Battle of Kortrijk

The Battle of Kortrijk was the second great offensive of the Flanders Army Group, made up of the Belgian army, the British Second Army and French corps under the command of the King of the Belgians, Albert I. After the Fifth Battle of Ypres, which had bogged down at the beginning of October in the mud of the old battlefield, the Allies spent almost two weeks repairing roads and bringing up artillery. On 14 October at 5.35 a.m. they attacked again, along the whole front from the river Leie at Comines to Diksmuide. In two days they broke through the last prepared position of the German Fourth Army west of the Leie, retook Roeselare and Menen and reached the river. The German Supreme Army Command then concluded that there was no longer any point in defending the Flanders coast or Lille. Over the next five days the Belgians took Ostend, Bruges and Zeebrugge, the British entered Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing, and on 19 October they recovered the town of Kortrijk, Courtrai in French, which gave the battle its name.

Name and dates

The name “Battle of Courtrai” and the dates 14–19 October were assigned after the war by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee. On this site we use the Dutch name of the town, Kortrijk. The British chronology of the war also lists the recapture of Roeselare (French: Roulers) under 14 October, because the French call the same operation the Battle of Roulers (French: Bataille de Roulers). French and Belgian accounts treat it as the second stage of one great operation, which the French call the Second Battle of Belgium and the Belgians the Flanders Offensive (28 September – 11 November 1918). The first stage, which they call the Battle of the Flanders Ridges (French: Bataille des Crêtes de Flandre), corresponds to the British Fifth Battle of Ypres, but ends not on 2 but on 10 October, and according to some French accounts only with the start of the new offensive. The Belgians call the second stage the Battle of Torhout and Tielt, and the third, begun on 20 October, the Battle of the Leie, which the French call the Battle of the Lys and the Scheldt. These names cover somewhat different sectors of the front and different dates from the British one, which describes chiefly the operations of the Second Army. We give the course of events, times and figures mainly after the British official history (James Edmonds and Robert Maxwell-Hyslop, Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, vol. V, 1947), which also summarises the accounts of the Belgian staff and the French official history, and after the despatch of Field Marshal Douglas Haig.

Background

The first offensive of the Flanders Army Group, launched on 28 September, retook all the heights around Ypres in two days, but then stalled. The roads across the belt of shell craters could not bear the traffic, Belgian and French divisions were left without food, and the Germans brought up reinforcements to their two rear positions, Flandern I and Flandern II. On 2 October General Herbert Plumer halted the Second Army’s advance. Marshal Ferdinand Foch pressed for a new attack as soon as possible, on 10 October at the latest, because the offensives in the Argonne and on the Beaurevoir Line were then drawing German reserves south. King Albert, shaken by the losses of the Belgian army, wanted however to wait for fresh French troops, and in the end fixed the attack for 14 October.

During those days the British harassed the Germans with shelling, wire-cutting, feint attacks and patrols so effectively that every morning before dawn the German artillery fired on no man’s land, expecting an assault. In the south the situation was turning in the Allies’ favour: after the breaking of the Hindenburg Line and the Battle of Cambrai, the British Fourth, Third and First Armies were advancing on Valenciennes and threatening the rear of the German Sixth Army defending Lille. On 12 October the German command agreed to its withdrawal.

The plan of the Army Group, whose chief of staff was the French general Jean Degoutte, provided for the main blow to be delivered by two French corps in the centre of the front. They were to take the Roeselare–Hooglede plateau and go on towards Tielt and Ghent. The Belgians were to attack on both sides of them, while the British Second Army was merely to cover the right flank, advancing to the Leie as far as Harelbeke below Kortrijk. On 11 October, however, Plumer warned his corps commanders that if all went well they were to be ready to cross the river and seize bridgeheads on its southern bank, because the threat of a crossing might hasten the evacuation of Lille.

Forces

The Flanders Army Group numbered 12 Belgian, 10 British and 6 French divisions, plus four cavalry divisions. In the front line, from the right flank, stood: the British Second Army with four corps (XV, X, XIX and II), of which three, X, XIX and II, attacked with seven divisions; the southern Belgian grouping with three divisions; the French VII Corps of General Massenet and XXXIV Corps of General Nudant, five divisions in all; and the northern Belgian grouping with three divisions. Two more Belgian divisions held the front on the IJzer from Diksmuide to the sea, and a French cavalry corps waited in reserve behind the Passchendaele ridge. The British had no tanks and little field artillery.

Facing them stood the German Fourth Army of General Friedrich Sixt von Armin, part of the army group of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. It had 24 divisions, eight of them in reserve, but many were tired and depleted. On the front of the three attacking British corps the Germans had three divisions and two regiments in the front line, with three divisions in reserve behind them. The Allies had already taken the whole Flandern I position in the previous battle, except for the sector south of Gheluwe. What remained to be broken was the Flandern II position, running from Menen through Ledegem to the north, and behind it the river Leie. On the coast stood the Marine Corps Flanders of Admiral Ludwig von Schröder, which for four years had guarded the submarine and torpedo-boat bases at Bruges, Ostend and Zeebrugge. British intelligence reported on 14 October that the Germans were already removing equipment from the coast and from Lille and were most probably preparing to withdraw to the Scheldt.

Course of the battle

14 October. The attack began at 5.35 a.m. without a preliminary bombardment, behind a creeping barrage which the British advanced by a hundred yards every two minutes and the Belgians by a hundred metres every three minutes. The day was fine and cold, but mist lay over the ground, and the smoke of the shells thickened it so much that at first visibility was only a few metres. There was no surprise: the Germans heard the troops assembling and at 4.15 opened heavier fire than usual, which however fell on empty ground. Resistance came from concrete shelters, machine-gun nests and above all numerous fortified farms. The British official history says that in the first phase the Germans were more inclined to surrender than to fight, and waited to be taken prisoner in full equipment.

In X Corps the 30th Division reached its objective near Wervik by 7.30, and the 34th Division took the village of Gheluwe, though the last farms held out until evening. In XIX Corps the 41st and 35th Divisions advanced about six kilometres and took the low heights above Menen and Wevelgem, but stopped in front of Gullegem (PL), which was surrounded by three belts of wire. In II Corps the Ulster 36th Division broke through the Flandern II position and took Moorsele (PL), and the 29th Division cleared Ledegem. The Scottish 9th Division, which included a battalion from the Dominion of Newfoundland, crossed the Wulfdambeek stream on eight portable footbridges and by about midday was at De Beurt farm. In this fighting the seventeen-year-old Private Thomas Ricketts of the Newfoundland battalion used the fire of a light machine gun to stop the Germans withdrawing a battery that was firing at his platoon at close range, and the platoon then captured it. For this he received the Victoria Cross, the youngest soldier serving in a combat role ever to be awarded it. According to Haig, II Corps penetrated five to six kilometres.

North of the British, the Belgians of the southern grouping reached Izegem, the French VII Corps surrounded Roeselare, and the northern Belgian grouping took Kortemark. The British chronology and sources from Roeselare give 14 October as the day of the liberation of the town, where in October 1914 the Germans had murdered dozens of civilians. Haig’s despatch speaks that day only of the encirclement of Roeselare, and some accounts take it that the French finally cleared it the following day. By evening the Allies had taken more than 6,000 prisoners, about two thousand of them by the British.

15 October. The British XV, X and XIX Corps were that day only to patrol and seize bridgeheads on the Leie, while II Corps with the neighbouring 35th Division was to attack at 9 a.m., together with the Belgians. XV Corps crossed the river on both sides of Comines and established itself on the far bank from the mouth of the Deûle canal to beyond Comines, which according to the British official history was an important strategic success, as it opened the way to the rear of the German defence of Lille. During the night explosions were heard in Menen and fires seen, and in the morning neighbouring Halluin was burning. At 9 a.m. the British entered the abandoned Menen. In II Corps the 36th Division took Gullegem and, after street fighting, Heule, while the Scottish 9th Division, following the barrage at the double, went through Heule wood, cut the Kortrijk–Bruges road and in the evening stood in Kuurne, less than two kilometres from Harelbeke. The Belgians advanced just as far and towards evening surrounded Torhout. The French corps in the centre moved much more slowly: according to the Army Group’s report they advanced 4 kilometres in two days, the Belgians and British 10–12. Foch was dissatisfied and told Haig he would form a French Sixth Army in Flanders under General de Boissoudy. That day the German Sixth Army began to withdraw from Lille.

On 15 October the Germans learned of the second note of President Woodrow Wilson. General Erich Ludendorff had until recently wanted to hold Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing at all costs, counting on this to help keep Alsace and Lorraine for Germany in the negotiations. Now he judged Wilson’s reply unsatisfactory and at 6.40 p.m. declared that “there is no longer any purpose in holding the Flanders coast and Lille”. On 16 October at 3.10 a.m. Rupprecht’s army group received the order to withdraw to the Hermann position, prepared further east.

16–17 October. The Germans broke contact and began to withdraw. On the Second Army’s right flank XV Corps wheeled south-east together with the British Fifth Army and advanced far beyond its set objective. On the left flank the Germans were still defending the river at Kortrijk. On 16 October at 2.30 p.m. a detachment of the 9th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, of the 36th Division crossed into Kortrijk over a pontoon bridge under cover of a smoke screen, but after the loss of the bridge, destroyed by artillery fire, it had to withdraw at 6 p.m. In the evening the Scottish 6th Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, of the 9th Division crossed the Leie at Harelbeke and for the next twenty-four hours beat off one counter-attack after another. On 17 October X Corps crossed on rafts and over damaged bridges and cleared the southern bank of the river from Bousbecque to Lauwe, and a French flag was hung from the church tower at Rekkem. The same day the British entered Douai and stood before Lille, abandoned by the Germans, which they surrounded early the next morning, and the Belgian 5th Division entered Ostend after four years of occupation.

On 16 October the British liaison officer at Army Group headquarters reported that King Albert was dissatisfied with the French, who were “not fighting”, and wanted to halt the offensive. The King’s order of that day changed the Second Army’s task: it was no longer to be merely a flank guard, but to advance east, south of the Leie. Plumer, who had already done so earlier on his own initiative, on the evening of 17 October sent X and XV Corps still further, to the Tournai–Kortrijk railway line.

18–19 October. On 18 October the British 40th and 31st Divisions liberated Roubaix and Tourcoing without a fight. Stiff resistance came only from the German rearguards at Mouscron, which the 14th Division did not take until just before midnight. During the night of 18–19 October the Scottish 17th Battalion, Royal Scots, of the 35th Division crossed the Leie on a single plank and with few losses took the village of Marke on the outskirts of Kortrijk. On the morning of 19 October the 35th Division reached the Tournai–Kortrijk road, and in the afternoon its patrols entered the town. At about 1 p.m. men of the 11th Battalion, Queen’s Regiment, of the 41st Division crossed the Leie by boat at the north-eastern edge of Kortrijk, and at 2.35 p.m. it turned out that there were no longer any Germans in the town, though they were still shelling it from a distance. During the night three divisions of II Corps crossed the river, and the Scottish 9th Division occupied Harelbeke. By the morning of 20 October the whole front of the Second Army was beyond the Leie.

Meanwhile in the north the Belgians reached the Bruges–Ostend canal, and during the night of 18–19 October the Germans withdrew to a position on the Leie. On 19 October the Belgians took Zeebrugge and entered Bruges, and the French corps, from that day already as the Sixth Army, reached the Leie below Harelbeke. The same day the Belgian 1st Guides Regiment charged the German rearguards on horseback at Burkel, between Oedelem and Maldegem; it is regarded as the last cavalry charge in Western Europe. On 19 October Foch issued his last general directive, directing the Flanders Army Group on Brussels, and in the evening King Albert ordered the crossing of the Leie and the Deinze–Eeklo canal before the Germans could dig in on them. On 20 October the left flank of the Belgian army rested on the Dutch border, and the whole Belgian coast was in Allied hands.

Casualties

There is no full account of either side’s losses in this battle. According to the British official history the Allies took more than 6,000 prisoners on the first day alone. Haig stated that in the offensive in Flanders and in the operations up to the end of October the British troops alone took more than 6,000 prisoners and 210 guns. French accounts credit the whole Battle of Roulers with about 12,000 prisoners and 120 guns. English-language works also give a figure of 12,000 prisoners and 550 guns. The heaviest fighting took place on 14 and 15 October for the fortified farms, while some of the British crossings of the Leie in the following days cost only a few wounded.

Significance

The Battle of Kortrijk ended the war for the Flanders coast. The ports of Bruges, Ostend and Zeebrugge, from which since October 1914 German submarines and torpedo boats had attacked shipping in the English Channel and the North Sea, and which the British had tried to block in April 1918, returned to Belgian hands without a fight. At the beginning of October the Germans scuttled several unseaworthy submarines there and hastily recalled the rest of the flotilla home. As a result of the battle the Germans also had to abandon Lille and the surrounding towns, the largest industrial centre of occupied France, and withdraw to the Scheldt.

For the Belgians it was a battle of liberation. After four years behind the flooded ground on the IJzer, the Belgian army recovered most of West Flanders, with its towns and the whole coast, in less than a week. But the battle also exposed disputes within the Army Group command: Plumer several times acted against Degoutte’s orders, and King Albert and Foch criticised the slowness of the French corps. After a short pause the Flanders Army Group moved on on 20 October, to the Leie and the Scheldt, and fought there until the Armistice.