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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.
Bibliography
— Richard Holmes
| US Military Dictionary: Battles of Ypres |
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.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: battles of Ypres |
Bibliography
See A. Farrar-Hockley, Death of an Army (1967); E. N. Gladden, Ypres, 1917 (1967).
| 1st earl of Ypres John Denton Pinkstone French (English military leader) | |
| In Flanders Fields (Themes) (poem) | |
| 1st Earl Douglas Haig Haig (English military leader) |
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