Today, If Ye Break Faith presents the concluding essay in the four part series on the formation of the Western Front. This particular series has proved quite popular, and if you're just catching it now, it is suggested you read the preceding posts "Last Light", "Sun Down" and "Always Darkest". I'm looking forward to more feedback, and perhaps suggestions for a future explorative series. As always, comments, questions as well as suggestions are most welcome. Feel free to follow If Ye Break Faith through Twitter and Facebook.
The war had been raging for two
months. Not only was it hoped that it
would be over by Christmas, it had be over by then. Strictly by the pace the massed armies, east
and west were destroying each other, victory had to come quickly before wastage
was total. There were less and less
likely conditions which would avoid a long campaign of attrition, and the diminishment
of these conditions would ironically be set in play by decisions made to avoid
such circumstances.
Falkenhayn, upon taking over from Moltke
as German Chief of Staff had two objectives in the west- to protect his exposed
right flank and to take Antwerp.[1]
Antwerp’s capitulation would not only deliver a deep water port into German
hands, but create an unimpeded axis of advance through Flanders and free up the
units there to bolster the numbers that would attempt an exploitation of the
open ground of Flemish Belgium and Northeastern France. His first objective had largely been achieved
by having stopped the Allies at strong defensive positions along the Aisne and
by holding firm a line which was extending southward far beyond the French fortress
of Verdun.
The Allies sought to prevent this and
had their own design to use the same ground to turn the German flank. Costly losses at the Aisne had driven home
the lesson of there being no going through, so had best to be going
around. The threat against Antwerp was a
real concern, particularly to the British.
Their continued existence on the Continent was solely dependent on
having access to the sea. King Albert I of
Belgium, in direct command of his country’s army held as long as he could at
Antwerp, but wisely ordered a withdrawal on the 10th of October when
his rate of casualties caused by the siege proved critical. Now with Antwerp abandoned, “control of the
Channel coast was deemed a strategic priority.”[2]
Field Marshall Sir John French, commanding the BEF began to disposition his forces
around the low ridges of high ground to the east of the town of Ypres. Ypres was “strategically located along the
roads leading to the Channel ports in Belgian Flanders.”[3]
With the French on the right and Albert’s much reduced force on the left,
between the 8-19 of October the BEF occupied thirty-five miles of front in the
centre of this line which due to topography took the shape of a fat finger
pointing towards the Germans.
Flanders is not an ideal place to
conduct military operations. Its ground
is mostly low-lying, prone to flooding and interspersed with ridgelines, hills
and isolated woods. In his next forward
move, Falkenhayn would try to avoid this territory by initially pressing
against the Belgians. Their defeat at
Antwerp had substantially weakened them not only in manpower, but in crucial
supplies of ammunition and much of their artillery had been left behind. On the 20th, the Germans
attacked. King Albert was in a trying
position. His forces were in great peril
of being overwhelmed, the Germans having the right numerical advantage to break
a defensive line so thinly held. If his
army couldn’t hold out, not only would the ports of Dunkirk, Calais and
Boulogne be taken and thus possibly force Britain from the war, but he would
loose what little sliver of his country he had left- and very possibly his
crown as a result. A desperate measure
was called for. With the knowledge he
was saving his country by doing it harm, Albert ordered sluices on the sea
dykes to be opened on the 27th of October, flooding twenty miles of
land between Dixmude and Nieuport to a depth of more than five feet. Now impassible, Falkenhayn would have to find
another way around.
Albert’s actions may have saved his
army, but it caused the Germans to shift their attention to the British who
Doctrine demanded the BEF assume a
defensive stance. The British army had
always entrenched when necessary.
Historian Maj. G Corrigan describes the opposing defensive philosophies
well. The French had assigned so much
importance to their offensive ideology that any entrenchment was viewed as
temporary shelter for use prior to jumping off in an advance. Little care or effort was assigned to their
construction or maintenance. It was
believed to do so would indicate to the men that a long halt was being affected
and would therefore drain the offensive spirit.
Germans “on the other hand...were on someone else’s territory and, once
the Schlieffen plane failed, were content to stay on the defensive while the
Allies tried again and again to evict them.”[5]
The British appraisal, Corrigan notes, was a compromise of the two. They would have to win the war by advancing
against the enemy, but could not do that until they had the strength of numbers
required. Until such time, the men would
be protected within well built trenches.
The conditions for the British at Ypres
were far from ideal from a defensive perspective, “the BEF’s trenches, at best hasty
scratching three feet deep...frequently knee-deep in rain or groundwater (and)
were as yet unprotected by barbed wire.”[6]
Repositioning his men from the flooded uplands and overstretched rail transit
bringing up reserves caused serious delays for Falkenhayn. Thus the British were allowed crucial days in
which to fortify their positions; occupying the best high ground available,
setting up artillery observation in village towers and constructing
strong-points in woods and stone cottages.
From the 31st of October a
protracted and bitter struggle of what became known as the First Battle of
Ypres began. Now the war would begin to
witness battles which had been measured in the span of hours and days become
events counted in weeks and months. It
was set up, more or less by an accident of circumstance. “Until hours before their armies crashed into
each other, neither was expecting to encounter an enemy in force.”[7]
The fighting was confused and close, often devolving to hand to hand combat as
either the Germans or the British sought to gain some sort of advantage during
large skirmishes at one point of the line or another. With copious reserves, the Germans held a
numerical advantage which was greatly offset by the inexperience of fresh and
very young soldiers. Often they failed
to properly exploit gains, or would be brought to a standstill if the attrition
of officers left them leaderless; worse was that these reserve units lacked
competent leadership at all. This
resulted in such poor tactical choices leading to high casualties that the
battle became known as the “Kindermord
von Ypren”, the Massacre of the Innocents at Ypres.[8] The British were in not much better shape as they
may have had the tactical edge of experienced professionals and a strong, deep
defensive line but suffered from a complete exhaustion of reserves.
With
such close and continued contact, headquarters normally removed from fighting
were well within range. At a crucial
point in the opening of battle, a single shell killed or wounded the commanders
and staff of two British divisions who had gathered in a chateau for a
situational conference. [9] Command; and the battle itself would devolve
to smaller units as time wore on as brigades, battalions and companies became
isolated from supporting units. Ypres
became a grinding battle of willpower more than anything else. Through heavy rains along ground already wet
and miserable and days growing colder, villages, woods and shallow trenches
were taken and retaken. For almost four
weeks of assaults and counter attacks, wearied men on both sides continued to
hammer away at each other in a dogged and brutal fashion.
As
lines broke, the gaps were plugged with whatever men were to hand- even cooks
and clerks were desperately put into the line.
“What ultimately saved (the British) at Ypres as earlier at Mons and Le
Cateau was the accuracy and speed of the ordinary British rifleman.” [10] Able to fire at a
terrific rate of fifteen rounds a minute and obliged by a naive enemy advancing
in close order meant that the Tommies inflicted many more casualties than they
themselves suffered.
Nevertheless,
the BEF was shattered. “In each of the
battalions which fought on the Marne and at Ypres there remained, on average,
only one officer and thirty men who had landed in August.”[11] With a total loss of
7,960 killed and 29,562 wounded[12] the British were on
the edge of annihilation. But the
Germans had been dealt a severe blow as well.
Indecisiveness at the highest level of command as to whether priority be
placed in the east or the west contributed to a lack of German momentum on
either front. As winter began to settle
in, offensive action started to taper off.
In the following months Allies and Germans both would dig deeper and
more heavily fortified works to the dual purpose of preventing the enemy from
breaking through and to provide protection for the massive armies now gathering
to make a breakthrough of their own. The
Western Front was made.
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