Our losses were comparatively small, though some brave men
had died, including Major Willie Redmond, whose death in Wytschaete
Wood was heard with grief in Ireland.
Ludendorff admits the severity of the blow:
"The moral effect of the explosions was simply staggering. . . The
7th of June cost us dear, and, owing to the success of the enemy
attack, the price we paid was very heavy. Here, too, it was many days
before the front was again secure. The British army did not press its
advantage; apparently it only intended to improve its position for the
launching of the great Flanders offensive. It thereupon resumed
operations between the old Arras battlefield and also between La
Bassee and Lens. The object of the enemy was to wear us down and
distract our attention from Ypres."
That was true. The Canadians made heavy attacks at Lens, some of which
I saw from ground beyond Notre Dame de Lorette and the Vimy Ridge and
the enemy country by Grenay, when those men besieged a long chain of
mining villages which girdled Lens itself, where every house was a
machine-gun fort above deep tunnels.
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