Instead the man-created lagoon – between 18 and 21 miles long, between 13/4 and 21/2 miles wide, and 3 to 4 feet deep – not only prevented the German army from breaking through, but also effectively rendered the frontline in the west a continuous one from Switzerland to the sea. It was the true beginning of four years of deadlock on the Western Front.
As noted also in the introduction, the key location of Nieuport does not stimulate the senses for the casual visitor any more than the Flanders coast did for contemporaries.1 Two canalised shipping channels – the Bruges and Furnes canals, three drainage sluices – the Nieuwbedelf, Nieuwendamme and the North Vaart, and the canalised river Yser merge together. The equestrian monument to King Albert erected in 1938 dominates the scene. But it is the two small monuments that are significant. One is to a Belgian military engineering company; the other to the veteran waterman, Hendrik Geeraert, remembered as the hero of the ‘flooding’. Geeraert, however, is only one of an extraordinary collection of characters involved in a story that remains all but unknown.
As both sides endeavoured to move to the north in search of an open flank following the first allied encounters with German entrenchments on the Aisne – the so-called ‘race to the sea’ – the position of the Belgian army in its ‘national redoubt’ at Antwerp appeared ever more problematic. While Antwerp was the largest port in mainland Europe, its choice as a national centre of resistance owed most to its being suitably equidistant between France and Germany as a symbol of Belgian neutrality. The plan had also been originally adopted in the 1850s when France was the most likely enemy and the most likely direction of invasion was from the south. It certainly made little military sense, lying as it did 50 miles from the sea up the notoriously difficult waterway of the Scheldt, the mouth of which was Dutch territory. Commanded by General Hans von Beseler, the German III Reserve Corps began to bombard the city on 28 September 1914. Heavy German artillery had already demonstrated its potential, smashing supposedly modern Belgian fortifications at Liège in August, and then French defences at Mauberge in early September. The obsolete fortifications of Antwerp presented little obstacle to the formidable array of guns available to Beseler and, under the punishing artillery fire, the Belgians made early preparations for a retreat to Ostend. The British ambassador, Sir Francis Villiers, and his French counterpart were warned on 30 September that a German breach of the line of the outer forts would precipitate withdrawal. In the hope of at least prolonging the defence until the BEF was deployed to the north and might mount a relief, the British Cabinet agreed on 1 October to send the 7th Division if the French commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, also provided a regular division. Despite the French Minister of War, Alexandre Millerand, impressing on Joffre the political necessity of supporting the Belgians, Joffre promised only the 87th Territorial Division and a marine fusilier brigade.
Joffre felt the enterprise doomed from the outset, but the British intention to put in troops exerted pressure. Accordingly, Joffre sent General Paul Pau to report on the situation, in the hope that Pau – elderly, likeable and persuasive – could get the young Belgian monarch to release his field army from the city for operations in conjunction with the French and British to the south. Insisting on 7 October that the real purpose should be to facilitate a junction of the allied armies, Joffre limited the 87th Territorial Division to the Poperinghe area some 70 miles southwest of Antwerp and sent only the marine fusiliers into the city itself. As far as Joffre was concerned, the British desire to save Antwerp to keep the city out of hostile hands was merely ‘traditional dogma’.2 Moreover, having shut itself up in Antwerp when superior in numbers to its opponents, the Belgian army had forfeited any role commensurate with its strength. Napoleon had once suggested that Antwerp was ‘a pistol, pointed at Great Britain’,3 and from the mouth of the Scheldt it was only 60 miles to England's east coast. But, in some respects Joffre was justified, for Antwerp could only have been realistically maintained if the allies had supplied it by sea and thus violated Dutch neutrality. The Dutch had declared the Scheldt neutral on 6 August, though Churchill was quite ready to force its passage.
With the German assault on Antwerp intensifying, the Belgian government was evacuated from the city though no decision was actually taken with regard to the Belgian field army. On 3 October, however, the field army withdrew to a second defensive line, between Termonde and the Nèthe. Albert, who was his own commander-in-chief, was determined to stay to the last and share the fate of the garrison. His prime minister (technically Chief of Cabinet), Baron Charles de Broqueville, and the king's private secretary, Jules Inglenbleek, tried to persuade Albert otherwise. De Broqueville, who doubled as war minister, apparently told Villiers that the army would begin its withdrawal from the city on 3 October, though this was entirely false. While Joffre welcomed the apparent news of a Belgian withdrawal as a means of uniting the allied armies in the field, the reaction in London was very different for no one had seriously expected such a situation to arise so quickly. With the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, absent fulfilling a political engagement at Cardiff, a hasty meeting between the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, the Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, decided to send immediate reinforcements to Antwerp, with Churchill himself also going there. The First Lord had been on his way for a weekend inspection visit to Dunkirk when recalled to London, and appears to have decided on his mission despite the advice of Grey and Kitchener to the contrary. Indeed, it was suggested at the time that even Villiers was not informed of Churchill's mission, and had begun burning his files. Churchill had been concerned about Antwerp and the Channel ports for some weeks, having raised the possibility of sending British Territorials to reinforce the Belgians, and even making the improbable suggestion to transport Russian troops there from Archangel. In early September, however, like the rest of the Cabinet, he had rejected a Belgian request for 25,000 men to be sent to keep open a land corridor into Antwerp, though some heavy naval guns had been supplied to the Belgians.
On arrival at Antwerp, Churchill made an arrangement with De Broqueville. The defence of the city would be prolonged for at least ten days. But, if the British government could not state definitely what steps they would undertake to relieve the city within three days, the Belgians were free to evacuate it, upon which British troops would be sent to Ghent to cover the withdrawal. Having been sent briefly to Ostend by Churchill in late August, a Royal Marine Brigade – many of them aged reservists or new recruits – and the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, the first Territorial Force unit to see active service, had been landed at Dunkirk in early September. On 28 September one of the marine battalions had been sent forward to Lille with the remainder pushing forward to Cassel two days later. Patrols were sent out in buses and on bicycles. The Royal Naval Air Service armoured cars of Commander Charles Samson motored further afield, engaging advanced German cavalry patrols with buccaneering if amateurish enthusiasm. The marines would now be sent to Antwerp with the addition of two naval brigades. The latter would be taken from the newly constituted Royal Naval Division – Churchill's ‘Sea-dogs’ as the former First Sea Lord, Sir John ('Jackie') Fisher, called them4 – drawn from those naval reservists surplus to manning ship requirements on mobilisation, supplemented by New Army volunteers. Unfortunately, they were only partially trained as infantrymen – many had never even fired a rifle – and lacked equipment of all kinds, including ammunition pouches, greatcoats and water bottles: some even reportedly had to slip bayonets through their belts or tie them on with string. Nor did they have any artillery, engineers or transport. Asquith himself considered it ‘idle butchery’ to send the marines to Antwerp, but this did not apparently lead him to make any objection, possibly because he was wrongly informed by Churchill that all recruits would be left behind and only ‘seasoned reservists’ taken.5
The British 7th Division and the 3rd Cavalry Division
were to land at Ostend. The French would also provide the territorial division and marine brigade they had previously pledged. In all, some 53,700 men and 75 guns would be available once all had arrived, the French providing 23,500 men and 40 guns and the British the remainder. In typically extravagant style, Churchill sent a telegram to Asquith on 5 October offering his resignation as First Lord in order to take personal command of the British forces at Antwerp. Asquith indicated he must return to the Admiralty, despite Kitchener's apparent willingness to make Churchill a lieutenant general. Indeed, when Churchill's telegram was read in Cabinet, it produced merely ‘a Homeric laugh’.6 Instead, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Rawlinson was ordered to take command of the British forces at Antwerp and Ostend. With the three days stipulated in Churchill's agreement with the Belgians expiring on 6 October, and without any British troops having thus far reached Ghent, the Belgians began to withdraw to the left bank of the Scheldt. Before leaving Antwerp for Ostend that day, Churchill directed Brigadier General Archibald Paris, acting commander of the Royal Naval Division, that he must not be caught in any capitulation of the city.
Meanwhile, Major General Thompson Capper's 7th Division was disembarking at Zeebrugge. Most recently Inspector of Infantry, Tommy Capper was the epitome of the ‘offensive spirit’. Almost ludicrously brave – he was to be killed at Loos in September 1915 – Capper was certainly not the easiest of superiors, spectacularly falling out with his chief of staff, Hugo Montgomery, in November 1914 and demanding his removal after having already threatened to remove all his three brigade commanders in October. Mindful of his orders not to get shut up in Antwerp, Capper declined to entrain immediately for the city, as the Belgian authorities in Zeebrugge wished. In any case, he soon received Rawlinson's instructions to proceed to Bruges, King Albert having requested that the British secure Ghent and the Belgian line of retreat. No other allied troops had yet appeared. Joffre had the French 87th Territorial Division landed at Dunkirk and then sent it to Poperinghe to cover the Belgian field army's retirement, rather than to relieve Antwerp.
On 8 October, Paris concluded that the defence of Antwerp could not be carried on much longer, and informed the Belgians that, in compliance with his instructions, he would withdraw. Churchill, whom Paris contacted personally by telephone, was furious with the decision, which effectively forced the hand of the senior Belgian commander in Antwerp, General Victor Deguise. Kitchener had already made a similar deduction to Paris and his orders for the withdrawal of the Royal Naval Division crossed with Paris's call to London. Unfortunately, three battalions of the 1st Naval Brigade totalling 1,479 men lost contact with the remainder of the force and, rather than surrender to the Germans, marched into internment across the Dutch frontier. Part of the rearguard battalion of the Royal Marine Brigade was also forced to surrender on 9 October, some 936 marines and seamen as a whole falling into German hands. Antwerp city with 26,000 Belgian troops was formally surrendered on 10 October, freeing Beseler to march on Zeebrugge and Ostend, the latter being occupied on 15 October. Beseler's first attempt to force the Belgian positions on the Yser failed on 18 October. Nieuport, with the vital locks and sluices that controlled the drainage of the low-lying area next to the sea, thus remained in Belgian hands.
To the southeast, Dixmude, not much more than a large village, was held by the French marine fusilier brigade commanded by Rear Admiral Pierre Ronarc'h. Ronarc'h was a short and sturdy 49-year-old Breton, who had seen land-based service in the China Relief Expedition of 1900 and was the youngest general officer in the navy. Composed of some 6,000 surplus seamen – mostly Breton reservists – rather than trained marines, and hastily put together in just two weeks, the brigade had previously been intended for the defence of Antwerp but, as with the French Territorials, Joffre had had no intention of committing it to a relief operation. According to one contemporary French author, Dixmude was to become a ‘raft of suffering at the entrance to the delta of marshes, watched over by ancient windmills with shattered wings’.7
King Albert, who had been persuaded finally not to stay in the city by his Bavarian-born Queen, Elisabeth, left Antwerp on horseback in the company of Pau. He had decided to lead his army towards the coast since there were clearly German forces between the Scheldt and the Lys. Albert also distrusted the French and preferred to keep in touch with the British, though he and his military adviser, Captain Commandant Emile Galet, had placed too much faith in the British ability to sustain the defence of Antwerp. Above all, Albert believed it vital to remain on Belgian soil. His small army, however, was close to collapse.
Prior to 1909 the Belgian army had been a professional one of long-service volunteers, conscription only being used to maintain a strength of some 40,000 men. The Flemish Catholics who had dominated government for much of the period since 1870 had been anti-militarist and opposed to allowing Catholic youths to mix with Walloons, who might be tainted with socialism. Growing European tensions resulted in an increase in the size of the army in 1902 and, just a few days before his death in 1909, Albert's uncle, King Leopold II, had signed a new conscription law. Further legislation in 1913 then extended the reach of conscription. The intention was to raise the strength of the army progressively to about 100,000 men in peacetime, with a field army upon mobilisation of 150,000; a garrison army for the key fortresses of Antwerp, Liège and Namur of 130,000; and an available reserve of 60,000 men. In the event, the Belgian field army in August 1914 comprised 117,000 men in six infantry divisions and a cavalry division, and some 130,000 garrison troops. The verdict of the French military attaché in 1909 was that the Belgian army would prove ‘if not inoffensive, at least of little danger to the invaders’. Three years later, his view was unchanged. In July 1914 his successor also reported that the army was ‘not capable of doing much’, and that the Belgian people themselves did not have the necessary ‘feeling of abnegation and of sacrifice’ to make a fight of it.8
The uncertain state of relations with France as well as Germany, and the failure of pre-war negotiations even with Britain, resulted in the army's divisions being widely scattered immediately before the German invasion. Thus, in August 1914, despite the representations of the army's chief of staff, 1st Division watched the coast from Ghent, 2nd Division was at Antwerp, 3rd Division facing the German frontier at Liège, 4th and 5th Divisions were covering the French frontier from Namur and Mons, and 6th Division and the cavalry covering Brussels. These seven divisions had been confronted by 34 divisions from the German First and Second Armies. The last fort at Liège fell on 17 August – the Germans had actually expected to take it in just 48 hours – and the last fort at Namur on 25 August, but most of the field army had managed to make it back to Antwerp by 20 August. With the refusal of the British to send troops to keep open the land corridor from Antwerp south of the Scheldt to the sea, the Belgians had been compelled to detach the 4th and 6th Divisions from the Antwerp defences for the purpose. Attempted sorties from the city then led to heavy casualties and declining morale. The bombardment only added to the defenders’ woes, one describing ‘a distant rumbling’ swelling into a roar and ending ‘with a frightful detonation which moved and shook the whole fort’. He continued, ‘We went through this moment of indescribable agony regularly every seven minutes, and every time each of us asked himself whether the shell that was coming was the one that was going to crush him to death.’9 The Germans penetrated the Nèthe line on 5 October, leaving no intact line of defence apart from the old inner ring of forts. Two days later, they were across the Scheldt at Schoonaerde, severely restricting the corridor by which the Belgians could escape the city. Significantly, when Deguise surrendered to a German colonel at Fort Sainte-Marie on 10 October, only the commandant of the fort, an NCO and a private accompanied him. The Germans asked where the rest of the expected 400-strong garrison were, and when Deguise pointed to the only two who had remained with him, the colonel ‘very politely refrained from any comment’.10
On 9 October, General Pau presented a de
mand from Joffre that the Belgian troops should not retreat to the coast. Rawlinson, De Broqueville and the Belgian deputy chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Maximilien Wielemans, attended a meeting at Ostend on the following day. Pau attempted to persuade King Albert to give up personal command of his army and send it into France to operate between Calais and St Omer with Boulogne as its base. Formerly head of De Broqueville's military cabinet, the Francophile Wielemans had effectively been appointed head of the Belgian General Staff on 6 September, when De Broqueville managed to persuade Albert to remove both the existing chief of staff, Lieutenant General Antoine de Selliers de Moranville, and his deputy, Baron Louis de Ryckel. When rebuffed, Pau insisted that the Belgians mount an offensive towards the line Poperinghe–Ypres–Poelcapelle after 48 hours’ rest. This Albert also resisted, despite De Broqueville's support for the French general, on the grounds that the army was incapable of offensive operations without more rest. By this time, too, Albert, who already enjoyed a stormy relationship with De Broqueville, had taken a violent dislike to the French military attaché at his headquarters, Eugène Génie, whom he described as an untrustworthy dog. Génie's predecessor, Colonel Aldebert, had resigned when Albert had declined to follow his advice and had retired with his army into Antwerp. At least the Belgian ministers did agree to ask the French government to extend their hospitality to them by allowing them to instal a government in exile at Le Havre, whence they proceeded without Albert on 13 October.
The Making of the First World War Page 3