End of the battles of Messines and Armentières

On 2 November 1914, according to the British nomenclature of battles settled after the war, two parallel battles in Flanders came to an end: Messines, in which the cavalry corps of General Edmund Allenby defended the ridge south of Ypres, and Armentières, where the British III Corps of General William Pulteney held the front in the valley of the Lys. The date is a convention. The fighting on both sectors went on, but from then on British historiography counts it as part of the First Battle of Ypres.

Wytschaete in German hands

The day before, the Germans had taken Messines and the ridge, while the French 32nd Division still held on around Wytschaete (PL). On 2 November the Bavarian 6th Reserve Division renewed the attack from the south and drove the French out of the village. The Germans suffered heavy losses in doing so, but the whole Messines–Wytschaete ridge was now in their hands.

Meanwhile further French reinforcements were arriving: the 39th Division, which was to retake Messines, and the cavalry corps of General Louis Conneau. The French, who could use undamaged railway lines behind their front, moved troops faster than the Germans. They now took over a large part of the sector of the exhausted British cavalry. Allenby’s cavalrymen, who since mid-October had been fighting on foot in the trenches, from then on held only a short sector between the French and III Corps.

Armentières

The loss of Messines exposed the northern flank of III Corps. The corps was then defending a front about 19 kilometres long, from the Douve stream to the eastern approaches of Armentières, which the British had retaken in mid-October. It had almost no reserves. Pulteney reported to headquarters that his troops would not withstand another major attack. The strongest German blows, however, fell further north, at Ypres. On the III Corps sector shelling and local attacks prevailed, although in the wood at Ploegsteert, on the 4th Division’s sector, heavy fighting went on for several more weeks.

Balance

Neither side achieved the aim with which it had entered the fighting. The Allies did not outflank the German wing and did not recover Lille. The Germans took the Messines ridge, from which they overlooked the British positions for the next two and a half years, but they did not break through to Mount Kemmel and into the rear of the defenders of Ypres. The British held Armentières. According to tallies based on the British official history, III Corps lost almost 5,800 men in the second half of October, and the Germans, in the fighting they called the Battle of Lille alone, over 11,000 by 28 October.

The line that settled at the beginning of November between Armentières and Messines survived without major changes until June 1917, when the British retook the ridge, and at Armentières until the German offensive on the Lys in April 1918.