Allies return to Ypres

The British chronicle of the war records under 13 October 1914 the occupation of Ypres by British troops. The old Flemish town had been without any garrison for several days. The German cavalry, which had entered it on 7 October, had left westwards the very next morning. Now British divisions were approaching from the north-east and French ones from the west. Accounts of the march suggest, however, that the main British forces entered the town only on 14 October.

The march from Ghent

Making for Ypres was General Henry Rawlinson’s IV Corps: Major-General Thompson Capper’s 7th Infantry Division and Major-General Julian Byng’s 3rd Cavalry Division. Both divisions had landed at the beginning of October at Zeebrugge and Ostend to save Antwerp, and after its fall had covered the retreat of the Belgian army. At 10 p.m. on 11 October the 7th Division marched out from Ghent, which superior German forces were enveloping from the east. By dawn its battalions stood in villages on the canal west of the city.

On 12 October the division marched towards Tielt, and on 13 October, in the rain, it covered some fifteen kilometres to Roeselare, about 20 kilometres north-east of Ypres. Some battalions arrived there only between 8 and 9 p.m. Byng’s cavalry division covered the march from the north, advancing through Torhout.

Entering Ypres

Early in the morning of 14 October the 7th Division set out from Roeselare in thick fog. The soldiers, who had been marching for days, were utterly exhausted. About a thousand men with blistered feet were taken by rail, and one battalion needed eleven hours to cover less than 20 kilometres. Divisional headquarters was set up in a bank building on the Grand Place, in the shadow of the Cloth Hall. The brigades took up positions east of the town, on an arc from Broodseinde through Gheluvelt (PL) to Kruiseik.

The same day Byng’s cavalry made contact south of Ypres with General Edmund Allenby’s Cavalry Corps, which was advancing from the direction of France. Rawlinson’s units, which until then had been fighting separately in Belgium, joined the main part of the British Expeditionary Force. From Switzerland to the coast of Flanders a continuous, though very thin, Allied line began to take shape.

The French and the British

The British were not alone at Ypres. In the town and at nearby Vlamertinge stood the French 87th Territorial Division, and at Poperinge the 89th Territorial Division, both made up of older reservists. Further north-east, around Roeselare, General de Mitry’s French cavalry was operating. On 15 October battalions of the 7th Division relieved the French outposts and began digging trenches south-east and south-west of Ypres. In the north, between the British and the Belgians, there was still a gap in the Allied line.

Field Marshal John French hoped that from Ypres his troops would advance east, towards Menin and Brussels, and turn the German flank. He did not know that four new reserve corps were just then arriving from Germany. A few days later the first great battle began at Ypres, in which the 7th Division, holding the most exposed sector of the front, suffered enormous losses.