To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  On the same day Sir John French, now experiencing one of his periodic bouts of optimism, and buoyed by the fighting talk of Foch, planned that the BEF should stage a general advance eastwards. The line between his left and Dixmude was held by two French territorial divisions, reinforced by a French cavalry corps on 17 October. French reckoned that the right wing of the main German army terminated at Courtrai. On the evening of the 19th he told Haig that only one German corps lay between Menin and Ostend. I corps’s orders were to capture Bruges and advance on Ghent, so simultaneously relieving the Belgians on the Yser and pushing north-eastwards round the German right wing. However, Rawlinson, responsible for the British left until Haig’s arrival, lacked his chief’s conviction that a rapid advance on Menin would at last place the allied line round the German flank. He was right. By the evening of the 19th, but ignored by French, British intelligence calculated that there were three-and-a-half German corps north of the Lys. In reality there were in excess of five.170

  On 4 October, while the battle round Arras was at its zenith, Falkenhayn had decided to push a cavalry corps well to the north, towards Ypres, with a view to its falling onto the French rear. However, the cavalry did not proceed as fast as Falkenhayn hoped. By 8 October, when its advance guards were at Bailleul and Hazebrouck, it was encountering thickening resistance and its hesitation was increased by its loss of contact with the 6th army. Falkenhayn concluded that he needed, not a cavalry corps, but a whole new army to place on the Flanders section of the front. The new army, the 4th, was commanded, like the old 4th (which was suppressed), by the Duke of Württemberg. It embraced von Beseler’s III reserve corps and four of six new reserve corps forming in Germany. The measure of Falkenhayn’s urgency, his anxiety to clinch the campaign in the west, can be gauged by his decision to use these four corps. The popular image, exploited by German propaganda, was that they were composed of young students, volunteers fired with patriotic enthusiasm. In reality most battalions had only one volunteer in ten; the majority of the soldiers were older men who had either completed their military service or who had never been called up at all. Their equipment was incomplete and only recently delivered: a month before they entered the line some battalions had received only half their complement of rifles. They were short of maps and entrenching tools. The lack of sufficient junior officers and NCOs did nothing to compensate for the inadequacies of their training. The senior officers were old, brought out of retirement, advocates of the tactical ideas of the 1870s: many were unfit, the 208th reserve regiment losing its commanding officer and all three battalion commanders to sickness in five days in October. And all these problems were even worse when related to the more demanding technical and tactical tasks of the artillery: practised only in direct fire and lacking the telephones to link the batteries to their forward observers, the field guns were to prove woefully inaccurate.171 Britain’s new armies were no better. But Kitchener, anticipating a long war, did not permit their use until a whole year later. Falkenhayn needed victory in 1914: there was no virtue in preserving these corps for a contingency which he could not afford to entertain.

  Falkenhayn’s plan was for the 4th army to form to the left of Beseler’s corps on the coast, supported by the heavy artillery from Antwerp. It would move from Belgium southwards, outflanking the allied left around St Omer. The 6th army, holding the line from La Bassée to Menin, was to attack and hold the French and British from the front. If the allies turned to meet the 4th army, the 6th would be able to break through north of Arras. The extension of the BEF into Flanders did not change the basic intention. Either the 4th army would strike the BEF in the flank as it tried to envelop the 6th, or the BEF would attack the 4th and so create the opportunity for the 6th to separate the French and British. If the BEF fell back, it would simply be enveloped by the 4th army from the north.

  The free manoeuvre of the 4th army required that the Belgians be dislodged from their line on the Yser. The battle which developed around Ypres, therefore, depended for its outcome on the dogged determination of King Albert’s 53,000 men and Ronarc’h’s marines between Dixmude and Nieuport. Albert’s order of the day to the Belgian army on 16 October was uncompromising: those who fled the battlefield would be shot by marksmen posted to the rear, officers claiming to be sick would be court-martialled, and general staff officers were to be posted to the front line.172 The Yser itself was not a major obstacle, and the waterlogged ground meant that trenches could only be one or two feet deep. The Belgians’ 75 mm field guns were becoming unserviceable through incessant firing, and ammunition was low. The 4th army was supported on its right by the heavy guns from Antwerp, but they were countered by the gunnery of the Royal Navy’s Dover Patrol stationed off the coast. The Germans’ attack opened on 18 October, and by the 22nd they had gained a foothold across the river at Tervaete, in the centre of the line. With the flanks at Dixmude and Nieuport thrown back, the centre formed an exposed salient which the Belgians were now desperate to reinforce. The French had sent the 42nd infantry division to Nieuport, but Foch’s plan was for it to thrust along the coast in the direction of Lombartzyde, while in the centre Ronarc’h’s marines pushed on Thourout and on the right elements of IX corps attacked towards Roulers. He argued that a French offensive north of Ypres would disengage the Belgians, and that all they had to do was to hold their ground. The Belgians said they could not do so, and indeed were already not doing so; the aid from France needed to be direct, not indirect. By the evening of 23 October the Belgians had been driven out of the salient, and were planning a general withdrawal. The 42nd division had already begun its attack, and the French would only release one brigade so that the ground the division had already gained would not be forfeit.

  During the course of 24 October the Germans launched fifteen assaults and by dark were established beyond the Yser on a 5-kilometre front. The French now agreed that the remainder of the 42nd division should reinforce the Belgian centre. The division seemed to be too late. The Belgians had been fighting continuously for seven days, without relief, and had no reserves. They had already fallen back to the railway embankment, which was parallel to the river and was raised 1 to 2 metres above sea level because of the waterlogged state of the ground. On the 26th their commander, Wielmans, and his staff resolved to retreat once more. The head of the French military mission, Brécard, warned the Belgians that in that case they would leave the French isolated, as they had received no instructions to fall back. The situation was saved by the intervention of King Albert, who forbade any further with-drawal.173 On 27 October, the lock gates at Nieuport were opened at high tide, so that the sea flooded the area between the Yser and the embankment. As the tide fell the gates were closed, and thus gradually the depth of the inundation rose. On the 30th the Germans made a last attack, getting across the embankment at Ramscapelle, but being driven out again at nightfall on the 31st. Thereafter the floodwater blocked the Germans’ path; the allied left flank was secure.

  The crisis on the Yser was part of a larger encounter battle, pivoting on the city of Ypres. On 19 October the advance of the 6th and 4th German armies began. Simultaneously Sir John French directed the BEF’s left wing in the direction of Menin and Roulers. On 21 October the 4th army’s reserve corps suffered heavy losses in a series of ill-prepared and ill-supported attacks. By 23 and 24 October Falkenhayn’s efforts were concentrated on the army’s right, on the Yser, and on the 6th army’s battle south of Ypres. Foch, on the other hand, continued to push in the direction of Roulers and Thourout, north-east of Ypres. The burden of the attack was now taken over by French units, forming the 8th army under d’Urbal, and so allowing Haig’s I corps to drop down, to the east of Ypres. Dixmude, tenaciously held by the French marines, became the key to the movements of both sides. Foch’s persistent attacks, although making no gains, contained the Germans and shamed both the Belgians and the British into abandoning thoughts of withdrawal. But the BEF was getting very tired: by the end of the month it had been in continuous acti
on along its entire front for ten days.

  Falkenhayn, checked on both the 6th army’s front and on the 4th’s, and with the chances of breakthrough on the Yser disappearing, planned a fresh attack. The task of the 6th and 4th armies would be to tie down the allied reserves. A new formation, renamed after its commander, von Fabeck, and composed of six additional divisions and over 250 heavy guns, was inserted between the 6th and 4th armies. It had a local superiority of two to one, and was to attack south of Ypres, driving north-westwards between Messines and Gheluvelt, on the Menin road. Haig’s I corps lay in front of Ypres, astride the Menin road. The line to the south was held by Allenby’s dismounted cavalry corps. On 29 October the Germans made initial gains along the Menin road, and on the 30th Allenby’s cavalry was driven back from Zandvoorde and Hollebeke to within 3 kilometres of Ypres. D’Urbal, his left relieved by the Yser inundations, sent three battalions in support of I corps. But on the following day a German shell struck the staffs of two of I corps’ divisions while they were conferring at Hooge. By now the British position at Gheluvelt was collapsing and the path to Ypres lay open. The situation was restored by the 2nd battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment, in reserve north of the Menin road, who advanced at the double for a mile, driving the Germans off the crossroads to the south and east. South of the road further cracks in the line appeared, but on the left of the German attack the British hold on the Messines ridge was consolidated, the first territorial unit into action, the London Scottish, coming into the line at Wytschaete.

  By 1 November Sir John French’s anxiety for the state of the BEF had good grounds. Of eighty-four infantry battalions, seventy-five mustered less than 300 men, a third of their strength in August: eighteen battalions had fewer than 100 men of all ranks.174 To Foch, French appeared gloomy and anxious. At an allied conference held that day Kitchener offered to replace the BEF’s commander with Sir Ian Hamilton, but the French decided they preferred the devil they knew. Moreover, as Foch and Haig realized, the crisis was now waning. D’Urbal’s XVI corps, moved onto the St Eloi-Wytschaete front, propped up Allenby, and his IX corps attacked the German right from the north against Becelaere. Thus, pressure on Haig’s corps was relieved on both its flanks. Falkenhayn pondered the wisdom of continuing the assault. By 3 November Fabeck’s group had lost 17,250 men in five days, and the vigour of the German assaults was fading.

  Foch now planned attacks—although he had never admitted that the fighting of the previous fortnight had been anything other than a continuous allied offensive—towards Messines and Langemarck, timed for 6 November, and designed to widen and consolidate the allied salient around Ypres. Falkenhayn, however, pre-empted him. Recognizing the failure of the attempt to break through at Ypres itself, the German chief of the general staff resolved to attack at the pivots south and north of the salient. Even limited gains here would—as Foch had recognized in his attention to the same areas—allow the German artillery to overlook the city and its network of roads. A local victory would help cover the absence of a decisive breakthrough. The German attacks began on 5 November, waned on the 9th, but resumed with great fury on the 10th and 11th. The assault was intended to embrace the whole front to the south of the Menin road, but on 10 November was mounted principally by the 4th army on the front between Langemarck and Dixmude. Dixmude itself was taken. The following day, on the other half of the front, the Germans staged the heaviest artillery bombardment the British had yet experienced and attacked between Messines and Polygon Wood. Again a breach was made on the Menin road, the mist and the gunfire covering the advance of the Prussian guards. But they were not well supported by the reserve division to their right, and the situation was restored. By now both sides were exhausted. Total German losses at Ypres were in the region of 80,000, and most of the newly formed reserve regiments had suffered at least 60 per-cent casualties. The BEF’s losses for the war up to 30 November, 89,964, exceeded the establishment of the original seven divisions, and 54,105 of them had fallen around Ypres. The combat strength of the Belgian army had halved. Total French dead for 1914 were 265,000, but casualties of all types were already 385,000 by 10 September.175 On 13 November the first battle of Ypres—although formally it continued until 22 November—was effectively over.

  The casualties of 1914 were the highest of the war in relation to the establishments of the participating armies. Such a rate of loss was unsustainable over the long run. So too were the pace and intensity of the first four months’ fighting. Digging trenches in October and November was as exhausting— albeit physical exercise of a different form—as the sustained marches of August and September. But trenches also gave protection; they minimized casualties and they stabilized the line. The first battle of Ypres highlighted the fact that the conduct of war was on a cusp.

  Tactically, the battle seemed to its participants confirmation of a new form of warfare. But with the wisdom of hindsight some of the features appear remarkably old fashioned. A junior officer of the German 46th Reserve Field Artillery Regiment, who came into action in the sector Langemarck—Bixschoote on 23 October, recorded that his battery fired as many as 960 rounds during the course of that night alone, and that during the pauses between British infantry attacks it had directly engaged the enemy’s artillery. But the latter was only 1,400 to 1,800 metres distant, most of the battery’s fire had been at ranges between 400 and 800 metres, and its crews could hear the enemy’s rifle bullets as they struck their gun shields. Using direct fire, the guns were deployed as though for mobile warfare, but found themselves confronting the tactical realities of more static formations. The horses of the regiment’s munition column panicked under shrapnel fire and fresh shell supplies had to be lugged up by hand.176 Elsewhere on the battlefield horses were still in evidence. On 26 October the Royal Horse Guards, on I corps’ right flank, covered the retreat of a brigade of the 7th division, two squadrons galloping for a quarter of a mile, parallel to and only 200 metres from the Germans; they then dismounted and engaged the enemy with their rifles; the regiment’s total losses were only eight men and twenty-five horses.177 True, most of the cavalry on both sides spent the battle dismounted. But the surprising fact is that cavalry could hold such important stretches of the line for so long. The French cuirassiers went into the line still attired in helmets and breastplates, and clutching their lances and carbines. British cavalry at least had rifles rather than carbines, but their divisional artillery consisted only of 13-pounders (the infantry field gun was an 18-pounder): thus it was deficient in the conventional index of First World War firepower. And yet by the standards of what was to come, this—the German heavy artillery and field howitzers apart—was not really a gunners’ battle. Much of the German field artillery was ill served. Both sides were short of ammunition, and what they fired tended, as the weather worsened, to bury in the mud rather than explode on contact. Rifle fire, not shellfire, predominated, particularly for the British. One soldier fired 600 rounds in a single day.178

  But all this was what contemporaries expected. What they did not anticipate was a battle of such intensity, over effectively three weeks, with so little movement. ‘I am getting awfully bored by the trenches,’ wrote a British officer on 5 November, ‘and am feeling fearfully tired. I hope we won’t be in them much longer. I wish they would order the advance.’179

  Those who did well were those who recognized that they must change their thinking. A British cabinet member reported on 20 October that Foch and Castelnau had originally imagined that the course of this war, like previous wars, would be shaped by big battles punctuated by quiet intervals. They had not appreciated the continuous powers of resistance conferred by trenches; now they did.180 On the same day Wilhlem Groener, despite being in the rear, recorded his appreciation that progress would be slow: ‘The whole war has taken on the character of a battle of fortifications. Fresh, joyful open warfare is not, in the current circumstances, the order of the day.’181 The capture of Dixmude on 10 November is an index of how quickly the skills of po
sition warfare could be learnt, particularly by the Germans. A German reserve division, which three weeks previously attacked without sufficient artillery preparation and with inadequate reconnaissance, was put under the command of officers from the active list: they ordered the fortification of the ground gained, built up the heavy artillery, and gradually pushed forward the line until it was within 200 metres of the Franco-Belgian positions. Only then, with artillery superiority and proper preparation, did the attack go in.182

  Although the character of the fighting—after the initial contact was made— was static, its commanders continued to see the battle as mobile. Falkenhayn and Foch ordered attack and counter-attack. But the movement effected in response to these orders was limited. Indeed, most of the battle was outside their control. The landscape around Ypres was still closed, the roads converging on the city dividing it into self-contained compartments, and its woods and houses providing cover. British infantry, trained to regard 500 yards as a minimum field of fire, found 200 to 400 yards to be the norm.183 Tactical command was therefore exercised at a much lower level. The decisions which closed the gaps on the Menin road on 31 October and 11 November were taken by a brigadier. The corps commanders, and Haig especially, had responsibility for the management of the battle, and acted accordingly within the fighting zone. The quality most urgently required of a general in such circumstances, devoid of information for long periods and too often unable to resolve his tension with activity, was an inner certainty, a belief in ultimate success, a bloody-minded obstinacy. These the first battle of Ypres had shown that both Haig and Foch possessed in abundance.