End of the First Battle of Mount Kemmel

On 19 April 1918 Flanders was quiet. It was very cold, with snow and hail. After the failed attack of 17 April on the Flanders hills and on the Belgians at Merkem, and after weak attacks the following day, the Germans undertook no major action at the Kemmelberg. The British Battles Nomenclature Committee regarded this day as the last day of the First Battle of Kemmel, although in reality it was already a day of changing the guard. At 6 a.m. command of the Kemmel sector was taken over by General Madelin, commander of the French 28th Division, whose troops had relieved the exhausted British 19th Division during the night.

The change was not confined to the hill itself. On 18 April General Herbert Plumer, commander of the British Second Army, agreed with the French command on a plan under which the French 28th, 34th and 133rd Divisions were to take over, over several nights, the whole sector of IX Corps, from Meteren to Spanbroekmolen south-west of Wytschaete. By the morning of 21 April they had relieved the British 19th, 25th and 34th Divisions on a front about 10 km long. Of the British, only a Kemmel defence detachment of about nine hundred men, which was to familiarise the French with the fortifications, and the heavy artillery of IX Corps remained on the hill. On 19 April General Antoine de Mitry arrived in Flanders, appointed commander of the new Army Detachment of the North (Détachement d’armée du Nord, DAN), which according to French records was formed that day from the former Northern Command. After conferring with Plumer and General Félix Robillot, commander of II Cavalry Corps, he issued orders for the deployment of his five infantry divisions and three cavalry divisions. That day Ferdinand Foch reminded Douglas Haig in a separate note that Kemmel must be held at all costs, because it was a position of capital importance for the defence of Ypres.

The balance of the three days was favourable to the Allies. The “Tannenberg” attack, which was to squeeze the Ypres salient from two sides and take Kemmel, Mont Rouge and Mont Noir, had gained almost nothing. The Belgians at Merkem took nearly eight hundred prisoners, and the British, the Australians and the first French units repulsed all attacks between Meteren and Kemmel. At the same time, on the southern flank, the British held Béthune on 18 April. On the morning of 19 April the German 4th Army informed the Guard Corps that the attack on the Belgians north of Ypres was being broken off. Its three reserve divisions were to move south. For the Germans had not given up on Kemmel. They decided to take the hill with a new attack, this time methodically prepared, with fresh divisions and masses of artillery.

The British had no illusions. According to the statements of German prisoners, new divisions were being brought into the line to renew the attack on Kemmel. The British army, meanwhile, was utterly exhausted: on 21 April the Adjutant-General reported that since the start of the German offensive on 21 March it had lost almost 250,000 men. That is why on 19 April Haig accepted Foch’s proposal that tired British divisions be sent to quiet sectors of the French front in exchange for fresh French divisions. The defence of the Flanders hills, with Kemmel at their head, now rested largely on the French.