The Making of the First World War

by Ian F W Beckett

  Albert had agreed, on 12 October, to accept general directions from the French High Command, or Grand Quartier Général (GQG), on the same basis as did the BEF, namely the right to retain independence if it was considered that national interests were at stake. On the same day as his ministers left Ostend, Albert issued a proclamation to his army, indicating that anyone who spoke of retreat would be considered a traitor to his country. On 15 October, when his army reached the line of the Yser, Albert also met every divisional commander to warn that they would be dismissed if they abandoned their positions. The following day, Albert proclaimed that anyone fleeing would be shot, any officers claiming sickness would be court martialled and all staff officers would be sent to the front. Had the worst come to the worst, however, Albert envisaged withdrawing the remnants of his army, now down to only 82,000 effectives, to Britain rather than to France.

  There was then a meeting at Furnes on 16 October between Albert and Ferdinand Foch, newly tasked by Joffre with co-ordinating the allied armies in the north. Buzzing with his customary energy and theatricality, the 62-year-old Foch had already berated Wielemans and other Belgian staff officers for continuing to retreat, before he went to see the king: Foch's own officers heard him repeatedly shouting ‘Attaque, attaque’. According to Albert's account of the subsequent meeting, Foch asked whether the Belgians would continue to resist, to which the king replied that they would, but that a major effort was not possible and that help was needed. Foch, who insisted the German forces in the area were second-class formations, promised help within forty-eight hours though it was not until 23 October that the 42nd Division actually arrived. Even then Albert did not believe his own army capable of an offensive and he deplored the continuing French commitment to such a course of action. Nonetheless, Foch found Albert far more resolute than any of his subordinates though he wrote to Joffre that it would be best to have some French troops on the left of the Belgians, hence Joffre's readiness to despatch the 42nd Division under a taciturn and imperturbable Corsican, Paul Grossetti. On one occasion, indeed, Grossetti was to be found during the subsequent battle on the Yser calmly directing his men while sitting on a chair in the middle of a crossroads under fire. According to the account of the only Frenchman present with Foch when he met the king, Lieutenant Colonel Brécard, Albert expressed his high regard for Foch, but an account by Galet suggests Albert had a less laudatory opinion of the Frenchman and his demands.

  In the meantime, Rawlinson's two divisions – now formally constituted as the British IV Corps – were ordered to hold Ghent and Bruges for as long as possible, then retire on the line St Omer–Dunkirk. With the Belgian field army that had escaped Antwerp beginning to reconcentrate around Ostend and Dixmude, then retiring on the line Dixmude–Furnes with its base at Dunkirk, Rawlinson began to pull back from Ghent, as there was at least a 10-mile gap between him and the Belgians. His subsequent orders from the commander-in-chief of the BEF, Field Marshal Sir John French, to advance to Ypres, which he reached on 14 October, to link with Lieutenant General Edmund Allenby's cavalry arriving from the Aisne in advance of the rest of the British forces, then opened a new gap. With the BEF now set to advance to the northeast in the hope of driving a wedge between Beseler and the rest of the German army, the Belgians completed their withdrawal behind the Yser.

  The Germans, too, were redeploying to the north and there was increasing contact as the BEF pushed eastwards from Ypres. On 23 October the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, demanded greater efforts from his principal commanders in the north, Duke Albrecht of Württemberg of the German Fourth Army and Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria of the German Sixth Army, who happened to be the Belgian queen's uncle. Falkenhayn viewed their gains thus far as purely tactical. Prompted by his chief of staff, Albrecht concluded that, while opportunities should still be taken to seize significant ground, the offensive in front of Ypres should be halted, with the effort now directed further north against the Belgians and French. Both German army commanders were aware that losses among trained officers and NCOs were still reducing the effectiveness of their reserve formations. Accordingly, the Fourth Army made a major assault on Dixmude on the evening of 24 October. Ronarc'h held on, repulsing some fifteen separate attacks over a period of five hours. He doubted whether his men could hold out for much more than twenty-four hours given his losses and his men's fatigue. The Belgians, too, were at the limit of their moral and physical resistance and there were no reserves available: by 31 October, the Belgian army had declined to just 34,161 effectives, a loss in just twelve days of a third of those who had escaped from Antwerp.

  Another effort was being made by Beseler further north on the Yser. He had been attempting to cross the river since 18 October. A relatively narrow and sluggish stream, the Yser had only low banks, though the one on the western side was higher than that on the eastern bank and there were only eight places where it was bridged. The German effort was hampered by fire from Royal Navy monitors, which persuaded Beseler that it was not possible to cross the river at Nieuport. Elements of the XXII Reserve Corps had therefore been brought up to assist Beseler at Dixmude. On 24 October, however, having previously been restricted to operating at Nieuport, Grossetti's French 42nd Division reinforced the Belgians, with instructions to hold ‘with or without the Belgian army’.11 Beseler was checked, though not before he had got across the Yser. On the following day, however, the 43rd Reserve Division broke into Dixmude in a flurry of street fighting, some 20 to 30 shells a minute falling on the defenders. According to one Belgian account reproduced in the German semi-official history of the battle for Ypres, the Germans had attacked ‘with the howls of wild beasts; lusting to massacre, they tread the wounded under foot and stumble over the dead: and, though shot down in hundreds, they keep coming on. Then follow isolated fights with bayonets and the butts of rifles: some are impaled, others strangled or have their skulls bashed in.’12 There were a number of documented atrocities, with at least 161 Belgian civilians slaughtered out of hand in Dixmude: the episode was reminiscent of the many earlier German atrocities committed during the original invasion of Belgium.

  The ground, impeded by wide dykes and thick hedges, was generally between the high and low water level and extremely swampy, hindering the German attempt to bring up ammunition and supplies, and they were driven out of Dixmude. The Belgians, however, had taken heavy losses and the Dixmude–Nieuport railway embankment was now seen as the last possible position that could be held. As a result, preparations were made to break the locks and allow the sea to flood the approaches to Nieuport. Foch later claimed that he had suggested the line of the embankment for a last stand, and also that he had prevented the Belgians from retreating even farther. King Albert countered that such a retreat had never received his agreement.

  There are various versions of the origins of the inundation policy. Foch was one who claimed the initiative, allegedly suggesting it to the Belgians on 25 October and seeking Joffre's authorisation on the following evening. Foch had certainly previously recommended flooding the area in front of Dunkirk, orders for which were suspended when the Belgians objected and it was felt too difficult to evacuate civilians. Matters were already in hand, however, before Foch's intervention, which actually was confined to mentioning the plans for Dunkirk. The chief lockmaster in Nieuport, Gerard Dingens, had supposedly raised the possibility on 19 October, while a young Belgian officer, Commandant Delarmoy, was also credited with suggesting the scheme earlier. By contrast, Albert's military adviser, Galet, credited the idea to Captain Commandant Prudent Armand Nuyten of the Belgian General Staff, formerly a professor of military administration and law at the Belgian military academy, who also selected the railway embankment as a suitable last line of defence. It should also be noted that the Belgians had released floodwater earlier in defence of Antwerp and also of the town of Berlaere.

  A naturalised Belgian born in the Netherlands, the 65-year-old Dingens comes across from the contacts he had with
British and Belgian officers as somewhat self-important. There is no doubt that he was a prominent and well-connected citizen in Nieuport. His attitude towards those who questioned him about inundating the countryside was invariably one of its impossibility, perhaps because he did not wish to be held responsible for destroying farmland. The Flemish-speaking Nuyten initially met Dingens on 13 October to ask some questions about the locks, but without apparently revealing any notion of opening them. As it happened, unidentified British officers from Rawlinson's staff had also questioned Dingens at Nieuport, as early as 10 October, about the possibility of flooding the area south of the Bruges Canal, as a means of isolating Ostend. One of these officers was almost certainly Colonel Tom Bridges, who had been acting as a liaison officer between the BEF and the Belgians. Three days later, Bridges raised the idea of flooding the low-lying polders around the Yser in a meeting with Rawlinson and his Belgian liaison officer, Captain Commandant de Lannoy. Significantly, Bridges suggested that Nuyten be asked to examine the problem. Rawlinson then formally proposed it on 15 October. On 17 October a Belgian engineer tasked with the defence of the lower Yser, Captain Robert Thys, similarly suggested flooding the area east of the Yser as a means of preventing a German advance. The son of a railway entrepreneur who had made a fortune in the Congo, Thys had earlier resigned his active commission to join his father's firm and supervise hydroelectric projects in the Congo: he had then immediately returned to the Colours when the Belgian army was mobilised on 31 July 1914. Wielemans was certainly also shown papers by a magistrate in Furnes, Emeric Feys, on the flooding of the area in the 1793–94 campaign during the French Revolutionary Wars, but this was only after the decision had already been taken. As it happens, the Dutch rebels had frequently flooded parts of the Low Countries to prevent the advance of the Spanish army during the Eighty Years War (1568–1648). While the Belgian decision in 1914 might be seen, therefore, as another measure of the increasing totality of warfare, there was particular historical precedent for extreme measures in the region.

  The first actual initiative was that of the headquarters of 2nd Division on 21 October, prompted by Thys and his fellow divisional engineers, to flood the area between the Bruges Canal and the Yser by opening the sluices on the Nieuwendamme. The operation was a hazardous one, for the Germans were so close to the Goosefoot that Dingens had been forced to evacuate his staff on 20 October. Dingens had also apparently removed the specialised tools, handles and keys necessary to open the sluices. Fortunately, a Belgian corporal had made the acquaintance of an experienced waterman and tugboat operator, 51-year-old Hendrik Geeraert, who could operate the sluices and knew where to find sufficient tools to do the job. In a wartime photograph later used as the basis for his portrait on a Belgian 1,000 franc note in circulation from 1950 to 1958, Geeraert stands with his arms determinedly folded, wearing a loose shirt and an old cap, his trouser waistband carelessly turned over. The weather-beaten face, with an impressive walrus moustache, gazes away from the camera, hinting at a casual disdain for authority. The lock doors of the Nieuwendamme were successfully opened late on the evening of 21 October. Orders were issued to accelerate the flooding on 24 October by opening the locks on the canalised Yser, the idea being to drain the river on several ebb tides, then to raise the water level on subsequent rising tides to create a flood. Geeraert again assisted the Belgian engineers. (It should be explained that, as well as regulating water levels in the canals, the locks were used to allow the low-lying ground to shed water when they were closed at high tide, and they were opened at ebb tide to release the excess out to sea.)

  Meanwhile, it was realised that the French plans to flood the approaches to Dunkirk risked cutting off the Belgian army by inundating the area behind it. Accordingly, Nuyten was despatched to find a solution on 25 October and was put in touch with the 59-year-old supervisor of the water authority in Furnes, Karel Cogge. Nuyten wanted to ensure the floodwater stayed east of the vital railway embankment being held by the Belgians to keep German artillery at bay. Rather like Dingens, Cogge was inclined to doubt the viability of utilising the so-called Spanish lock on a disused branch of the Furnes Canal to flood the area, at the same time closing all the culverts through the railway embankment, which had never been designed to contain water. Despite suffering from bronchitis, Cogge agreed to accompany Captain Commandant Victor Jamotte on a hasty survey of the terrain and watercourses between Furnes and Dixmude on 26 October. The military situation continued to deteriorate and, though the Belgians were well aware of the potential environmental impact, there seemed little alternative to inundation. Indeed, on 26 October, King Albert, accompanied by Galet, visited the British General Headquarters to ask for reinforcements. The volatile Sir John French displayed what the Belgians characterised as ‘phlegmatic solidarity’, but had none to give.13 As a result, Thys was ordered to open the old Spanish lock that night. Cogge's wife was reluctant to allow her husband to go with Thys but relented when Thys was able to offer 2,000 francs and a decoration. As with the earlier operation at the Nieuwendamme, several tides would be required to build up a sufficient flood and Cogge and Thys were out again on the nights of 27 and 28 October. ‘French’ water was added by opening a temporary dam that the French had erected three days earlier when flooding the eastern approaches to Dunkirk and blowing the levee between the Furnes Canal and the North Vaart.

  Worried by the slow rise in the water level, and on their own initiative, Geeraert and Captain Commandant Borlon wanted to open the lock gates on the North Vaart on the night of 28 October, but Thys vetoed this on the grounds that it seemed likely the Germans now controlled the Goosefoot, and if any of the party were captured the secret would be out. In reality, the Germans were unaware that Nieuport had been abandoned by the French troops sent to secure it and, in any case, were preparing for an attack on the Belgian position at Ramscappelle to the south. In the event, caution was abandoned due to the lack of progress of the floodwater and, on the following night, Geeraert and Captain Fernand Umé successfully opened the North Vaart gate without attracting German attention. They repeated the operation on the next two nights.

  Now at last the water was rising, ‘a silent conqueror at first scarcely visible’.14 The flood had reached between Pervyse and Dixmude by 28 October, and got to Pervyse on 31 October. The German forces in front of the Belgians were already suffering shortages of supplies. A diary found on the body of an officer from the 202nd Reserve Regiment on 27 October had recorded three days earlier: ‘For several days we have had no hot food. The bread, etc., is hardly sufficient. The emergency rations are exhausted. The water is very bad, quite green, but it is drunk, as no other is obtainable. Man is reduced to the state of a beast.’ Indeed, the officer in question, describing himself as in a ‘shocking plight’, was relying on what little could be shared with his men.15 Initially, the Germans seem to have attributed the rising water to recent rainfall and did not realise what the Belgians had done. It is also conceivable that the Germans did not grasp that the Belgian maps, with which they had been issued, measured the average tidal heights differently: there was a difference of over six feet between the Belgian calculation of the average height of the spring ebb tide and the German calculation of the summer high tide.

  Beseler attempted to continue his offensive, briefly taking Ramscappelle south of Nieuport on 30 October, until it became apparent that the water might actually cut off the leading divisions of III Reserve Corps. According to the German official history of First Ypres: ‘On the morning of the 30th the advancing troops had been up to their ankles in water; then it had gradually risen until they were now wading up to their knees, and they could scarcely drag their feet out of the clayey soil.’ Indeed, when the Germans looked behind them, ‘the green meadows were covered with dirty, yellow water, and the general line of the roads was only indicated by the houses and the rows of partly covered trees’.16 Though the Germans did capture Dixmude on 10 November, their effort on the Yser effectively ceased on 30 October. I
t had cost the Belgians some 18,000 casualties, and the Germans at least 9,500 casualties. The Belgians continued to hold the Yser line for the rest of the war.

  The inundations had secured the allied left but, equally, rendered the German right secure, and they were able to deploy their forces further south to the evolving battle around Ypres. Nonetheless, the events along the Yser effectively completed the continuous trench line of the Western Front. The Germans remained in possession of the high ground, of most of Belgium and much of the more industrially valuable part of France. They could afford to stand on the defensive and allow the Western allies to try to solve the problem of deadlock. It was bad enough that Ostend and Zeebrugge were in German hands, the threat to British interests sufficient to justify the Passchendaele offensive in 1917. While German access to the Channel was to be blocked by the Dover Barrage of anti-submarine nets and mines, this was to be put in place from February 1915 onwards precisely because of the loss of Ostend and Zeebrugge. The loss of Calais and Dunkirk in 1914 would have made the laying of the barrage more hazardous, and the supply of the BEF in France and Flanders potentially far more difficult. It would also have opened two more ports to German vessels with concomitant consequences for the imposition of the allied blockade on the Central Powers. In short, the loss of the Channel ports would have been absolutely catastrophic for the allies.