In Flanders Flooded Fields

by Paul Van Pul

  The swing bridge at Rattevalle [Rat Trap] on the Bruges Canal in 1993. After lifting the (iron) bridge structure by turning the key, the bridge guard manually rotated the bridge by pushing with his torso against the breastplate in the foreground while slowly walking over the ribbed arch in the background. Since at the Goose Foot in Nieuport two bridges rested on the median walls, a narrow, circular footbridge replaced this path over the spillway to the gate structure. The bridge above has meanwhile also disappeared.

  Author’s photo archive.

  ‘Can’t you send a motorcar?’ Dingens tried.

  ‘You send one of your men.’ the lieutenant insisted.

  ‘But a man cannot carry them, and there are six of those handles …’

  ‘He can use a wheelbarrow.’ the lieutenant insisted.

  Dingens felt that the young lieutenant didn’t understand what he was talking about. Presumably the officer imagined something like a wrench type of thing.

  ‘Do you know how much one handle weighs? Four and a half kilograms … one man can not handle six of them at once.’

  The lieutenant gave up and walked away.

  Then a captain commandant came up to Dingens, curious to know more about the procedure.

  ‘But lockkeeper, if you don’t have handles, how do you then actually open a bridge?’

  ‘Well, to swing the bridges we do not necessarily need a handle. Come, we’ll show you how.’ and Dingens winked at his assistants.

  But the commandant didn’t like the humiliation of an open air lesson in bridge technique and walked off. For now at least the nerve-racking incident was closed.

  Later a chief sergeant of the Belgian gendarmerie showed up at the lockmaster’s office with the message that the barges, still in the head bays of the three navigable waterways had to be locked through immediately and transferred by sea to Dunkirk, Calais or maybe even further. This new order made tensions rise again.

  The tugboat Amical from Termonde, now an exhibit at the Maritime Museum in Antwerp, was built in 1914. If Henry Geeraert indeed was a tugboat captain in Nieuport as the story goes, then this vessel would be a good look alike for the ship he piloted in October 1914.

  Author’s photo archive.

  Geeraert in his typical posture on what we believe is his barge, Suzanne. Unfortunately this picture could not be dated.

  Historical prints collection Callenaere-Dehouck.

  Dingens replied that these barges were constructed to navigate on inland waters and that, if they had to be directed on Dunkirk, they could as well be locked and taken onto the Furnes Canal from where they could continue their journey to Dunkirk by way of the Furnes-Dunkirk Canal. Besides, women whose husbands had been drafted into the army manned some of the lighters. The chief sergeant, uneasy about this unexpected response, decided to consult with his superiors first.

  When he returned to the lockmaster he could only confirm the initial order: the vessels had to be locked immediately. On this definite order Dingens phoned the marine superintendent Mr Aspertagh and asked for the services of a tugboat to transfer the barges into the tidal port. As soon as the tug pulled up in the tail bay Dingens had the seventeen barges locked through and his assistant Beke, was ordered to help the skipper in pulling the vessels to the harbour dock on the left bank, downstream of the Yser mouth.

  What the lockmaster of course did not know at the time was that Army Command intended to load these barges up with stores and float them further west along the coast. A major evacuation line had been set up by sea and land from Ostend to the new Belgian supply bases in Calais and Dunkirk.

  The enemy was moving up fast along the coast so in the end the barges were never requisitioned. In order to prevent the Germans from eventually using these craft to their advantage, one of the vessels was later sunk as a block ship in front of the dock entrance.

  Once they were in the relative safety of the dock the skipper of the tugboat, Henry Geeraert, curious about all the military commotion in and around town, made his way back to the lock system to watch events from close up. The man could never have imagined then that this decision would change his life forever and in the end make him a national hero for generations to come. 2

  Henry Geeraert was born and raised in Nieuport. In July of 1863 he was born at 40 Long Street while his father was away ‘on the great fishery to Iceland’. Mother Anna Veranneman was a housekeeper and lace-maker. Later father would turn to the less hazardous inland shipping where Henry would succeed him. At twenty-four Henry married Melanie Jonckheere and together they had eight children. Due to their travelling existence all children were born in various locations along France’s waterways.

  The only known picture of Henry Geeraert with his parents.

  Nieuport 1914–1918, R. Thys, 1922.

  Being married and raising children was certainly not Henry’s favoured pursuit for at least from 1914 on his family was never mentioned again in any documents. After the war lockmaster Dingens would – for obvious reasons perhaps – not have a good word for Geeraert when he wrote: ‘He is a great enemy of full glasses …’ But then again this was probably not far from the truth.

  With the aggravation caused by all this interference with his authority over the lock complex it went almost unnoticed to the lockmaster that the guard detachment of his beloved domain had been changed. A platoon of the Second Pontoneer Battalion, Second Army Division, led by Sergeant Jules Henry had taken over the surveillance of the locks and bridges. One of their orders was to prepare destruction of the southernmost bridge, the one across the Furnes Lock.

  By the time their commanding officer arrived, on the evening of the next day, Sergeant Henry and his men had installed charges next to the heavy iron turntable underneath the swing bridge. This operation was later confirmed by the Army Order of 15 October at noon that instructed all divisions to prepare for the destruction of all bridges on the Yser and the Ypres Canal. This order for the first time actually confirmed Belgian Army intentions to defend its position behind this winding aquatic obstacle.

  There is a slight geographical discrepancy though. Since Sergeant Henry did prepare the destruction of the bridge over the Furnes Lock and not the one on the Yser River/Ypres Lock [see detailed map at the beginning of Chapter VII] he left a narrow physical gap in the 43km long defence between Ypres and the sea. Theoretically the sergeant left the enemy an invasion route onto the left bank over an intact bridge on the Ypres Lock! But then again, the man only followed orders that we will see later, emanated in fact from French High Command. Was it perhaps to minimize destructions in view of a French offensive towards Ostend?

  Shortly after midnight on 15 October, Baron de Broqueville in Dunkirk phoned the king’s orderly officer in Nieuport-Bains telling him that in the morning Mr Augagneur, the French Minister of the Navy, would visit Furnes accompanied by Emile Vandervelde, Belgian Minister of State.

  As daylight broke over another wet and cold autumn day King Albert departed from Nieuport-Bains at 09:00, this time for the County Town of Furnes. The queen also left the Crombez Mansion but an hour later. This time the small household staff had been able to arrange for the royal couple to stay at the Villa Maskens, which was some 10km further west. In her diary the queen wrote on 15 October: ‘We are always the cuckoos that go in someone else’s nest.’

  Front of the Maskens Villa in La Panne. Amenities were spartan: no running water, no central heating. In later years this historic building was levelled to make way for the lucrative beach tourism industry and its associated building boom.

  Historical prints collection Callenaere-Dehouck.

  Soon after her departure the queen’s motorcar ran into a traffic jam near the locks in Nieuport. Refugees with handcarts and wheelbarrows, and hundreds of despondent soldiers once belonging to the Garrison Army crowded the roads. This miserable procession did not end on the road to La Panne. Every poor soul seemed heading for France.

  The Maskens Retreat was a modest, brick residence at the seafront
in the dunes near the resort village of La Panne, only a kilometre or so from the French border. For the royal couple it would be a relatively safe haven on home soil from the battle that was about to erupt.

  The building was rather isolated and would be out of range of the German artillery if it would ever manage to get close to the Yser. In an emergency an aeroplane could even land on the wide open space of the beach to pick up the queen to take her to England. Fear for a large German landing here, behind the lines was not a concern for the moment: the wide belt of dunes, together with the few and far between, small, sandy accesses made for an unattractive landing beach.

  At General Headquarters the staff officers had some encouraging news: the German columns did not seem to pursue any offensive actions against the Belgian units east of the river. General Foch in Doullens, the Somme Department, as always being self-confident, was even more outspoken. To the liaison officer arriving from Colonel Brécard in Furnes he said: ‘At present the war is not complicated. The German infantry does not appear. It stays in its trenches because it is exhausted.’

  A view of the royal bathroom in the Maskens Villa. Note the two bird cages on the windowsill and on the floor the ewer and the night bucket.

  Historical prints collection Callenaere-Dehouck.

  Amidst all the messages arriving at Belgian General Headquarters one, at 10:00 was a proposal by General Rawlinson to inundate the polders along the right bank of the Yser. This was still a remnant of the nightly discussion between Belgian Captain Commandant de Lannoy and Colonel Bridges two days earlier in Roulers.

  In fact the idea had not left de Lannoy and after some study he had come to the conclusion that the project, contrary to what the lockmaster in Nieuport had said, was indeed feasible. It seems he had made a similar proposal, just a month earlier to inundate the banks of the Dyle river, south-east of Malines. At that moment of course it still did concern the defence of Antwerp. But the Military Governor had rejected the idea on the grounds that the engineers had not studied the project in peacetime.

  Now Rawlinson had sent this dispatch to Furnes. Reaction at General Headquarters was that ‘the question would be taken into consideration’ or … lets wait and see.

  What still worried the French Generalissimo was the now widening gap between the British and Belgian Armies. The BEF was moving from Hazebrouck towards Bailleul and was expected to make contact with Rawlinson’s Fourth Corps at Ypres soon. The Belgians on the other hand were stretching their exhausted forces to the limit by occupying a 43km front, from the sea to Ypres, with six divisions comprising barely 50,000 rifles.

  His concerns were reflected in two messages he cabled to Foch, one in the evening of 14 October, the other the next morning. In both he urged Foch to prop up the Belgian right in order not to compromise the British left flank in Ypres. As a result Foch ordered the two territorial divisions that had covered the British detraining near Hazebrouck, the 87th and 89th, to the area north of Ypres, along the Ypres Canal. Joffre had also stressed not to weaken the Dunkirk garrison but have the place prepared as a bastion.

  The preparations for the defence of the Yser were now well advanced. The Second Army Division, under General Dossin, was responsible for the sector from the Yser mouth to kilometre-stone (km) 4 along the river.3 (see map p.97) Three advance posts were set up: one on the left at the village of Lombartzyde, one in the centre at Kets Bridge and one on the right across the Union Bridge in the village of Mannekens vere. A bridgehead was established north of Nieuport to cover the lock system.

  From km 4 to km 10 the First Army Division guarded the riverbank. Here a bridgehead at the hamlet of Schoorbakke stayed in touch with a forward position at the village of Schoore. At km 10 the Fourth Army Division took over to km 16. With a bridgehead at Tervaete bridge the division was in contact with its advance posts at the villages of Keyem and Beerst. The town of Dixmude, just across from the Yser, was the main bridgehead on the right and under the responsibility of the French fusiliers marins of Rear Admiral Ronarc’h. In the area between Furnes and Nieuport two brigades of the Third Army Division plus the Second Cavalry Division were kept in reserve.

  The king though, was not confident about the future. His troops had not been able to get enough rest, the ranks had been dangerously thinned and the integration and training of the garrison troops in the Field Army had barely begun. He warned Colonel Brécard that his men were demoralized and that, in the event that the enemy attacked in earnest, he did not expect a prolonged resistance. In two messages to Joffre that day Brécard informed him of the king’s apprehension. But to reassure the Generalissimo he indicated in his second dispatch that General Foch would visit Furnes the next day.

  In the afternoon the commanders of the Fifth and Sixth Army Divisions, still southeast of Dixmude near Houthulst Wood, informed High Command that their men were exhausted and would not be capable of any offensive action. Colonel Wielemans nevertheless upheld his orders. In the evening though, with the appearance of an enemy brigade to the north-east of their exposed position, the Deputy Chief realized the vulnerability of both army divisions and ordered them to fall back behind the Ypres Canal. Here they were to organize its defence from Boesinghe, where the French Territorials manned the trenches, to the Old Fort Knocke on the confluence of the canal with the Yser.

  Since the French Minister of the Navy, Victor Augagneur, was in Furnes King Albert took the opportunity to see him. The king again stressed the exhaustion of his divisions and asked to convey to the French Government the message that his troops alone would not withstand the German pressure for long. Aware that the French did not have any sizable naval presence in the English Channel, the king did not ask the Minister for support from French naval vessels. Instead, he had sent Captain Commandant Galet to talk to Colonel Bridges. Galet was to inquire about naval artillery support from the British Fleet on the Belgian left along the coastline.

  Now that the Germans had entered Ostend their advance against the Belgian line could be expected at any time soon. Only the British Fleet could strengthen the front with some heavy artillery in this corner. Bridges had transmitted the request from King Albert to Lord Kitchener who, in turn, passed it on to Winston Churchill at the Admiralty. This string of calls set in motion a long series of difficult and dangerous naval operations in support of the Belgian left flank. Churchill immediately ordered bombardment of the German held Belgian coastline to begin the next day.

  The Admiralty was by now well prepared for a prompt and full response. Having anticipated the threat that enemy occupied Zeebrugge and Ostend could bring to the vital cross-Channel traffic a new command had been set up at the Admiralty on 12 October. Officially it was the 6th Destroyer Flotilla, but was generally better known as ‘the Dover Patrol’ with Churchill’s Naval Secretary, Rear Admiral Horace Hood in command. His task force was comprised of no less than twenty-four Tribal-class destroyers, the light cruisers Attentive, Adventure, Foresight and Sapphire, the 3rd and 4th Submarine Flotillas (thirteen B- and C-class submarines) and a number of auxiliary patrol vessels and trawlers.

  The light cruiser HMS Attentive spent most of her war years on shore bombardment with Dover Patrol. As such Captain Thys was quite familiar with the vessel’s silhouette on the horizon. So when he visited Dunkerque one day he took a picture of this unmarked war ship, perhaps believing it was Attentive. But this was in fact a French Bouclier class destroyer, which looks amazingly similar to the British Attentive class cruisers. On the quay to the right lay several buoys, recovered from the Channel waters at the start of the war.

  Thys family archive.

  Since no coastal operations had been anticipated when the command was set up, few vessels on the Navy List were adapted for the purpose and none were attached to Hood’s command. Fortunately the three shallow-water monitors that had escorted the Belgian mail boats out of Ostend on the 13th were still at Dover so Hood immediately asked for them.

  These river patrol boats, Javary, Madeira and Solimoes, ha
d had a short but already peculiar history behind them. Originally the Brazilian Navy had ordered these three vessels at the Vickers shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness. But when they were nearing completion in August 1914 they were taken over by the British Navy. With the onset of the war the Admiralty did not want to run the risk of seeing them one day reappear as opponents. Although there seemed no immediate role for them in the fleet it was obviously better to keep them in British hands. The Admiralty regarded them as being monitors – floating artillery – but their light armament in fact did not reflect this classification: forward they had a twin 152-mm gun turret, aft a 120-mm howitzer on each side and amidships two 3-pounder guns on the superstructure. One would rather call them oversized patrol boats, ideal for extended runs in the shallow Amazon basin.

  The next day, the Generalissimo, unaware of the Belgian plea for British naval support, sent the following telegram to Lord Kitchener:

  Now that operations have extended towards the North Sea coast between Ostend and the advanced defence of Dunkirk it would be appropriate for the two allied navies to participate in this operation by protecting our left flank and, through the use of long range guns, act on the German right. The commander naval forces should act in cooperation with General Foch through intermediary of the Military Governor of Dunkirk.

  It will be noticed that Joffre again ‘forgot’ to mention the Belgian Army and its Commander-in-Chief in the joint action on the left flank. But then again, perhaps he was more concerned about the defence of the Dunkirk Fortified Place rather than coming to the aid of the hard pressed Belgians in the open and muddy polders between Nieuport and Dixmude.