One of the most fought over areas of France, Ypres was to witness the full devastating force of the opposing German and Entente armies pitted against each other during four years of conflict. As a battleground it would bear the marks of the German army’s heavy artillery bombardments and see the war of manoeuvre descend into entrenchment, with deep furrows cut into the landscape in which men would live in mud for the duration of the war that was to come.
The fighting here saw the armies on both sides transform from those that set out to win a fast-paced ‘Race to the Sea’ into a morass of mass-conscripts forced to embrace the mechanisation of battle and the everyday life of warfare. The ‘Old Contemptibles’ of the British Expeditionary Force were virtually wiped out here to be replaced and replenished by Kitchener’s Army of volunteers and later conscripts. The notion of cavalry charges and ground gains in battle became almost mythical for both armies; and the weapons of war were to change from the cavalry sword to the machine gun, trench mortar and, most controversially, poison gas.
For many German, French, Belgian, British and Commonwealth troops, Ypres would be their baptism of fire in modern warfare.
Click on the links below to read more about the armies at Ypres:
* The Canadian Expeditionary Force at Ypres.
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.