Introduction

‘A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world’.
Winston Churchill (1919)

The casual visitor to Ypres might struggle to understand why Churchill once argued that the city was of crucial importance to the British people. Today Ypres is an attractive, peaceful Belgian city. During the First World War life here was very different and the town was almost entirely destroyed. Throughout the war huge explosive shells fired from German guns could be heard hurtling through the air on their way to spreading devastation throughout the city. To British troops they sounded like an express train tearing through the air. As these huge shells crashed down in all directions, bricks and timber were scattered everywhere. Howitzers roared incessantly, shaking the earth; and the crackle of machine guns mingling with the boom of mortars and bombs, made a noise that sounded like some titanic thunderstorm.

For four years it seemed as if hell itself had been let loose on Ypres. A once beautiful medieval town quickly became a city of the dead through which soldiers passed on their way to the nearby front line trenches. In little over four years, centuries of history were wiped out by the fierce fighting that took place around the once thriving city. By the end of the war Ypres was a ghost town with hardly a building left undamaged.

DEVASTATION ON THE WESTERN FRONT DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

  IWM Negative Number: Q 100470
Ruins of the Cloth Hall at Ypres 1917.

The Guardian of the Channel Ports

Four major battles took place around the city. Ypres was of crucial strategic importance to Britain and her allies. It was seen as ‘the guardian of the channel ports’. If the Germans captured Ypres they would have been able to advance across the flat Flanders plains to the nearby channel ports of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne.  The British would have been unable to transport men, weapons and supplies to their troops on the Western Front and 
an invasion of the UK would have been possible. The British were determined to defend Ypres at all costs. As a result this small city became the focus for four of the most terrible battles the world has ever seen.

Defend at all costs - The First Battle of Ypres (1914)

On the morning of 21 October 1914, British and French troops met on the Passchendaele ridge, halfway between Ypres and Roulers and decided how best to halt the German advance through Belgium. They made the decision to fall back towards Ypres, seek the security of the walled town and defend it at all costs. The First Battle of Ypres had begun, so had many days of terror for the British army. On 26 October, British troops holding the village of Kruiseecke near Ypres were killed or buried alive when British artillery fired into the village, totally unaware that it was being held by their own men.  By the end of October Ypres was within range of German shellfire as the Germans attacked to the south of Ypres along the Wytschaete Ridge.

THE INDIAN ARMY DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

  IWM Negative Number: Q 56325
VCOs (Viceroy Commissioned Officers) and other ranks of 129th Baluchis take aim in the trenches on the outskirts of Wytschaete, Belgium, October 1914. A row of houses is just visible behind them, showing their proximity to the town.

Adolf Hitler was among the German soldiers in action. For his part in the fighting he was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. Hitler later wrote to his landlord that it was the happiest day of his life, despite the fact that one in five of his regiment had been killed during its first 10 days in action.

On 11 November German forces attempted to take Ypres itself. British troops defending the town were hit by the heaviest artillery bombardment of the war so far. For a short while German soldiers broke through the British front line, but were eventually beaten back. The First Battle of Ypres had come to an end. The British Expeditionary Force, along with French, Canadian and Indian support had stopped the German advance to Calais.