Germans reach the Belgian coast

On 15 October 1914 German troops reached the North Sea coast in Belgium. That day they took Ostend and Zeebrugge, and in the following days the whole coastal strip from the Dutch border almost to the mouth of the river Yser. The race to the sea, which since mid-September had been pushing the Western Front ever further north, was coming to an end. One question remained to be settled: whether the Germans would break through along the coast to the French Channel ports.

The pursuit from Antwerp

After the fall of Antwerp the German command sent west the III Reserve Corps of General Hans von Beseler, which had taken the fortress, together with the 4th Ersatz Division. Beseler was to reach the sea at Ostend and Blankenberge and catch the retreating Belgian army. Behind his troops came the Naval Division, formed at the end of August from sailors and marines, which was to occupy the coast. On the way the Germans took Ghent and Bruges, abandoned by the Allies.

At the same time the new German Fourth Army of Duke Albrecht of Württemberg was concentrating in Belgium. Its core consisted of four new reserve corps, made up largely of young volunteers, which had been brought from Germany by rail through Brussels. Beseler’s corps also came under the Duke’s command. The new army was to strike on the sector from the sea to Ypres and decide the struggle for Flanders.

The Belgians’ last line

The Belgian army, which after leaving Antwerp had also abandoned the ports on the coast, halted on the Yser. On 14 October its divisions began to dig in, and on 15 October they manned the line of the river from Diksmuide (French: Dixmude) to the sea. On the lower Yser lay Nieuport (Flemish: Nieuwpoort), covered by a bridgehead on the eastern bank at Lombardsijde and Westende. Several outposts were also pushed forward of the river, to the villages of Mannekensvere, Schoore, Keiem and Beerst. South of Diksmuide the front continued along the canal to Ypres, where French Territorial divisions stood, as did the British returning to the town.

The Belgians were at the end of their strength. After two and a half months of fighting the field army had lost more than half its strength. Estimates of its numbers in mid-October range from just under 50,000 to about 70,000 men, exhausted and poorly equipped. King Albert I moved his headquarters to Veurne. His wife, Queen Elisabeth, noted in her diary on 15 October that the situation was very bad and everything seemed black to the King. Albert would have preferred to let the army rest behind the French border, but he gave way to French pressure and agreed to defend the Yser.

Fusiliers at Diksmuide

Support for the Belgians came from the French brigade of naval fusiliers under Rear Admiral Pierre Ronarc’h, some 6,500 sailors, who a few days earlier had covered the retreat at Ghent. Around noon on 15 October the brigade reached Diksmuide and was ordered to hold the town and the crossing of the Yser for a few days. In those days General Ferdinand Foch, who was co-ordinating Allied operations in the north, pressed the King for the Belgians not only to defend the Yser but also to join the offensive. Albert refused, pointing to the exhaustion of his soldiers.

The line along the Yser and the canal to Ypres, more than 30 kilometres long, was the last obstacle on the road to Dunkirk and Calais. In the very next days German columns approached the Belgian outposts, and soon the Battle of the Yser broke out. A few days later the offensive of Duke Albrecht’s new army began on every sector from the sea to Ypres.