Part 5 (1/2)
A brilliant series of advances by Pulteney's 3rd Corps on 12-15th Oct., leading to the capture of Bailleul and Meteren, and the line Sailly-Nieppe, confirmed French in the belief which he shared with Foch that the enemy had exhausted his strength, and that the time was ripe for a strong offensive eastwards. The advance had scarcely been started, however, before reports arrived of a powerful offensive on the part of the Germans towards Ypres and the Yser. The power and weight of the enemy's opposition on the British front increased each day. Armentieres and the Bois Grenier were won by 15th Oct., but the failure of the 4th Corps in its advance on Menin was one of numerous indications that the Germans were being heavily reinforced. By the 21st all General French's worst forebodings were realized by the certainty established that the small German force which had been operating between Ostend and Menin on the 18th had been increased by no fewer than four corps. This discovery, in the British Commander-in-Chief's own words, ”came like a veritable bolt from the blue”. There was no longer any hope of continuing the offensive on the part of the comparatively weak British line, extended as it was on too long a front. It was a case of holding on now until relief arrived.
The threat was twofold. Not only were the Germans ma.s.sing in tremendous strength in the north; they were also seriously threatening the British right. Maud'huy, round Arras, was fighting a battle which, like that which the British were waging round Ypres, was one of the landmarks of the war.
He sent word on the 16th that the enemy was intent on driving in a wedge between Ypres and La Ba.s.see--a threat which, had it matured, would have finally separated the Allies, and compelled the British either to surrender or be driven into the sea. Faced by this double threat, General French decided to risk the possible disaster on his right, and concentrate against the German tide in the north, which otherwise must gain the seaboard, with possibly fatal consequences to the whole British campaign.
Fortunately the First Army under Haig had already been ordered in the direction best calculated to meet the new situation, though there was no longer any hope of its original orders--to turn the enemy's flank and drive him back to Ghent--being carried out. In this first phase of the battle of Ypres, which lasted until the night of 26th Oct., the northern portion of the British line, notwithstanding the enemy's immense reinforcements, progressed slowly but surely, and took heavy toll in killed, wounded, and prisoners. A certain amount of ground was lost to the south, between Zonnebeke and La Ba.s.see--the commanders of both the 2nd and 3rd Corps being anxious about their positions on more than one occasion--but at no point was any serious break made in the line. Maud'huy at the same time was gallantly keeping the enemy in check in the Arras region, though he could not drive him from Lens and the Vimy Ridge; while on the left the French and Belgians were withstanding repeated a.s.saults on the swaying front between Dixmude and the sea. The line held, and was now more or less firmly established.
The second phase of the battle of Ypres consisted in the repeated attempts of the Germans to break through this line at all costs. It began on 27th Oct., and lasted through five of the most momentous days in the history of the British army. On this day the French 9th Corps, which had been sent by Joffre to the a.s.sistance of the sorely tried British troops, took over the trenches in the northern part of the British salient. Capper's 7th Division, exhausted by incessant fighting and fearful losses, was temporarily attached to Haig's 1st Corps in the centre, and took over the ground south of the Ypres-Menin road. Byng's 3rd Cavalry Division was at the same time placed under Allenby. The 4th Corps was thus temporarily broken up, Rawlinson being sent home to supervise the preparation of the 8th Division for France.
The British line was further reduced in numbers during the opening days of this new phase of the battle by the repeated but unavailing attempt of the enemy to advance, the Germans meantime mounting up reserves of reinforcements for a decisive blow until, by the 30th, they outnumbered the battle-worn British by two to one. Then came the onslaught in full, almost overpowering strength. ”October 31st and November 1st”, afterwards wrote the British Commander-in-Chief in his story of _1914_, ”will remain for ever memorable in the history of our country, for during those two days, no more than one thin and straggling line of tired-out British soldiers stood between the Empire and its practical ruin as an independent first-cla.s.s Power.” The storm centre of the British battle-line was the Wytschaete-Messines ridge, where Allenby's Cavalry Corps and Shaw's 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division withstood for forty-eight hours the supreme efforts of two and a half German army corps to dislodge them. The honours of those heroic days were shared by the French 9th Corps and the British 1st Corps (with the 7th Division attached) in their continued defence of the Ypres salient; and the British 2nd Corps, which held a long line on the right in difficult country, and, though forced to give up Neuve Chapelle on the 28th, withstood repeated attacks by superior numbers until the Indian Corps took over their positions.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing lines of the Allied Armies in Northern France at the end of October and beginning of November, 1914
1, Yser line, defended by Franco-Belgian forces.
2, Ypres to La Ba.s.see line, guarded chiefly by British troops.
3, French lines to a point above Verdun.
4, French lines adjacent to the Alsace-Lorraine frontier.]
The culminating phase of the battle began on the 29th, when overwhelming ma.s.ses of the enemy stormed the centre of the Ypres salient, held by Haig's 1st Corps and the 7th Division, and forced our troops back on Gheluvelt.
The ground was recovered before nightfall, but fighting of the fiercest character continued all round and beyond the salient, the critical sector of the 31st extending from Gheluvelt to Messines, on the south, where the 1st Cavalry Division was heavily pressed, and the London Scottish received their costly baptism of fire. The Germans got into Messines that day, but were hurled out again, and the line in this sector was completely restored by nightfall. The climax of the crisis had been reached shortly after midday in the Gheluvelt area, when the 1st Corps, after doing more than could be expected of any men in their prolonged stand against the heaviest odds, was at last broken, part of the 1st Division falling back rapidly along the Ypres-Menin road, with the Germans at their heels. ”I felt”, afterwards wrote General French, who was not more than a mile or so away at the time, ”as if the last barrier between the Germans and the Channel seaboard was broken down”, and he spent the worst half-hour his life had ever known. The situation was saved by Brigadier-General FitzClarence, V.C., commanding the 1st Guards Brigade of the 1st Division, who, on his own initiative, and in the nick of time, ordered the 2nd Worcesters to counter-attack. The Worcesters, who were in reserve to the 2nd Division, rushed up to fill the gap, and, saving the South Wales Borderers, drove the Germans out of Gheluvelt and re-established the line, which was completely restored before dark. FitzClarence was killed only a week or two later in the same part of the field.
The third phase of the battle of Ypres lasted from 1st Nov. to the 10th.
Its most dangerous hours were at the very beginning, when both Messines and Wytschaete were lost, and only the timely arrival of the French 16th Corps, which partially restored the situation, and the devoted bravery of Allenby's Cavalry Corps, staved off this new threat of disaster. It is impossible here to follow all the confused operations in the remainder of this phase, in which fighting continued with varying intensity, and mingled success, all along the line from La Ba.s.see to the sea.
The outstanding feature of the fourth and final phase, which extended from 11th Nov. to the 21st, was the succession of heavy a.s.saults by the pick of the Prussian Guard, ordered by the Kaiser personally to carry the Ypres salient at all hazards. It failed, but not before the Germans had pierced the front along the Menin road in the first clash of arms on the morning of the 11th, a battalion of Royal Fusiliers being practically wiped out in gallantly disputing their pa.s.sage. Haig met the situation ”with the same grim determination, steadfast courage, and skilful forethought”--the words are those of Lord French--”which had characterized his handling of the operations throughout”. The line was re-established, but only after fearful losses on both sides. The 1st (Guards) Brigade mustered at night only 4 officers and 300 men.
The French and Belgians were also attacked all along their line between Ypres and the sea--where British monitors swept the coast with sh.e.l.ls for 6 miles inland--but the enemy was held off, save at Dixmude, which he captured and held. Between Dixmude, which had been stubbornly defended by Admiral Ronarc'h and his French marines, and Nieuport the sluices of the Yser had been opened by the Belgians, and the low-lying country across which the Germans were striving to force a way so flooded as to render all their efforts futile.
It was during this final effort of the Germans to reach the Channel ports in 1914 that Lord Roberts arrived at the front to visit the Indian Corps, who had withstood some heavy a.s.saults on the old line of the Second Army, between Armentieres and La Ba.s.see. Lord Roberts had scarcely fulfilled his mission, inspiring the troops with his presence at a critical time, when he was taken suddenly ill on 13th Oct. and died on the following day.
North of Armentieres the British 3rd Corps under Pulteney, which held the line thence towards Messines, had its share of fighting on the left bank of the Lys, and though its deeds in maintaining its positions were overshadowed by the epic struggles in the salient, its minor battles played their part in the victory of First Ypres. The great battle died down with the failure of the supreme effort of the Prussian Guard. Rains and floods and mud combined to call a halt in the struggle for the Channel ports, and the Western front was now established for the winter. There were occasionally attacks by the Germans at Ypres and Festubert, and more than one attempt on their part to cross the flooded Yser on rafts; but all to no purpose; and before the end of the year (20th Dec.) a five days' battle between the Indian troops and the Germans round Givenchy left matters much as they were before, the British positions, with the aid of British troops, being held. The French also broke the monotony of trench warfare with encouraging advances in Alsace, towards Noyon, in the Argonne, and elsewhere, but no vital changes took place in the general situation.
_Eastern Front, 1914_
Foiled in their grandiose plans in the West, the Germans were forced to rest content with their valuable territorial gains in France and Belgium, and remain on the defensive there while they turned to the more threatening situation on the Eastern front. As already noted, the Germans had under-estimated the rapidity of the Russian mobilization. They had not antic.i.p.ated an offensive on that front until they could spare as many reserves as necessary from the West, and the forces left to guard their vulnerable frontier of East Prussia were as inadequate to stay the unexpected advance which the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was in supreme command of the Russian armies, ordered under Generals Rennenkampf and Samsonoff, as were the Belgians to prevent the march of the Germans across their territory. By 25th Aug. the Russian armies, whose advance had begun as early as the 7th, had pushed so far ahead that all East Prussia seemed in danger of falling into their hands. General von Francois, commanding the German troops, had been driven into Konigsberg, the cradle of the Prussian monarchy; Gumbinnen, Justerberg, Allenstein, Soldau, had all been captured; and the hopes of a flight to Berlin before the Russian 'steam-roller'--too often raised in the early stages of the war--seemed not unlikely to be realized.
Germany's hour of danger, however, produced the man who was destined to play a ruling part in the remaining phases of the struggle--Paul von Hindenburg, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, then on the retired list.
Hindenburg knew the topography of East Prussia by heart, and had commanded army corps in manoeuvres along that frontier for many years. Appointed at this critical moment to supersede General von Francois, he collected 160,000 men from every available source, and by means of Germany's unequalled strategic railway system had concentrated them in a favourable position between Allenstein and Soldau for delivering the blow which would cut the communications of the southern army under Samsonoff, and smash it piecemeal in the treacherous marshes of the Masurian Lakes, the tracks through which, though well known to Hindenburg, were a veritable tangle to the Russians.
Tempted by their initial triumphs, the Russians had themselves courted disaster by placing themselves in precarious positions. Samsonoff's southern army had not only lost touch with the northern force under Rennenkampf, which had occupied Insterberg on the 23rd on its march on Konigsberg, but had also failed to secure either Allenstein or Soldau.
Hindenburg was quick to seize every advantage, and his lethal thrust on the 26th, when he retook Soldau and outflanked the Russian left, was followed by a similar enveloping movement on their right before they realized what had happened. Ma.s.ses of German guns came up and completed the move. Too late the Russians fled along the only road left open to them--by way of Ortelsberg and Johannisberg, across a narrow slip of land between the marshes. Save for little more than one corps, which succeeded in escaping along this route before it was closed, practically the whole of Samsonoff's army was wiped out in this decisive battle of Tannenberg, as the victors named it. Samsonoff himself was killed by a sh.e.l.l on 31st Aug. Altogether the Russians lost in killed and wounded some 30,000; no fewer than 90,000 were taken prisoners.
Hindenburg, whose Chief of Staff was General von Ludendorff--already distinguished in the war as the leader in the a.s.sault on Liege--at once became a national hero throughout Germany. The Central Powers, however, had little further cause for rejoicing on the Eastern front in 1914, once Hindenburg had been enticed to the Niemen by the rapid retreat of Rennenkampf after the Tannenberg _debacle_. The Grand Duke Nicholas had sent General Ruzsky from Galicia to retrieve the situation, and the new leader made as good use of the Niemen River--a formidable obstacle to cross with its width of some 200 yards--as Hindenburg had done of the Masurian Lakes. The operations, which ended in the failure of the Germans to cross the river, and their heavy defeat at Augustovo after a sanguinary nineteen days' battle beginning on 1st Oct., restored confidence to the Russian army.
General Ruzsky had already made his mark in the opening campaign in Galicia, where the Austro-Hungarian armies, after invading Russian Poland at the opening of the war, were driven back in a series of mighty battles which left the Russians in possession of Lemberg and all Eastern Galicia.
Brussiloff was meantime sweeping on towards the Carpathian pa.s.ses, while Ivanoff, commanding the Russians in Poland, forced back the invading armies under Dankl and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand beyond the Vistula and Cracow. Przemysl alone held out in Galicia, and this was invested by the Russians towards the end of September, when the Germans, far to the north on the Niemen, were rapidly losing the advantage and prestige they had won at Tannenberg. Hence Germany's increasing need for help from the Western front.