IMPORTANCE OF LA BASSEE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1381, 1 April 1915, Page 4

IMPORTANCE OF LA BASSEE.

It is near La Bassee, wbich has been for months the centre of strife, that Field-Marshal Sir John French’s force is said to end and General Joffre’s army commences. The district has been a seething swirl of fighting. Givenchy, Guinchy, and Vermelles, villages to the west, have all been scenes of sanguinary strife, and violent efforts have been made to push past a line running, approximately, from north-west to south east ol La Basse. Here the Germans were in strong force, protecting the La Bassee Canal and the network ot railways behind It, and holding their line of communication to the north-east with their bases further eastward. They had been driven back to this position from Givenchy and Guinchy by sterling Anglo-French attacks. La Bassee is an important strategical point. Roads and railways converge there, and the La Bassee Canal runs due east and west 61 it, and about five miles to the east turns north, while another of these waterways runs due south. Festubert, Givenchy, Guinchy and Vermelles, where the heaviest fighiug was three months ago, are all on a line about four miles west of the town. Neuve Chapelle, which is now in British hands—we held it before and lost it—lies almost due north, about six miles away from La Bassee, and a mile and a-half north-east of Neuve Chapelle again is Brelsemil, while about three miles to the south east of Neuve Chapelle is the Bois du Riez, a thicklywooded district, that is close to the railway line that runs south from Aubers and theu curves outward and eastward to join up with the railways that the Germans have been so vigorously defending. The British victory at Neuve Chapelle put them in command of at least three new Hues of railway, two main roads, and an additional section of the canal.