Is a Big Attack Pending?

Tuesday 2nd March 1915: Rumour seems to be doing the rounds of the trenches in Northern France that a big attack is to be made in the next ten days or so. If so this will be the first major offensive operation since the war became one of continuous trench lines and fortifications last autumn. The war has decidedly assumed the aspect of an enormous siege, hundreds of miles long. The individual combatants change with the miles but the prospect of barbed wire, trenches, machine gun positions and dugouts barely does. Any attack, wherever it is delivered, will need to overcome strong defences held in depth by a determined foe. We fear that the people of Bedfordshire, as of the country as a whole, must brace themselves for large numbers of local men making the final sacrifice or being wounded and needing careful nursing in the days, weeks and months ahead.