by Paul Van Pul
Here Nuyten took Charles Cogge to a quiet corner of the building and, talking in their native dialect, both were quickly at ease with each other. The staff officer started by asking several technical questions about the water management of the large polder adjacent the French border. This 35 square kilometre polder, called Les Moëres in French, De Moeren 4 in Flemish, straddled the border with France. Almost half of the polder was on the Belgian side but was not separated by a dyke from the French part. Already in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, the Military Governor of Dunkirk had intended to inundate this tract of land but after the Prussian entry into Amiens they had turned back whereupon the governor had shelved his plans.
‘Official’ portrait of Charles Cogge, supervisor of the Furnes North Watering (NWV). Furnes would not forget its famous citizen. Behind the Market Square, in the North Street, his bust still stands.
Kunstmatige Inundaties in Maritiem Vlaanderen 1316–1945, J.Leper, 1957.
When Nuyten showed Cogge the ordnance map at a 1:40,000 scale of the area, Charles had to admit that he could not read such a complicated map. Instead he proposed to go home and return in the afternoon with his own copy of a dedicated water map. Nuyten agreed.
There exist several handwritten declarations, indeed signed by Charles Cogge but not all written by him, detailing the events described in the following pages. Unfortunately these ‘testimonies’, written by different people and quite spaced in time, are not all in accordance with each other. Sometimes the author of the document in question seems to mix up persons, places and/or events. In analysing these documents we got the strong impression that each writer, probably unwittingly wrote down the chain of events as he saw it, thereby getting the nodding approval of an innocent Charles. Fortunately, in combining these stories with the account of Nuyten and other witnesses, it was possible to paint a quite accurate picture of the crucial events that unfolded in the next few days.
The only known, summary account, written by Cogge himself about his exploits in the company of the engineer officers in October 1914. This picture was taken from a copy since unfortunately the whereabouts of the original are still unknown.
Nieuport 1914–1918, R. Thys, 1922.
Around 14:00, while an ugly autumn storm poured shower after shower on the battlefield, Nuyten and Charles Cogge crouched over a water chart in the corridor of the Furnes town hall. In the process Charles Cogge explained to the captain commandant all he wanted to know about the looming threat of the impending French floods around Dunkirk. Nuyten, in the meantime, had not forgotten the newly assigned front line of his own army. Although the railway embankment would be easier to defend against infantry attack than the winding river bank, it had one major drawback: if the German heavy artillery could get close enough, this well marked, straight line on the ground would make an easy target for the enemy gunners. With what remained of the Belgian infantry concentrated and lined up behind it, these exhausted men would be wiped out in no time. So to prevent the enemy from moving in its dreadful artillery Nuyten reasoned that the terrain in front of the railway should be made impassable to heavy equipment. The abundant rains provided the perfect conditions to prevent the Germans from bringing their guns forward across the river. But once the sky cleared it would only be a matter of days before the soil dried out and the enemy started moving again. Then the battle weary Belgians would be forced out of their country. A disaster was indeed looming.
Keeping the land wet was the solution. And there was in fact enough surface water available – in Dunkirk! If the Belgians could somehow divert the water stored by the French in the canals around Dunkirk and push it towards the front in Belgium, this plan could be the saviour of the army and the country.
From Cogge’s explanation Nuyten deduced that the French were using the small, winding canal between the towns of Bergues and Furnes, the Bergen Vaart, as a carrier for the floodwater. Since the Bergen Vaart was fed with freshwater 5 from the Aa river coming from St Omer, Nuyten asked Cogge:
Would it not be possible to inundate the polder between the railway and the Yser by using the freshwater from the Bergen Vaart in France and channel it through the Steengracht and the Krommegracht [Crooked Brook] eastward?
Nuyten and Cogge did not immediately discuss plans to inundate the land between the Yser and the railway. More likely Nuyten at first looked at ways to saturate the soil in the entire region between the river and the Loo Canal. This was a much larger area and would require the Belgians to retreat further west. But it would also increase the distance between them and the enemy’s heavy guns. By just saturating the soil and not inundating it the negative effects on the land could possibly be lessened further.
Cogge had to disappoint Nuyten. He explained that the Bergen Vaart was partitioned in two canal sections by a lock at the village of Houthem, near the French border. The French reach of the canal being some 45cm lower than the Belgian section, it would be impossible to draw water towards Nieuport.
The normal level of the Bergen Vaart in France was +1.93m, in Belgium +2.37m. In this respect Charles Cogge was right. But we suspect that, in view of the impending flood Dunkirk had already raised the level in France to +2.90m as it had done in 1814, which was actually 53cm above Belgian level. So, theoretically, water could have been transferred from France to Belgium. But due to the extraordinary circumstances Cogge was obviously not aware of this situation. Besides as he said, even if they could push water east, the discharge through these brooks was so small that it would take eight to ten days to get a reasonable result. Furthermore, there was a more important drawback. Because there was almost no measurable drop in ground level one would first inundate the whole region south of Furnes before the water would reach Nieuport.
In November 2000 Flemish television network VRT aired a documentary on the subject of this book. In it several key scenes were re-enacted. Here, in between two shootings Jef Laleeuwe as Cogge (left) and Geert Aneca as Nuyten, take a welcome break.
Author’s photo archive.
Since fresh water from France could not be used for his plans Nuyten then asked if the locks in Nieuport could be used instead. Cogge replied that this too was impossible because the locks did not give immediate access to the polder, but that the North Vaart Gates could be used to flood the polder. After checking its location on the map Nuyten was again disappointed. These drainage gates were situated within the Goose Foot complex north-east of the city. That area was now under constant observation by the enemy and hence quite prone to enemy bombardment.
It is rather interesting to include two notes here.
First of all, Cogge was not entirely correct when he said that the locks in Nieuport did not give access to the polder in question. As we mentioned earlier the small East Vaart Lock, and its identical twins on the Loo Canal, provided immediate access from the Furnes Canal and hence the Furnes Lock at the Goose Foot, to the polder. This detail would have been quite useful to the military for in order to create a flood they preferred the use of a navigation lock to lift gates.
With a gate structure the doors have to be raised and lowered at each turn of the tide, which means that at four precise moments of the day soldiers need to work the lift mechanisms. The swing doors in a lock on the other hand can be unhooked from their windlasses and once free these doors will then automatically open at rising tide and close again when the water recedes. As such this procedure is very simple and does not involve any further human intervention. From an army point of view it is the perfect way to conceal your intentions from the enemy.
The small, charming East Vaart Lock connecting the Furnes Canal and the North Vaart (seen from the latter). The only, well preserved inundation lock in the region … perhaps in the whole of Flanders. But for how long?
Author’s photo archive.
Charles Cogge can be forgiven for this oversight since, although he was an experienced man, he had had no dealings with the locks and navigation on the canals.
It could be said that th
is missed opportunity deprived the military of an early start and an efficient way to flood the polder. But at that early stage in the battle this would eventually have forewarned the enemy who would have changed their battle plans accordingly and with devastating results.
The German steamroller was still in full swing and the Anglo-French front line between Dixmude and further south was not at full strength yet. So if an ‘early’ flood had been set, the Germans would certainly have shifted their main attack more inland, concentrating all their power south of Dixmude and thereby forcing a breakthrough north of Ypres. The Belgians would then have been taken in the flank and pushed into the sea.
Secondly, various authors have maintained that the Germans were too close to the lock system. This is indeed a misinterpretation of Captain Commandant Nuyten’s words. Only the next day the French would evacuate the bridgehead and the danger of the Germans occupying the locks would become real. The main drawback as Nuyten saw it was that, as described above, by using the lift gates the gate runners would have to raise and lower the heavy paddles several times a day. For a structure with eight double doors, this meant sixty-four individual cranking operations a day. Not only did this require a lot of manpower but also the raising and lowering of the sixteen steel racks on which the doors were hung could be seen from afar. Such a rhythmic activity at an exposed location near the front line would certainly be detected by the enemy’s forward observers and as a result would trigger a devastating reprisal with large calibre gunfire.
In the end Nuyten, now clearly running out of options, asked Cogge what his personal advice would be. The senior supervisor explained that, instead of the locks on the north-east side of town, they could use the Spanish Lock on the west side of Nieuport. The old and now disused branch of the Furnes Canal, better known as West Vaart, connected this old structure, built in 1820, to the polder. This vaart passed underneath the ‘new’ Furnes Canal by means of a culvert and then turned under the railway levee to end up in the North Vaart. But still, all the seawater would end up on both sides of the railway since between Nieuport and Dixmude several drainage canals passed from west to east under the railway.
‘And if we closed all the underpasses in the railway levee?’ Nuyten asked.
‘That will be impossible,’ Cogge replied. ‘There are too many of them and some, like the Great Beaverdyke Vaart, are 10m wide and have a depth of at least two metres.’
‘However,’ Nuyten insisted, ‘try to imagine that we could do it.’
‘Then the water would stay on the east side of the railway’, Cogge had to admit.
He estimated that by using the Spanish Lock they could flood the polder in eight tides, or four days. But if they opened the North Vaart Gates instead, which were a lot wider, it would only take three tides.
This conversation proved enough for Captain Commandant Nuyten. He left Charles Cogge briefly in the corridor and entered the offices of General Headquarters where he stopped Captain Commandant Galet and told him: ‘I found the way to set a flood between the Yser and the railway.’
Now events started to unfold rapidly. Cogge was brought before the Deputy Chief of Staff where he again explained his ideas about a flood. Major Maglinse, Chief Operations was also brought in as well as Captain Commandant Masure, Head of the Transport Section. Masure was renowned for his encyclopaedic knowledge. He had already succeeded a few weeks earlier in organizing, within twenty-four hours, the successful evacuation of all army stores from Antwerp and all this under the unsuspecting noses of the Germans.
After all of them had discussed the feasibility of this major undertaking and weighed the pros and cons, they agreed to inform their Commander-in-Chief. The king, who happened to be at General Headquarters at that moment, listened to all the arguments of his staff and ultimately approved the project in principle.
High Command, almost from the start envisioned the project in two stages: first inundate east of the railway to stop the German infantry; secondly flood or saturate the whole area west of the railway levee and up to the Loo Canal to avoid the subsequent slaughter by enemy bombardment. Although the German heavy guns would be confined to the grounds east of the river they would still be well within striking distance of the whole area west of the railway. Clearly though King Albert at this stage only approved of a limited flood, that is between railway and river.
One of the first problems High Command ran into was the fact that at Army Headquarters no post of Army Engineer-in-Chief existed. So on the spot it was decided to create a Directorate of the Inundation Service and to call on the commander of the engineers’ battalion of the Second Army Division in Nieuport, Captain Commandant Victor Jamotte to head this new service. Captain Robert Thys was assigned as his deputy.
Another vital decision to be taken was the height of the water level to be achieved. A water level too low would perhaps leave dry access corridors in the polder that the enemy could use to press on. A water level too high on the other hand could not only provoke a breach of the railway embankment (it had never been designed to act as a levee) but it might also allow the Germans to use flat-bottomed boats and barges to launch an assault on the railway line.
Again upon Cogge’s advice it was decided to set the flood level at +3.00 to +3.25m. Although according to the ordnance maps that way a rather unwished-for depth of 1.80m would be reached in the low spots but on the high ground it would at least provide the required two feet of water.
Next, orders went out to the various engineers’ companies assigning them a specific underpass to block. We know the companies of the Second Army Division that were involved: the Company Borlon was to built an emergency dyke near Nieuport while the companies Spinette and Delobbe were to block the Venepe Vaart between Nieuport and Ramscappelle.
Meanwhile Nuyten had sent Charles Cogge home, but only after he had asked him if he would be willing to come on a reconnaissance trip along the railway levee. There the supervisor would be most useful: he could indicate the different culverts to block and give any practical information to the soldiers on the spot. Cogge had dutifully agreed.
Deputy Chief of Staff Colonel Wielemans was billeted at the home of the local Justice of the Peace, Emeric Feys. This gentleman was also a member of the local Water Board and he was highly interested when Wielemans told him about the impending inundation. After all, the total area of land to be flooded comprised some 140 square kilometres, hundreds of farms and over ten villages and hamlets.
Feys, as a man of the law, had one important issue he wanted to raise: did High Command realize that all the people in the affected region would have to be financially compensated for the damage to their property and crops due to the flooding?
To reinforce his argument Feys dug up an official deed from his archives, dated 15 April 1798 that he showed Wielemans. This document had been registered by the Département de la Lys – Belgium was then under French rule - and acknowledged the fact that farmer Hendrik Demolder from ‘s Heerwillemscappelle, a hamlet west of Pervyse, would be refunded for two years of rent he had paid on 140 square units of the 172 he had rented and that had been inundated for the defence of Nieuport in 1793. Farmer Demolder had been the grandfather of Feys’ spouse. A powerful precedent indeed!
Justice of the Peace, Emeric Feys, in Furnes pointed out to Colonel Wielemans that financial compensation for the affected farmers in the inundated polder could mount rapidly. This statement certainly influenced the decision to limit the initial flooding.
Kunstmatige Inundaties in Maritiem Vlaanderen 1316–1945 J. Leper, 1957.
This intervention by judge Emeric Feys has, in later years, often be misinterpreted. Some authors even wanted to credit the man with the initial idea of the flood. As we already have seen, the truth is evidently more complex. Certainly this financial reality must have played an important role in the final decision; perhaps it was even the deciding factor not to go ahead with the second stage of the flood, west of the railway towards the Loo Canal. Who dared to predict in wh
at shape the Public Treasury would be after this devastating war was over?
The total area that the military wanted to inundate was indeed large. Today it would compare to twice the size of the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport or almost five times Paris-Charles De Gaulle.
Apparently Wielemans was not the only one who discussed the project with local dignitaries that day. According to a post-war report by Roads & Bridges engineer L. Bourgoignie, Captain Commandant Jamotte and Captain Thys, who were both billeted, together with two other officers, at the home of Mr Cortier in Furnes were brought into contact with Mr Van Staen, retired chief supervisor of Roads & Bridges in Furnes. Unfortunately nothing more is known about this encounter. Also the testimony of Germain Van Marcke, the school teacher from Wulpen, about his discussion with the two artillery officers from General Dossin’s staff (see Chapter VI) would fit in here.