Ypres Passchendaele

By the same authors:

Picture Postcards of the Golden Age: A Collector’s Guide

Till the Boys Come Home: the Picture Postcards of the First World War

The Best of Fragments from France by Capt Bruce Bairnsfather

In Search of the Better ‘Ole: The Life, Works and Collectables of Bruce Bairnsfather

Revised edition 2001

Picture Postcard Artists: Landscapes, Animals and Characters

Stanley Gibbons Postcard Catalogue: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987

Germany Awake! The Rise of National Socialism illustrated by Contemporary Postcards

I’ll be Seeing You: the Picture Postcards of World War II

Holts’ Battlefield Guidebooks: Normandy-Overlord/Market-Garden/Somme/Ypres

Visitor’s Guide to the Normandy Landing Beaches

Battlefields of the First World War: A Traveller’s Guide

Major & Mrs Holt’s Concise Guide to the Ypres Salient

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battle Maps: Normandy/Somme/Ypres/Gallipoli/MARKET-GARDEN

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Ypres Salient + Battle Map

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Normandy D-Day Landing Beaches + Battle Map

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to Gallipoli + Battle Map

Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to MARKET-GARDEN (Arnhem) + Battle Map

Violets From Oversea: Reprinted 1999 as Poets of the Great War

My Boy Jack: The Search for Kipling’s Only Son: Fourth revised limpback edition 2008

Major & Mrs Holt’s Concise, Illustrated Battlefield Guide to the Western Front – North

Major & Mrs Holt’s Concise, Illustrated Battlefield Guide to the Western Front – South

Major & Mrs Holt’s Pocket Battlefield Guide to the Somme

First published in Great Britain in 2006, this revised edition 2008 by

Pen & Sword MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Limited

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Text copyright © Tonie and Valmai Holt, 2008 Except where otherwise credited, all illustrations remain the copyright of Tonie and Valmai Holt. The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

9781783460816

The rights of Tonie and Valmai Holt to be identified as Authors of this Work have been

asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

Abbreviations

About the Authors

How to use this Guide

List of Maps

Countdown to War

The Schlieffen Plan

FIRST YPRES - 18 OCTOBER-11 NOVEMBER 1914

SECOND YPRES - 22 APRIL-25 MAY 1915

THIRD YPRES - Passchendaele

THE SALIENT BATTLEFIELD TOUR: - 1st, 2nd, 3rd YPRES

ALLIED AND GERMAN WAR GRAVES & COMMEMORATIVE ASSOCIATIONS - THE AMERICAN BATTLE MONUMENTS COMMISSION (ABMC)

TOURIST INFORMATION

Acknowledgements

Picture Credits

INDEX

Introduction

The Dead

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known

Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

Rupert Brooke. Sonnet No IV. 1914

Sub-Lt Rupert Brooke, RNVR,

died 23 April 1915.

Portrait by Charlotte Zeepvat

This ‘Pocket’ Guide to Ypres and Passchendaele is designed for those who have limited time to visit this historic and emotive battlefield. Suggestions for the best use of a day or half a day are given below and those who have more time at their disposal and/or a deeper interest in the Battles of Ypres should refer to our Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Ypres Salient & Passchendaele. Those who would like to put the Ypres Battles in their chronological and historical context are directed towards our Major & Mrs Holt’s Concise, Illustrated Guide to the Western Front – North.

Throughout the Great War of 1914-1918 only one corner of Belgium remained unconquered. In this rough, half-moon shape known as ‘The Salient’, an eternal bond between the Belgian and British nations was formed. To this day that bond is movingly renewed every evening at 2000 hours when, under Sir Reginald Blomfield’s impressive Menin Gate Memorial, buglers from Ypres sound the Last Post in memory of their British and Commonwealth Allies.

During four years of fighting for a few kilometres of land an average of 5,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers died every month. By 1918 almost one million had been wounded. The ground was flat, the weather frequently wet and the trenches readily filled with water. Added to the dangers of cannon and machine guns were the Salient inventions of the Flammenwerfer and poison gas. To die there was easy. ‘Wipers’ and Passchendaele were names that became engraved on the hearts of many Australian, British, Canadian and Indian family hearts, for the men of the Dominions had rallied early and enthusiastically to the cause of the Mother Country.

There were many famous names who fought and died in the Salient, like Prince Maurice of Battenberg, the poets Julian Grenfell, Francis Ledwidge and ‘Hedd Wynn’ (Pte Ellis Humphrey Evans) and the VCs Capt Noel Chavasse, Capt Francis Grenfell and Brig Gen Charles FitzClarence as well as the inspiration for Bruce Bairnsfather’s immortal Old Bill, L/Cpl ‘Pat’ Rafferty, who is commemorated on the Menin Gate. It was, however, the common soldier who carried the heaviest burden as the terrifyingly vast list of names on the Menin Gate, the Tyne Cot Memorial and the New Zealand Memorials at Polygon Wood and on the Messines Ridge bear witness. There are almost 55,000 names on the Menin Gate and nearly 35,000 at Tyne Cot. None have known graves.

The twin spires of Ypres. To the left St Martin’s Cathedral. To the right the Belfry Tower, Cloth Hall.

The Ypres Salient is an area whose fascination continues to exert a hold even as we approach the 100th Anniversary of the Passchendaele Battle.

Since we conducted our first tour in 1977, when no other post-WW2 organised tours existed for the general public, the battlefield scene has changed beyond all recognition. Then we would stand alone with the faithful buglers at the Menin Gate, be the sole signatories in remote cemetery registers, place our poppy tributes on rarely visited memorials. It was a very privileged time. Gradually the interest and momentum rolled on. Local authorities realised that battlefields could equate to tourism. Designated routes were devised and signed, sites were refurbished, made safe for visitors, car parks were constructed, small museums with superb personal exhibits but little professional curatorship skills were expanded and ‘modernised’. Perhaps a little of the ‘soul’ was lost in the process but now, as battlefield touring has moved from the exclusive realms of the ‘buff ‘ or the ‘pilgrim’ to that of the ‘student’ and the ‘tourist’, the benefit is that so many more people are able to be exposed to the lore of the Great War and can contribute to keeping the memory alive.

The ever-continuing research by armchair historians and energetic local enthusiasts alike has led to a flood of new information and the discovery and opening up of new sites to visit. In the Ypres Salient ‘The Diggers’ (qv) have discovered the treasures under the developing industrial estate at Boezinge; one of the great craters has been opened to visits at St Eloi; the fascinating Canal Bank site at Essex Farm has been exploited; Talbot House in Poperinge has opened a Visitor Centre in the old adjacent Hop Store; Zonnebeke has completely remodelled its Museum and opened up the historical remains at Bayernwald; interesting tunnel entrances have been refurbished on the Letterberg at Kemmel; new Interpretative Centres and parking facilities have been created behind Tyne Cot Cemetery and at Langemarck German Cemetery. The expansion seems never ending.

What is important is to keep alight the flame thrown to our hands by John McCrae in the best-known poem of the Great War: In Flanders Fields. In writing this book – the fulfilment of more than a quarter of a century of studying and visiting the battlefields – we have endeavoured to hold it high and now pass it to you. The Rupert Brooke poem, one of his collection of Sonnets, published in 1915 and reproduced at the beginning of this Introduction, has many resonances of the McCrae poem, also published in 1915. Both poems highlight the tragedy of lost youth that we still mourn today.

Tonie and Valmai Holt,

Woodnesborough, 2008

Abbreviations

Abbreviations and acronyms used for military units are listed below. Many of these are printed in full at intervals throughout the text to aid clarity. Others are explained where they occur.

About the Authors

Respected military authors Tonie and Valmai Holt are generally acknowledged as the founders of the modern battlefield tour and have established a sound reputation for the depth of their research. Their Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guides series comprises without doubt the leading guide books describing the most visited battlefields of the First and Second World Wars. They have a unique combination of male and female viewpoints and can draw upon over a quarter of a century’s military and travel knowledge and experience gained in personally conducting thousands of people around the areas they have written about.

Valmai Holt took a BA(Hons) in French and Spanish and taught History. Tonie Holt took a BSc(Eng) and is a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and of the Army Staff College at Camberley. They are both Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts and Science and have made frequent appearances on the lecture circuit, radio and television.

In 2003 they sponsored and unveiled a plaque to Bruce Bairnsfather on the site of the cottage where he drew his original Fragments From France cartoon near ‘Plugstreet Wood’.

The authors with some of their books.

In 2007 an updated edition of their biography of John Kipling, My Boy Jack?, was published to