Battle of Kortrijk begins

At 5.35 a.m. on 14 October 1918 the Flanders Army Group of Albert I, King of the Belgians, moved off on its second great offensive in Flanders, along the whole front from the river Lys at Comines to Diksmuide. The Belgian Army, the British Second Army and two French corps attacked the Flandern II Stellung, the last prepared line of the German Fourth Army west of the Lys. By evening they had broken through it along almost its entire length, advanced several kilometres in places and taken more than 6,000 prisoners. The French surrounded and, according to the British chronology of the war, retook Roeselare, while the Belgians reached Izegem and took Kortemark. The British named the operation the Battle of Courtrai, after the French name of the town of Kortrijk, which they reached a few days later. The French speak of the Battle of Roulers, that is, of Roeselare.

A two-week pause

The Army Group’s first offensive, the Fifth Battle of Ypres, had retaken all the ridges around Ypres in two days, but then bogged down in the mud of the old battlefield. On 2 October General Herbert Plumer halted the British Second Army’s advance. The French and Belgian divisions tried to push on for a few more days, but without much gain. The British chronology of the war closes their battle of the Flanders ridges (French Bataille des Crêtes de Flandre) on 10 October. Meanwhile the Allies repaired the roads across the belt of shell holes, sorted out the supply system, which had broken down in the first days, and brought up heavy artillery. The fresh French XXXIV Corps also arrived in Flanders, and XXX Corps was on its way. Marshal Ferdinand Foch pressed for an advance by 10 October at the latest, but King Albert preferred to wait for the new divisions and set the attack for 14 October.

During those days the British did everything to make the Germans expect an attack every day: they shelled their lines, cut the wire, sent out patrols and staged feint attacks. As a result the German artillery fired on no man’s land every morning before dawn. Under the Army Group’s plan, signed as usual by its French chief of staff, General Jean Degoutte, the main blow was to be delivered by the two French corps in the centre of the front, onto the Roeselare–Hooglede plateau and on towards Tielt and Ghent. The Belgians were to advance on either side of them, and the British Second Army was to cover the right wing, pushing up to the Lys. British intelligence reported that morning that the Germans were already removing equipment from the Belgian coast and from Lille and were most likely preparing to withdraw to the Scheldt.

An attack in the fog

The attack went in without a preliminary bombardment. The barrage came down in front of the infantry line three minutes before zero hour and at 5.35 began to move forward. The problem was co-ordinating it at the junction of the British and the Belgians: the British barrage advanced a hundred yards every two minutes, the Belgian a hundred metres every three. It was decided that each army would go at its own pace, and that liaison between them would be kept by a special detachment of infantry and machine guns from the 9th (Scottish) Division, which would conform to the Belgians. As the British official history notes, it was precisely at this junction that things went best. There was no surprise. The Germans heard the troops assembling and at 4.15 opened heavier fire than usual, but since the British knew the places on which it had fallen on previous mornings, it did little damage.

The day was fine and cold, but a fog lay over the ground, thickened further by the smoke of shells and by the smoke screen with which the British covered Wervik to blind the fire from there into the flank of the attack. At first visibility was a few metres. The German machine-gun nests and concrete pillboxes put up weaker resistance than the fortified farmsteads, of which there were many behind the trench lines. The British official history writes that in the first phase of the fighting the Germans were more inclined to surrender than to fight, and waited to be captured in full equipment, with all their belongings.

The British at Menen and Ledegem

On the right wing of X Corps, the 30th Division was on its objective by 7.30, and its patrols entered Wervik, where they found only snipers and machine guns. The 34th Division took the village of Gheluwe, but at 10.30 its 102nd Brigade was briefly pushed back by a counter-attack, and the farmsteads armed with field guns and trench mortars, especially one the British called Roumanian Farm, held out so long that the objective was taken only at 6 p.m. In XIX Corps the 41st and 35th Divisions advanced several kilometres and occupied the low hills above Menen and Wevelgem. The 35th Division, whose objective lay as much as seven to eight thousand yards from the start line, marked the direction of the attack with thermite shells fired every minute and collected thirty German guns on the way. In front of Gullegem (PL), surrounded by three belts of wire, it was halted, however, by accurate fire, and a burning ammunition dump blocked its way. Plumer wanted the village taken that same night, but the attack was put off until morning.

In II Corps the 36th (Ulster) Division broke through the Flandern II Stellung and took Moorsele (PL), but around noon its leading battalion stopped a mile and a half short of Gullegem. The 88th Brigade of General Bernard Freyberg and the 86th Brigade of the 29th Division crossed the Menen–Roeselare railway and cleared Ledegem, which the Scots had taken and been forced to give up on 1 October. The 9th (Scottish) Division crossed the Wulfdambeek stream on eight portable bridges, and soon after noon its leading battalion, the Newfoundlanders, stood before De Beurt farm. Near Ledegem a platoon of this battalion came under fire from a German battery firing at close range. Seventeen-year-old Private Thomas Ricketts and his section commander worked round to its flank with a Lewis gun, and when the ammunition ran out he went back for more under fire and prevented the Germans from withdrawing their guns. The platoon captured four field guns and four machine guns and took prisoners. For this Ricketts received the Victoria Cross, the youngest soldier of the army to be awarded it for a combat action. According to the despatch of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, II Corps pushed five to six kilometres deep after heavy fighting.

The Belgians and the French at Roeselare

North of the British, the southern group of the Belgian Army advanced just as quickly. The account of the Belgian historical section, summarised in the British official history, attributes this to good barrages and to the rapid advance of the infantry, which forced the German batteries to stop firing and withdraw. The Belgian 3rd Division, advancing next to the Scots, reached Bavikhove, near Harelbeke, and according to Haig the Belgians got as far as Izegem. Further north the Belgian divisions of the northern group took Kortemark.

In the centre of the front the French VII Corps of General Massenet took Roeselare. The town, where in October 1914, after fighting the French, the Germans had murdered dozens of inhabitants, had lain just behind the front for four years and suffered badly from Allied shelling. The British chronology of the war and local sources give 14 October as the day of its liberation. Haig’s despatch speaks that day only of the French surrounding the town, and some studies hold that it was finally cleared the next day. In Roeselare the French 152nd Infantry Regiment is especially remembered; it bears the name “Roulers 1918” on its colours. Otherwise the French advanced more slowly than their neighbours. The French official history admits that some divisions made “slight progress” and explains this by the great number of machine guns and centres of resistance in the German front line.

Evening

By evening the Allies had taken more than 6,000 prisoners, about two thousand of them by the British, “and more are still coming in”, as was reported at British headquarters. In the afternoon patrols of the 14th Division, checking whether the Germans had left Comines, crossed the Lys by an abandoned bridge and seized a small bridgehead on the far bank, but heavy shelling forced them back. For the night Plumer left the corps a free hand: the next day they were to patrol along the Lys, and II Corps, together with the Belgians, was to attack again at 9 a.m., up to the Kortrijk–Roeselare railway.

On the German side the breakthrough in Flanders settled the fate of Lille. The withdrawal of the German Sixth Army from around the city had been approved on 12 October, but only at noon on 14 October, with its right wing threatened, was the order given for it to move off the next morning. The same day President Woodrow Wilson sent the Germans a second note, in which he announced that the terms of an armistice would be settled by the Allied military commanders. A day later the German Supreme Army Command concluded that there was no longer any point in defending the Flanders coast, and within a few days the Belgians recovered Ostend, Bruges and Zeebrugge.