battles of Ypres

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Ypres, battles of (WW I). The medieval centre of the Flanders wool trade, Ypres lies in the centre of a shallow saucer, with higher ground to the north (a complex of ridges including Passchendaele ridge), east (Menin road ridge), and south (Messines ridge), although the sensation of height is scarcely perceptible. The town was an old Vauban fortress, whose ramparts are still visible, although its buildings, including the towering medieval cloth hall, were levelled by four years of German shelling.

Ypres was entered by a German cavalry patrol on 13 October 1914, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrived the next day. The area became important during the ‘Race to the Sea’ as both Germans and Allies extended to the north in the hope of finding an open flank. The first battle of Ypres took place as British and Germans, both attacking, clashed on the axis of the Menin road. It soon became evident that the Germans were in overwhelming strength, and the battle embodied moments when the British and French held on by the narrowest of margins. On 31 October the Germans took Gheluvelt and were checked only by an improvised counter-attack, and much the same happened on 11 November at Nonne Bosschen. The Cavalry Corps defended (though it ultimately lost) Messines ridge with a skill which bore tribute to the British army's pre-war emphasis on dismounted training. The Germans committed newly raised divisions of student volunteers, whose terrible losses (they went forward into the teeth of the BEF's scorching musketry bravely singing patriotic songs) caused the Germans to call the battle the ‘Kindermord zu Ypern’ (the massacre of the innocents at Ypres). Fighting died away at the end of November, with losses equal at around 100, 000 each, leaving a substantial Allied salient bulging out into German lines.

On 22 April the Germans began the second battle of Ypres, attacking the northern flank of the salient between Poelcappelle and Bixschoote, using gas for the first time on the western front. They achieved a breakthrough by mauling two French divisions, but were unprepared to exploit it, and were then checked by desperate resistance in which Canadians played a distinguished part (see Canadian Expeditionary Force). The fighting then became an expensive see-saw of attack and counter-attack, which ended with British withdrawal to a line closer to Ypres and was followed by the loss of Hill 60, south-east of Ypres. In all the Allies lost over 60, 000 men to 35, 000 Germans.

For the next two years the Ypres salient remained one of the most active parts of the western front. In July 1915 the Germans used flame-throwers to gain the crest-line at Hooge on the Menin road, and in the spring of 1916 there was heavy fighting around Mount Sorrel, at the southern end of Sanctuary Wood.

The battles of Ypres, 1914-17. Gas was first used by the Germans at Langemarck in April 1915.
(Click to enlarge)

The salient was chosen as the scene of the principal British offensive of 1917, the third battle of Ypres. Haig had always believed that Flanders, where there were important objectives like the German railhead of Roulers within striking distance, offered better prospects for an attack than the Somme, and was under pressure from the Admiralty to get German submarines off the Flanders coast. The main battle was preceded by the assault of Plumer's Second Army on Messines on 7 June. It was launched—rather too late, for the momentum had been lost—by the attack of Gough's Fifth Army north of Ypres, which began on 31 July. It formed three phases, more distinct to historians than they were to participants. First, in the battles of Pilckem Ridge, Gheluvelt Plateau, and Langemarck, Fifth Army pushed its way into a salient made more than usually boggy by unseasonable weather and shelling which had destroyed the land drainage system. Next, Second Army took over for the battles of Menin Road Ridge, Polygon Wood, and Broodseinde, and made good progress in the crucial central sector. Finally, in the battles of Poelcappelle and Passchendaele the exhausted attackers—British, Australian, and Canadian—fought their way up onto Passchendaele ridge in appalling conditions: the Canadians took the village on 6 November. In all the British lost about 260, 000 men each, although the figures remain contentious. The battle did very serious damage to the morale of combatants on both sides, although on balance it probably hit the Germans hardest, and the conditions in which it was fought make it a byword for suffering.

The battle of the Lys, part of the Ludendorff offensive of 1918, is sometimes called the fourth battle of Ypres. The Allies lost ground around the town, including Mount Kemmel to its south, but retained Ypres.

With the exception of Verdun, there are few landscapes more redolent of war than the Ypres salient. The Menin Gate memorial, cutting through Vauban's ramparts, commemorates 55, 000 soldiers of Britain and her empire who died in the salient and have no known graves, while at Tyne Cot on Passchendaele ridge another 35, 000 are commemorated.

Bibliography

• Liddle, Peter H. (ed.), Passchendaele in Perspective (London, 1997)

— Richard Holmes

Three battles in World War I fought near Ypres, western Belgium, which was a key point of an Allied salient that blocked the Germans from approaching the English Channel. Mainly British and some Canadian forces were engaged against the Germans in all of the battles. The first battle, in late 1914, stopped a German march toward the sea but resulted in the Allied forces being surrounded. The second battle, in the spring of 1915, marked the first occasion on which poison gas (chlorine, by the Germans) was used as a weapon, against the rules of the Hague Convention. Casualties were in the tens of thousands on both sides. The last battle in July to November of 1917, also called the battle of Passchendaele, was the longest and bloodiest. It was fought in torrential rains with a quarter of a million casualties on both sides, and an effective pushback of the German line of only five miles.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.