (Scottish) Division's front in the I Corps sector, the wind was weak or shifted and the gas — heavier than air — blew back or settled into the British trenches, compounded where German shellfire smashed British cylinders. In the 15th (Scottish) Division's centre the cloud "hung back," causing delays and losses among the advancing troops. As firstworldwar.com summarises: "In places the wind blew the gas back into the British trenches, resulting in 2,632 British gas casualties, although only seven actually died." Some estimates suggest more British than German gas casualties were suffered that morning. The gas failed to neutralise the defenders decisively, and combined with a bombardment too short to cut the wire, this set up the slaughter that followed once German machine-gunners manned their parapets.

The reserves controversy and Haig's rise

This is the battle's central command controversy and deserves careful, precise treatment. The southern attack (IV Corps) made real progress on 25 September, capturing Loos and Hill 70 and threatening a breakthrough. To exploit it, reserves needed to be immediately available. But the general reserve — XI Corps, including the newly arrived, untested 21st and 24th Divisions plus the Guards — had been kept under French's own control, positioned well to the rear near Lillers. The New Army divisions had marched over 20 miles on successive nights and arrived exhausted, hungry and disorientated.

Haig had pressed French before the battle to place a strong reserve close behind the attacking divisions. On the day, the mechanism of release was slow: French agreed Haig could have the reserve but delivered the order in person rather than by telephone, and the divisions could not join the fighting until 26 September — by which time the Germans had reinforced their second line. Thrown in on the 26th without adequate artillery support, and in places caught in uncut wire, the two divisions were shattered; one figure records about 8,000 casualties out of 15,000 in a single failed attack. German accounts called the ground the "Leichenfeld von Loos" — the "Field of Corpses" — with one regimental diary noting that "never had the machine gunners such straightforward work to do."

French was genuinely at fault for holding the reserves too far back and for the cumbersome command arrangement. But the historical record here was actively shaped: in a self-serving letter to Kitchener on 29 September, Haig laid out the case against French, claiming his attack had reached an undefended German second line that reserves could have exploited. After the offensive, Haig ensured French was blamed, and French compounded his position by trying, in his official dispatch, to misrepresent when he had agreed to release the reserves. On 27 October 1915 French's own Chief of Staff, Sir William Robertson, told King George V that French should go. In December 1915 French was replaced by Haig as Commander-in-Chief. So the reserves controversy is Established as a genuine command failure but Disputed in emphasis: the surviving narrative that pins nearly all blame on French reflects, in part, Haig's successful campaign to displace him.

Scottish units and casualties — specifics

The two Scottish New Army divisions did well on the first day and paid heavily for it. The 15th (Scottish) Division — comprising 44th (Highland), 45th and 46th (Lowland) Brigades — captured Loos village and Hill 70, the deepest penetration achieved by any of the six divisions on 25 September. It was withdrawn to Mazingarbe having suffered about 6,600 casualties out of 19,212 engaged (a figure from the divisional history by Stewart and Buchan; a slightly higher variant of ~6,896 appears in some sources). The 9th (Scottish) Division captured a foothold on the formidable Hohenzollern Redoubt and lost about 6,000–6,058 casualties in three days (per the divisional history by John Ewing and Edmonds's Official History); among its dead was the divisional commander, Major-General George Thesiger. Together the two Scottish divisions lost on the order of 12,600 men.

Individual regimental tolls were severe: the 7th King's Own Scottish Borderers lost about 611 other ranks out of 950 (and 20 officers), the 8th about 379. The 4th Black Watch, "Dundee's Own," went into action with 21 officers and about 450 men and lost 20 officers and some 240 other ranks; roughly 57% of the battalion's men were killed or wounded on the first day. (Individual regimental histories are treated on the relevant regimental cards, #5–14, and on the divisional cards #21–22; this card cross-references rather than duplicates them.)

Notable individuals bring the human cost into focus. Piper Daniel Laidlaw of the 7th KOSB, 15th (Scottish) Division — "the Piper of Loos" — mounted the parapet under fire and played "Blue Bonnets O'er the Border" to rally his gas-shaken company, earning the Victoria Cross (the first VC won by the KOSB in the war and, by some accounts, the first to a New Army soldier). Lt-Col Angus Douglas-Hamilton of the Cameron Highlanders was killed on 26 September leading the remnants of his battalion forward for the fourth time, and received a posthumous VC. Among the fallen were John Kipling, only son of Rudyard Kipling, killed with the Irish Guards on 27 September (his loss shaping his father's later commemorative work), and the Aberdeen-born war poet Charles Hamilton Sorley, killed by a sniper on 13 October, whose posthumous sonnet "When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead" is among the finest of the war. Loos produced 21 Victoria Crosses in all (six posthumous), several to Scottish soldiers.

Outcome, legacy and commemoration

Loos is generally and correctly assessed as a British failure — a costly defeat despite genuine first-day gains that could not be exploited. Per the British Official History (Edmonds, 1928), British casualties were 59,247 (48,367 in the main attack, 10,880 in the subsidiary), against roughly 26,000 German. It demonstrated that the British could break into German positions but not yet through them, and it exposed shortages of heavy artillery and shells, inadequate wire-cutting, and poor handling of reserves — lessons that fed directly into 1916.

For Scotland the battle became a byword for loss: "hardly a community in Scotland was left unaffected," in Trevor Royle's phrase. Dundee's experience became synonymous with the fate of its battalion at Loos, and the city lights a beacon on the Law annually in memory. The centenary in 2015 saw a Scottish national commemoration in Dundee, services in Inverness and at universities (the University of Glasgow lost 42 of its community at Loos), and a painting presented to the Scottish Parliament. The Loos Memorial, forming the walls of Dud Corner Cemetery near Loos-en-Gohelle — built close to the Lens Road Redoubt captured by the 15th (Scottish) Division — commemorates 20,592 officers and men with no known grave (registers give figures between 20,592 and 20,610). Designed by Sir Herbert Baker with sculpture by Charles Wheeler, it was unveiled on 4 August 1930.

• Loos was the first British use of poison gas — and in places the biter was bit: the wind blew chlorine back into British trenches, causing 2,632 British gas casualties (seven fatal), and possibly more British than German gas casualties that morning.
• The British code-named the gas "the accessory" for secrecy; captured German soldiers had warned the Allies gas was coming before the earlier Ypres attack, but the warnings were not passed on.
• The 15th (Scottish) Division's capture of Loos village and Hill 70 was the deepest penetration achieved by any of the six attacking divisions on the first day.
• Piper Daniel Laidlaw's VC action — piping his company over the top through gas — is one of the most famous individual acts of the war; he later re-enacted it for a 1934 film, Forgotten Men.
• Dud Corner Cemetery takes its name from the large number of unexploded ("dud") shells found in the area after the Armistice.
• Two fathers' grief shaped literary history at Loos: Rudyard Kipling lost his son John and became a driving force in the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission; the CWGC's 1992 identification of John's grave remains disputed by some historians.
• The Aberdeen-born poet Charles Hamilton Sorley, killed at Loos aged 20, was described by Robert Graves in Goodbye to All That (1929) as "one of the three poets of importance killed during the war" (the others being Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen).
• Loos was fought over ground strikingly like industrial central Scotland — pit-heads, slag heaps and miners' rows — which some Scottish soldiers remarked upon.

• "The Scottish battle." Justified but to be stated precisely: 36 of the 72 assaulting battalions and two of six divisions were Scottish, and roughly 30,000 Scots took part. It is not accurate to imply every soldier in a "Scottish" unit was Scottish; the kilt's recruiting appeal drew many non-Scots, and Scots also served throughout the wider army.
• "Over 7,000 Scots killed." A reasonable modern consensus estimate (CWGC Foundation; Scottish Government), but not a precise archival count; popular usage conflates "Scots" with "men in Scottish regiments." National Records of Scotland deliberately avoids the specific figure. Treat as Traditional with caveat.
• The gas attack. Do not present as a triumph: it was the first British use, and it failed in places, gassing British troops. This is Established and should be stated plainly.
• The reserves and French's fall. French genuinely erred, but the enduring "French alone is to blame" narrative was shaped by Haig's self-serving campaign and French's own attempt to misrepresent the timeline. Established as a command failure; Disputed in the apportioning of blame.
• "One-third of the Loos Memorial names are Scottish." Appears in Scottish educational/revision material but could not be confirmed against CWGC, IWM or NRS. Treat as unverified.
• John Kipling's grave. The CWGC's 1992 identification (re-affirmed 2016) is disputed by some battlefield historians (Tonie and Valmai Holt). Flag as contested.
• Relationship to Card #24. This card is the dedicated battle narrative for Loos; the broad war-wide statistics and the "disproportionate Scottish sacrifice" (Patrick Watt 13.07% vs 10.47%) mythbusting belong to Card #24 and are not re-argued here.