End of the Battle of St. Julien

On the morning of 4 May 1915 the German artillery, as every day, rained shells on the British trenches on the eastern edge of the salient at Ypres. The trenches, however, were empty. During the night the infantry of the British 27th, 28th and 4th Divisions had left the projecting tip of the salient and occupied a new, shorter line, on average about 3.5 kilometres closer to the town. The withdrawal, which the Germans noticed only after several hours, ended the fighting the British later named the Battle of St. Julien, after the village of Sint-Juliaan, lost by the Canadians on 24 April.

Field Marshal John French took the decision to withdraw on 1 May, when yet another announced French counter-attack north of Ypres failed to materialise. That same day General Ferdinand Foch handed him a note from General Joseph Joffre: the Allies’ main aim was now to be an offensive between Arras and Neuve-Chapelle, and at Ypres they were only to stand on the defensive. General Herbert Plumer, who had commanded the troops in the salient since 27 April, had a plan ready. Over two nights guns, transport, reserves and wounded were withdrawn across the canal, and on the last night, 3–4 May, the front-line infantry was to leave.

As late as 3 May it seemed that the plan would fail. From the morning the Germans shelled the British brigades at the very tip of the salient, near Berlin Wood below Gravenstafel Ridge, and at 3 p.m. they attacked. The men of The Buffs who held the wood and the nearest trenches were killed or wounded. The Germans took Berlin Wood but got no further, and the fighting died down only at about 9 p.m. Plumer nevertheless decided to go ahead with the withdrawal. After dark the artillery left first, then successive halves of the battalions, and from midnight the last covering parties. A ground mist shielded them. According to the British official history only one soldier from the three divisions went missing: he fell asleep in a trench, woke at 6 a.m. when his comrades had already gone, and rejoined his unit the next day. The only men left in German hands were the wounded who could not be moved, together with the orderlies looking after them.

When the Germans realised what had happened, their infantry began to advance cautiously. Without a fight it occupied Zonnebeke, Polygon Wood and Nonne Bosschen, places that had seen the heaviest fighting of the First Battle of Ypres in the autumn of 1914. A German report described a picture of mobile warfare not seen for a long time: lines of infantry skirmishers on the Flemish meadows and batteries coming up at a trot. In front of the new British line, however, the advance came to a halt. The Germans judged that they could not take it without careful artillery preparation, and after dark they began to dig in a few hundred metres from the British. For the rest of the day their guns shelled the new positions, most heavily the exposed trenches of the 28th Division on the forward slope of Frezenberg Ridge.

The new line formed a semicircle with a radius of about 5 kilometres around Ypres. It ran from near Hill 60, through the woods in front of Hooge, Frezenberg Ridge and Mouse Trap Farm, and then, as before, westwards towards the canal and the junction with the French. Plumer ordered a second line to be built, and the engineers strengthened a third, along the ramparts of the town and the canal. For the first time orders were also given to organise a gas-alarm system, sounded by gongs, bells and klaxons. The British gained a shorter front, but they lost the high ground from which the Germans could now see almost the whole of the reduced salient. The shallow, narrow trenches on Frezenberg Ridge were soon to come under even heavier fire.