Until a short time ago Ypres boasted a relic of warfare against the British. It possessed a flag captured from us in battle. At Ramillies[63] one of the regiments of the Irish Brigade[64] which fought for France managed to seize a British standard, which was proudly preserved in one of the city's convents at the outbreak of the war.
You already know something of the situation and surroundings of Ypres. It stands twenty-three miles from the dunes at Nieuport, on a canal which joins the Yser to the south of the large village of Dixmude. To the south and east of Ypres is a crescent of gentle heights, but for the rest the country is a dead flat land, and the spires of Ypres are a landmark for many a mile of Flemish meadow and marsh. Cobbled roads, skirted by lines of poplars, radiate from the town in all directions. Towards the east run two main highways—the more northerly leading to Roulers, the more southerly to Menin, and thence to Lille.
In Chapter VI. you read of the desperate stand made by the 7th Division between these two highroads, and in Chapter VIII. learned that on 19th October Sir John French had sent the First Corps to its aid. At this time Sir John hoped that an advance might be made to the north-east, and that Bruges and perhaps Ghent might be captured. He thought that Sir Douglas Haig would probably not be opposed by much more than the 3rd Reserve Corps, which he knew had suffered considerably in the earlier fighting, and perhaps by one or two Landwehr divisions. By the 21st he knew better. That day Sir Douglas Haig with the First Corps advanced along the road to Bruges, but could not proceed because the French Territorials on his left had been forced to retire behind the Yser Canal. At the same time the 7th Division between the two highroads and Allenby's cavalry beyond the Ypres-Comines canal were being heavily attacked. Sir John's programme was therefore entirely out of the question. The Allies found themselves outnumbered by three or four to one, and Sir John himself, on the evening of the 21st, declared that the utmost that could be done, owing to the unexpected reinforcements of the enemy, was to hold the positions round Ypres until General Joffre could send a relief of French troops, which could not arrive before 24th October.
Diagram of the Ypres Salient.
The two shadings indicate two stages in the German advance.
Sir Douglas Haig had therefore to halt and hold a line from Bixschoote, close to the Ypres Canal, to Zonnebeke,[65] on the Ypres-Roulers road. The remainder of the line round to Hollebeke was also held by his infantry, and south of Hollebeke Allenby's cavalry linked them up with the Third Corps, which was lying along the line of the Lys towards Armentières. Such was the position of our troops on 21st October. We were holding, you will observe, a bulge round Ypres. Any troops so placed are very insecure. They occupy a kind of wedge thrust into the territory held by the enemy, and this wedge can be attacked on each of its faces and at the jutting angle at one and the same time. If the line is broken anywhere the bulge must give way, and the troops holding it must retire and straighten out their line or suffer destruction.
You may, perhaps, ask why the Germans chose to make a great attack on Ypres. It is not a great railway centre such as Hazebrouck or Béthune; only a single line of railway runs westwards from the city. Nor was it a depôt filled with stores and valuable to the Allies as a base. The reason why the Germans threw their strength against Ypres is that it was the heart of the dangerous bulge or salient which I have just described. If the salient could have been broken through—and the task did not seem to be very difficult—the whole Allied line of defence might have been pushed back beyond Ypres and Armentières, in which case the Allies would not be able to turn the north flank of the Germans.
A frightful series of struggles soon began to rage. Day after day the gray-coated legions of the Kaiser in ever-increasing numbers swooped down on all parts of the salient, and only by almost superhuman endurance were the thin lines of the defence held against them. The line was nearly broken at Zonnebeke; it was actually pierced for a time in the centre at Becelaere, while on the extreme right a most determined assault was made against the cavalry at Kleine Zillebeke. The few reserves available were hurried to the danger points, and then began days of the heaviest possible fighting and of the utmost anxiety. One hundred thousand British, strung out along a line of twenty miles, had to hold back half a million Germans! Nor was this all: the half-million was growing in numbers every day.
