End of the Second Battle of Ypres

On 25 May 1915, for the first time in five weeks, there was no German attack at Ypres. The day before, the Germans had struck with chlorine at the British positions from Hooge to Turco Farm and taken Mouse Trap Farm and part of Bellewaarde Ridge, and British night counter-attacks had failed to recover the lost trenches. During the night of 24/25 May the British 4th Division gave up, without interference, the over-exposed wedge of the front at Mouse Trap Farm and manned a rear line between Wieltje and Turco Farm. By morning the front was quiet and the shelling lighter than on previous days. After the war the British Battles Nomenclature Committee ended the Second Battle of Ypres on this day.

Why the fighting stopped

Both sides were at the end of their strength. On the evening of 24 May the headquarters of the German 4th Army, which was being stripped of ammunition and units for the fighting in Artois, ordered that no further major operations be undertaken. By the end of the fighting on 25 May the British batteries had little left but a few shrapnel shells. The divisions that had defended the salient since 22 April had been thrown into battle again and again without relief, until many battalions were reduced to remnants filled up with half-trained recruits. Over the following days the British relieved the most depleted brigades and strengthened the new line. Exchanges of fire, raids, mining and local attacks continued at Ypres, but the great battle was over.

Five weeks of fighting

The battle began on 22 April with the first chlorine attack in the west, which broke two French divisions north of Ypres. The gap was hastily closed by the Canadians and British, and on 24 April the Germans struck the Canadians themselves with gas and took the village of St. Julien. After a week of costly counter-attacks, at the beginning of May the British fell back to a shorter line closer to the town, and on 5 May they lost Hill 60. On 8 May, after a hurricane bombardment, the Germans took Frezenberg Ridge, and after a pause of several days, on 24 May, they attacked for the last time.

After the war the British divided this fighting into four battles: Gravenstafel Ridge, St. Julien, Frezenberg Ridge and Bellewaarde Ridge. The Germans spoke of the Second Battle of Flanders, and Polish studies use the name Second Battle of Ypres.

Balance

The Germans took the northern and eastern parts of the Ypres salient, together with the high ground from which they could now see almost its entire interior. The salient became much shallower, and in places the German trenches came within 3–4 kilometres of the town. Ypres, shelled by heavy guns, was reduced to ruins. The front, however, was not broken, and the town remained in Allied hands until the end of the war.

The losses were enormous. According to the British official history the British army lost 59,275 killed, wounded and missing between 22 April and 31 May, including the fighting for Hill 60. According to the Canadian official history the 1st Canadian Division lost more than 6,000 men, of whom about 2,000 were killed. Estimates of French losses vary widely, in most studies from over ten thousand to more than 20,000 men, and Belgian losses, according to French studies, at about 1,500. After the war the Reichsarchiv put German losses at Ypres from 21 April to 30 May at 34,933 men. The Germans thus lost markedly fewer than the Allies, which the British official historian explained by the superiority of the German artillery and by hasty Allied counter-attacks without proper artillery support.

After the battle

The battle was the only great German offensive in the west in 1915, and for the Germans only a partial success. Erich von Falkenhayn regarded it as a subsidiary operation and directed his main forces against Russia. The gas attack of 22 April showed the power of the new weapon, but the Germans had no reserves to exploit it, and the surprise could not be repeated. Chemical warfare on the Western Front had nonetheless become a fact: both sides began work on masks and on their own war gases, and in the autumn at Loos the British released a chlorine cloud on a large scale for the first time.

For the British the battle was above all a lesson in the cost of defence without sufficient artillery and ammunition. The shell shortage, exposed at Ypres and in the failed attacks in Artois, shook British politics in those days. For Canada it was the first great battle of the war and the beginning of the legend of its soldiers. It was during this fighting that the Canadian army doctor John McCrae wrote the poem In Flanders Fields.