The town of Ypres has a long history. There are reports that a community on its site was raided by the Romans in the first century BC. It was in the Middle Ages that Ypres became a prosperous city with a vigorous linen trade with England and a population that grew to 40,000. Wealth and prosperity had its drawbacks and the hostile attention of jealous neighbours and rampaging armies made it necessary to fortify the city. Parts of the early ramparts, dating from 1385, still survive near the Rijselpoort (Lille Gate). Work on the famous Cloth Hall that would become a landmark in the First World War began in the thirteenth century. Over time, the earthworks were replaced by sturdier masonry ramparts and a partial moat.
Ypres was further fortified in the 17th and 18th centuries while under the occupation of the Hapsburgs and the French. Major works were completed at the end of the 17th century by the French military engineer Sebastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban.
It was the First World War that would bring the city to prominence. The town had been held against German attacks in 1914 in the First Battle of Ypres and like Malta or Stalingrad in the Second World War, it became of symbol of defiance. Ypres was the last major town in Belgium that had not been occupied by the Germans and so, to the Belgian people, it represented the last part of their homeland that was free.
Prior to the First World War the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by the major powers, including Britain, through an 1839 treaty and so Germany’s invasion of the country brought the British Empire into the war. However, Ypres was a strategic position during the First World War because it stood in the path of Germany’s planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France from the north. The Allies and particularly the British wanted to hold it because it was a key site to protect the Channel sea ports and associated shipping lanes, and a good point to advance from to seize Ostend and prevent the Germans using this port as a U-boat base.
The Schlieffen Plan, the initial German attack on France through neutral Belgium, had ended in failure at the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. This had forced the Germans to retreat and dig in on the line of the River Aisne where French and British attacks were unable to breach well-sited defences and fighting seemed to descend into a deadlock. In an effort by both parties to regain the initiative, French and German forces made progressive moves northward in vain attempts to outflank and envelop each others’ armies – this push north and west became known as ‘The Race for the Sea’, and eventually it reached its destination, with barbed wire entanglements being constructed to the water’s edge in Belgium. Repeated failures to outflank the enemy ensured the gradual extension of opposing trench lines as combatants sought cover from machine gun and artillery fire. By the end of 1914 the trenches would stretch from the North Sea to the Swiss border.
In early October the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) relocated from the Aisne to Flanders, on the extreme left of the Allied line, and was ordered to probe north to Ypres. This coincided with simultaneous German moves westward and a series of confusing encounter battles ensued in which the larger German forces pushed the British back to an extended and thinly held line. It was during the relentless attacks on Ypres and its outlying villages between 19 October and 22 November 1914 that the famous Ypres Salient was created.
Initially the only British troops at Ypres were the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars (QOOH) – a yeomanry regiment attached to the Royal Naval Air Service which, as a personal initiative of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had landed at Ostend in late August with 3,000 marines and a force of aircraft and armoured cars, in order to bolster the Belgian defence of their channel ports, particularly Antwerp. This force (known as the Antwerp Expedition) was rapidly expanded by two brigades of the Royal Naval Division (RND) and would eventually reach Antwerp only to be driven back on the night of 8 October. Their battle casualties amounted to 195, of which fifty-seven were killed.
However, 936 men became prisoners of war and nearly 1,500 men of the Royal Marines and RND were cut off by the Germans. These men eventually managed to cross the Dutch border to be interned in camps. Among those retreating was the poet Rupert Brooke, who was later to die of blood poisoning on a French hospital ship, moored off the island of Skyros, while on the way to the Dardanelles. The QOOH – nicknamed in the British Army ‘Queer Objects on Horseback’, had been used to augment the Antwerp Expedition with the blessing of Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War. The regiment had had a historical link with the Churchill family since 1892. Winston Churchill had become a member in 1902 and his younger brother, Jack, was serving with them in 1914 when they became the first Territorial Force unit to see action. Until the arrival of the British 7th Division they were the only troops between the German Army and the Channel ports.
The Germans actually managed to enter Ypres and a few local surrounding villages, before being forced back onto the ridges around the city by the British 7th Division which, landing at Zeebrugge on 6 October, posed a threat to the German commander, Erich von Falkenhayn’s rear. Corporal Charlie Parke and 2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, 7th Division reached Ypres on 14 October after a punishing speed march of 103 miles in which the last 40 miles had been covered in a little under 40 hours. To the weary British, Ypres seemed as hrough the New Forest. The quaint old-fashioned Flemish town, lying sleepily by the side of a serene, tree-shaded canal, appeared very remote from war. At every cottage door were rosy-cheeked women with tempting jugs of wine since very few were T-totallers in the British contingent.
The Ypres area has been described as being like a saucer, with the city of Ypres at the centre where the cup sits and the surrounding land to the north and east being the saucer rim. This gives an indication of the advantages of terrain and position that the Germans enjoyed for the greater part of the conflict. The German Army now surrounded the city on three sides, bombarding it throughout much of the war. In the years that followed, the British, French and Allied forces launched costly attacks from the Ypres Salient into the German lines on the surrounding ridge lines.
In the First Battle of Ypres (19 October to 22 November 1914) the Allies recaptured the town from the Germans. The Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to 25 May 1915) is notable or notorious for the first large-scale use of chemical weapons by the Germans. With the assistance of these frightening new weapons they were able to capture high ground to the east of the town.
Ypres was a medieval town known for its textiles; however, it became infamous during the Great War with trench warfare, poison gas and many thousands of casualties. As the German Army advanced through Belgium, it failed to take the Ypres Salient. On 13 October 1914, German troops entered Ypres. On looting the city, the Germans retreated as the British Expeditionary Force advanced. On 22 November 1914, the Germans commenced a huge artillery barrage killing many civilians. Today the battlefields of Ypres contain the resting place of thousands of German and British soldiers. Battle Story: Ypres explores the first and second battles of Ypres through narrative, eye-witness accounts and images.