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The First Battle of Ypres:
Where All Roads Led in October 1914

Critical Locations for the First Battle of Ypres Highlighted
See expandable map in right column for more detail.

In the fall of 1914, the new German chief of staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, decided to make a major push to capture the channel ports, since without them the British Army could neither be supplied nor evacuated, if that proved necessary. To accomplish this he directed two armies, his Fourth and Sixth to Flanders. The Allies, still thinking on the scale of the Race to the Sea to date, were late in appreciating the size of this approaching German steamroller. They would find themselves outnumbered in the sector through the end of the year. The Allies, though, were able to improvise a mixed defending force of Belgian, French, British, and Indian Army troops. Their decisive action to foil the enemy's plan would be known at the "First Battle of Ypres," which, for our purposes here, excludes the fighting to the north along the Yser section, and to the south from around Armentiéres to the La Bassée Canal. The area would prove to be a unique and challenging battlefield.

The Holt's Ypres battlefield guide describes peculiar terrain around Ypres:

The area in which the British found themselves was known as "Flanders," a centuries-old word meaning "flooded land." The town itself sits on a wet plain astride a complex of waterways designed to drain the surrounding land. Beyond that, running in a broad sweep clockwise around Ypres from Passchendaele in the northeast via Messines in the south to beyond Kemmel in the southwest is a low ridge that puts the town at the centre of a natural amphitheatre.

After the desperate struggle of 1914, while the British Army held the town and some variable amount of the surrounding countryside, the Germans occupied the heights, which defined and constrained the "Salient" surrounding Ypres and from which they would observe everything that moved in the Salient for much of the next four years.

In mid-October, it was the British cavalry that first saw the importance of the terrain around Ypres when they occupied the high ground to the south of the town. Shortly after, one of the newly arrived British divisions, the 7^th, commanded by General Henry Rawlinson, was sent to join the British 3^rd Infantry and 2^nd Cavalry Divisions blocking the strategic Menin Road east of Ypres and found themselves looking at Passchendaele Ridge. Meanwhile, the Allies along the coast to the north fought off the German Fourth Army, commanded by the determined Duke of Württemberg. But suddenly, this most northern section of the Western Front was effectively shut down when the coastal area of Belgium was flooded. Deflected to the south, the Fourth Army would attack the British forces north of Ypres around a village called Langemark on 21 October. The Fourth Army, however, was made up of older reservists and a few battalions of youthful barely trained "student" battalions, who were ill-prepared to go against entrenched British Regulars. In the latter part of the battle, the decisive moments would come farther south, in the center of the Salient on either side of the Menin-Ypres Road.

The BEF Heading for Ypres

For this presentation, we will be focusing at the fighting in three key locations: Langemark in the north, Messines Ridge south of town, and east of Ypres, centering on the Menin Road. These dimensions of the battle overlap in both time and space, so our explanations here will necessarily be simplified to cover the big picture. The First Battle of Ypres seems maddeningly complex and chaotic to understand and filled with bad luck, missed opportunities, and startling heroics.

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The First Battle of Ypres: Messines Ridge,
15 October – 2 November 1914

Indian Troops Called in to Defend Messines Ridge

Immediately south of Ypres rises a five-mile-long spur that commands the open territory to both the west and east to a considerable distance. This ridge starts just at the point where the southern part of the salient's bulge emerges. Atop it sit three villages, St. Eloi, Wytschaete, and Messines. Messines Ridge, as it came to be known, would in 1917 be the site of one of the most spectacular events in military history. In October 1914, no one knew of this future fame, but the riders of General Edmund Allenby's recently created Cavalry Corps clearly saw that its possession was the key to the southern defenses of Ypres. At this point, the Race to the Sea melded into the series of actions later known as the First Battle of Ypres. The actions around Messines would overlap and impact nearly all the action to the north during the First Ypres.

By the 18^th the partly dismounted Cavalry Corps flanked by two infantry divisions were positioned on the eastern slope of the ridge. However, the two cavalry divisions each contained only half the manpower of a British infantry division, while the accompanying Royal Horse Artillery was simply no match for the approaching German forces. Further, at this point neither BEF Commander Sir John French and his staff, nor sector coordinator Ferdinand Foch. had grasped the enemy's intentions and the massing of forces just over the horizon. Their orders for the day were for their small, under-gunned forces to advance east. For three days, the advance proceeded eastward of Messines and Ploegsteert Wood, involving only light skirmishing. The Germans were building up their manpower for the push to the channel, which would be launched on 29 October.

Over the next week, the sheer mass of the advancing German Sixth Army drove the cavalrymen back to Messines Ridge, where thinned-out units combined with French reinforcements and some newly arrived Indian Army battalions made a stand. At 0530 on 29 October the Germans opened a broad offensive from north of the Menin Road to Messines. The 1^st Cavalry Division repulsed German attacks against the town of Messines, but further north on the ridge things were dire, despite French reinforcements sent by Foch. The next day the II Bavarian Corps renewed the attack on Messines in the evening and broke into the town at 0430 the following morning. In the local area, about 6,000 Germans were engaging less than 900 of the dismounted cavalrymen. After extensive house-to-house fighting the British troops withdrew. Reinforcements arrived around noon and tried to regain the town, but were unsuccessful. Farther north at Wytschaete, a similar pattern developed, with outnumbered British troops losing the attritional battle as both sides experienced heavy casualties.

London Scottish Territorials Decimated at Messines Withdrawing

Wytschcaete fell at 0245 on 31 September and attempts by French forces to regain it failed. With both key positions on Messines Ridge in enemy hands, the decision was made to withdraw Allied forces from the high ground. To safeguard their retirement, the British shelled Messines to prevent a close pursuit. The French 32^nd Division passed through the exhausted retreating British and secured a defensible position west of Messines Ridge.

Things quieted down after 2 November all along the new front around the Ypres Salient. Except for a successful breakthrough at St. Eloi that was quickly halted, for the next week German efforts concentrated on artillery work to batter the town of Ypres and the field fortifications springing up around it. On 10 November, the German Army launched what turned out to be their last offensive action in the west in 1914. It did not provide pressure around the new line west of Messines, however. This position would remain stable until 7 June 1917 when Messines Ridge would be the site of the most spectacular demonstration of mine warfare in military history.

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The same day also saw a French counterattack, launched by the 17^th Division of IX Corps. The attack was launched from the front held by the 2^nd Division. Foch had hoped for British support during his offensive, but his request didn’t reach General Haig until 0200 on 23 October, only seven hours before the attack was expected to begin. The French attack itself failed, but the French division replaced the British 2^nd Division in the front line. The next day the 1^st Division was also relieved, this time by two French territorial brigades. Often forgotten in summaries of the battle that focus on the bravery of the Old Contemptibles of the British Army, it was the French reinforcements who finally stabilized the line in front of Langemark.

An action at Langemark in the later stages of First Ypres added much to the mythic heritage of the war. The German reserve units attacked the well-ensconced positions of the enemy between Bixschote and Noordschote over open terrain on 10 November 1914 and suffered heavy losses. More than 10,000 German soldiers were wounded or killed in a battle that had no military significance. To conceal the disaster on the Western Front, the OHL published a famous official communiqué on 11 November 1914, which announced misleadingly that: "Westwards Langemarck young regiments rushed forward under the song 'Deutschland, Deutschland über alles', advancing against the first line of the enemy and taking it." The losses of these "Student Battalions" came to symbolize German heroism, patriotism, and a spirit of sacrifice, accentuated in the increasingly embellished accounts of how German troops had assaulted English machine guns without cover.

Sources: "Battle of Langemark," History of War Website; 1914-1918 Online

The First Battle of Ypres: Down the Menin Road
19 October – 22 November 1914

At three dates during the larger battle, the tide of victory turned on actions at three locations near where the extreme eastern boundary of the salient crossed the Menin Road: Polygon Wood, Gheluvelt Chateau, and Nonne Bosschen. Here we will focus on these key struggles in their chronological order.

Some of the Old Contemptibles Fighting at Ypres in 1914

Polygon Wood

All battles are important, certainly to those who fought them. Moreover, the first battle in Polygon Wood was noteworthy as another of those fleeting opportunities for the Germans to push through a weak spot in the Allied forces, which they failed to exploit. Polygon Wood was on the northern side of the salient held by the British. On the morning of 24 October, the German XXVII Reserve Corps launched an attack to reduce the salient using four regiments of their 54^th Reserve Division, supported by artillery, attacking the British 21^st Brigade. The line south of Zonnebeke had been thinned due to movement of units of the 2^nd Division to support a French counterattack to the west. This left just the 21^st Brigade to defend Polygon Wood, five miles due east of Ypres and a few hundred yards south of Zonnebeke, and the only geographical barrier to a German assault on Ypres itself.

The two platoons forming the right of the Wiltshires defending the southern edge of Reutel were overwhelmed by attacks in their front, flank, and rear at about 0800. Germans in the village of Reutel, on the right flank and even behind the Wiltshires, attacked in force, while the rest of the Wiltshires were fully engaged at the front, and shot their way down the trenches from right to left, capturing what remained of the companies, the casualties exceeding 450 men. Brig. Gen. Watts, commanding the 21^st Brigade, reported to the 7^th Division headquarters the desperate straits of the Wiltshires and the 2^nd Royal Scots Fusiliers (who had already fallen back). The division commander immediately took from his cavalry reserve at Hooge the only unit available, the 1/1^st Northumberland Hussars (known familiarly in the Army as "The Noodles") to check further enemy progress through Polygon Wood. Advancing dismounted, they stopped the Germans, who had paused—apparently unaware of the breakthrough they had made—long enough for the 2^nd Warwicks, detached from the 22^nd Brigade, to join them and this ad hoc force then drove the Germans back, suffering nearly 300 casualties, including the senior officer Lt. Col. W.L. Loring of the Warwicks.

The next day, with the Germans still holding the northern half of the wood, the 1^st Irish Guards and the 2^nd Grenadier Guards, from 4^th Brigade, 2^nd Division, were ordered to clear them out. The scene was later described as "a slaughterhouse." During the early hours of the 26^th, these two battalions were reinforced by the 3^rd Coldstream Guards, and all attacked again. However, the Germans held their ground and the action was over. Three days later, though, the German Army would be back in the area with their maximum effort of the First Battle of Ypres.

Gheluvelt Chateau

The grounds of Gheluvelt Chateau was where the war of movement on the Western Front stopped. Afterward, there would be no big breakthroughs until 1918, and 41 months of trench warfare would ensue. Launched at 0530 on 29 October, the German's big push would fall on the Gheluvelt crossroads which was located at the junction between the British 1^st and 7^th Divisions. Covered by fog, the German attackers advanced aggressively, taking many captives. As at Polygon Wood earlier, they did not seem to understand the opportunity presented to them. In any case, their capture of the crossroads gave them an excellent staging point for further attacks and an observation post for their artillery. The German commander planned to renew the attack the next morning, shifting the axis of attack south of the Menin Road. The 30^th ended with progress in the south, Messines Ridge would fall in a day or two, and with the defending British line thinned out. The next morning, 31 October, the attack shifted back to the north with German artillery pounding the British 1^st Division dug in just west of the village of Gheluvelt. With the utter destruction of the Second Welch Regiment, the road to Ypres and the Channel opened.

By mid-day on 31 October 1914, there were no more flanks, just one last gap in the entire line from the Swiss border to the English Channel where a breakthrough seemed possible. Shortly before noon the line of the British 1^st Division was broken at Gheluvelt. If at that moment German reinforcements available close at hand could thrust through the gap and spread out fanwise, they could have rolled up the defenders on either flank in their rear and simply broken the cohesion of the British in Flanders to pieces. The impulse of retreat began to seize the British troops. Already men and guns were streaming back toward Ypres. The Germans quickly assembled 13 battalions for a final follow-through attack. .

Gheluvelt Chateau Today

General Charles FitzClarence, commanding the British Army 1^st Brigade, was riding nearby and saw the deteriorating situation. At Polygon Wood north of Gheluvelt, he found the 2^nd Worcestershires, part of the reserve of the 2^nd Division on the north, and ordered them to counterattack immediately. This movement had scarcely begun when a shell burst in Hooge Chateau, where the staff of both divisions had assembled for a conference, and practically destroyed them.

But the Worcestershires — a tiny force of eight officers and 360 men — swept all before them nonetheless. They fell upon their adversaries, who were mostly Bavarians, and drove them back in confusion from the chateau grounds. The line was reestablished. The Western Front of the Great War was de facto completed. It would not move dramatically until the first Ludendorff Offensive of 1918. General FitzClarence, sadly, did not have much longer to live. He died in the last big action, on 11 November 1914 in fighting along the Menin Road, where many more would fall in the remaining four years of war.

Nonne Bosschen

The German Army, though, had not quite given up on breaking through at Ypres. The Fourth Army was ordered to prepare another assault over a broad front. On 11 November, after an intense bombardment, their best advance was just north of the Menin Road. They captured Gheluvelt Chateau and they pushed almost a mile to Nonne Bosschen, a small wooded area next to Polygon Wood. Once again, however, counterattacks drove the Germans back. The most famous of these is commemorated with the painting shown at the very top of this issue. At 1400 hours, the 2^nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, accompanied by a company of the Northamptonshire Regiment and the 5^th Field Company, Royal Engineers who did not want to be left out of the action, moved forward to clear Nonne Boschen of the 1^st Prussian Foot Guard.

After a final attack on 17 November, German forces moved into a defensive mode in the west and sent available troops to the Russian front. Sporadic fighting continued until 22 November, when the arrival of winter forced an end to the battle. The Allies claimed a victory. Yet, both sides had lost many of their finest soldiers. The generals had discovered modern industrial war was a man-eater. If ever there was a time to invoke diplomacy to bring the war to an end, this was it. But no one was ready for that. A month later, the Ypres battlefield would be the site of the most famous episode of the 1914 Christmas Truce.

This 47-minute presentation is one of the six episodes presented by ITV on British television in 2005 collectively named The Great Battles of the Great War. I've seen a number of Gallipoli presentations in the past and this is broader in its scope than any I've encountered. For instance, it begins at nearby Troy explaining why the straits have been so important historically. Then, it gives a detailed discussion of how Turkey managed to decide to join the Central Powers. From this base of knowledge, it describes the naval and land campaigns as they unfolded and successively failed for the Allies. My only disappointment is that the producers did not point out what I've concluded after my own visits to Gallipoli—that the whole expedition was ill conceived, doomed to failure, and beyond the operational capabilities of the invaders at the time. Nevertheless, it's an excellent introduction to one of the most famous military events of the 20^th Century. Almost forgot—it uses present-day camera work in conjunction with historic photos to show just how large the Gallipoli Peninsula is and how disconnected the various forces at Cape Helles, Anzac, and Suvla Bay turned out after each landing got bogged down.

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