When was the battle of ypres fought

When it rolled over their positions, French troops either suffocated or fled, their eyes and throats burning from the chlorine. From 22 April to 25 April, the Canadians fought tenaciously to defend this exposed position. Outnumbered, outgunned, and outflanked, on the 24th they faced a second, this time direct, chlorine gas attack. The Canadians counterattacked to stall the German advance, and then slowly gave ground, buying precious time for British troops to be rushed forward.

History Second Ypres Festubert St. By this time, the fighting on the Western Front had stabilized into a war of attrition between the great armies of Germany on one side and France, Britain and its empire on the other — dug into a vast system of opposing trenches, running from the North Sea to Switzerland. In April , after a short taste of trench life in a relatively quiet sector of the front, the First Canadian Division was ordered into the Ypres salient — a bulge in the front lines on the Flanders plain, east of the ancient Belgian city of Ypres.

The Allies wanted to protect Ypres partly because it offered rail and road links to ports on the coast that the Allies were determined to keep out of German hands. The salient was a dangerous place for Allied defenders. It was surrounded on three sides by enemy soldiers and artillery. The trench works the Canadians moved into in April were also woefully inadequate — shallow, poorly constructed, and littered with human excrement, pools of water, and the unburied corpses of soldiers killed in previous fighting.

Chemical weapons had been outlawed by international treaties before the First World War. In the spring of , however, Germany decided to test a new weapon — chlorine gas — on the Ypres salient.

On 22 April , the Germans released more than tonnes of the gas from thousands of canisters arranged along German lines. The heaviest part of the gas cloud hit the Algerians, the chlorine burning their throats and causing their lungs to fill with foam and mucus, effectively drowning the men in their own fluids. As German forces moved from behind the drifting gas cloud toward the now-empty Algerian trenches, Canadian and British battalions — including soldiers suffering from the gas — moved to plug the hole.

During hours of desperate fighting that day, with help from isolated groups of French and Algerians, they managed to stop the enemy from encircling the First Canadian Division inside the salient, and from marching on the city of Ypres.

On 24 April , a second gas attack hit the Canadians head-on. None of the troops carried gas masks at this point in the war. Some Canadians fled, and many sought refuge by lying face-down in the crevices of their trenches, where the green, hazy gas cloud, heavier than air, found and killed them.

But many others survived by holding urine-soaked cloths and handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses — after being instructed to do so by medical officers who had identified the gas as chlorine.

There were about one million gas casualties during the First World War — 12, of them Canadian. Suffering in later years from chemically-induced illnesses and disabilities, they would sometimes fight unsuccessfully to have medical claims approved, having failed to document their injuries at the time.

And eventually they got them to hospital, but they both died. That saved my life. The 24 April attack opened serious gaps in the Canadian lines and forced the retreat of several battalions. But overall, the battered First Division held the ground outside Ypres, buying time until French and British reinforcements could be brought in. After four days of intense fighting, the Canadians were mostly relieved on 25 April. Cluny Macpherson , from St. The British battalions fought to hold their ground but also lost casualties in dead, wounded and prisoners.

This battle has a special significance for the German people for this reason. Many soldiers who fell during this battle are now buried in the German military cemetery of Langemarck nowadays it is spelt Langemark. The German aim was to break through the British front and take Ypres.

A very serious situation for the British developed with the German occupation of Gheluvelt but a successful counter-attack involving the 2nd Battalion the Worcestershire Regiment recaptured the village and restored the break in the British Front Line. Hill 60 was the scene of bitter fighting in April Hill 60 was a man-made hill at 60 metres above sea level in the area of Zillebeke , south east of Ypres. The high ground of the hill was held by German troops from 10 th December , after they had captured this area from the French Army.

German domination of this high ground enabled them to make life very difficult for the Allied troops in this part of the Ypres Salient. When the British 28th Division took over this sector from the French Army in February it was decided to retake the position because of this. A new concept of offensive mining for the British Army was carried out for the attack. On 17 th April , five mines were exploded under the German position; four mines went up in two pairs and the fifth mine as a single mine.

The top of the hill was literally blown off. The British took the hill and over the following four days fought off fierce german counter-attacks. On 22 nd April the battle subsided with the British in control of the hill. A study of the build-up to the Second Battle of Ypres see below , which began on that same day, 22 nd April, reveals why the German Army was so determined not to lose any ground in the area of Hill On that day the warm, sunny spring afternoon was suddenly shattered at 5pm with a devastating and frightening new development in modern warfare: a cloud of poisonous gas.

A unique feature of this website is a detailed study of the build-up to the Second Battle of Ypres and the events of the first day of 22 nd April. The story of the gas attack is told from both the Allied and the German sides of the wire. With the aid of maps and previously untranslated material this study offers a fascinating and original perspective on the start of this battle. The ridge lay in a north to south direction a few miles south of the town of Ypres. Planned from , the Battle of Messines was to be a prelude to the Third Battle of Ypres, which had the high ground of the Passchendaele Ridge to the north-east of Ypres as its objective.

The objective of the Messines June offensive was to remove the German Army from its domination of the positions on the high ground of the ridge south of Ypres, which they had held since October A successful operation at the Wytschaete-Messines ridge would break through the German Front and straighten the British Front Line, thereby reducing the manpower needed to man it, and place the Allies in an improved position south-east of Ypres.

They would then be in a better position to protect the right flank of the large-scale British attack planned for the end of July to the east and north-east of Ypres. From the early spring of mining operations were carried out to dig the tunnels and lay the explosive for a total of 21 mines. The troops involved in the mining were military tunneling companies and engineers from the Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand forces. In the early hours of the launch of the attack, 7 th June, 19 of the 21 mines were blown at 3.

The German defenders on duty in the Front Line were shocked and hurled into the air, along with concrete bunkers, equipment and tons of earth.

A dull rumble from the explosions was said to have been heard in London. British, Irish, Australian and New Zealand infantry carried out the assault on what was left of the German line and over 7, German prisoners were taken. Artillery and tanks moved up, German counter-attacks were held off and by the end of the first day the British objectives had been reached.

The largest of the mines, packed with 41 tons of ammanol explosive, was located over 80 feet below ground under the German position at Spanbroekmolen.

This was the location of a windmill by that name. The crater has filled with water and has been preserved as a memorial site:. In the centre section of the attack on 7 th June the 36th Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division advanced side by side. A memorial to the men of these Irish divisions and all men of Ireland who fought in the First World War is located at Messines Mesen :.

Having successfully secured the high ground of the Wytschaete-Messines Ridge in the Battle of Messines 7 th th June the plan for the next operation was to advance against the German Front Line east and north-east of Ypres. On reaching the strategically important high ground of the Passchendaele Ridge to the north-east of Ypres, the British intention was to continue to push westwards, cutting off access for the German forces to the Belgian ports of Ostende and Zeebrugge.

German forces were in control of these ports and using Zeebrugge in particular for shipping and submarines U-Boats. A British offensive in Flanders before the autumn weather closed in would also draw the focus of German Army commanders away from the Aisne battlefield.

Very high casualties for the French Army resulted in a struggle to maintain discipline in some of its units and soldiers mutinied. The British Fifth Army commanded by General Hubert Gough advanced in a north-easterly direction away from its positions near Ypres with the Passchendaele Ridge in its sights.

The French First Army was on its left. Some ground, approximately two miles, was gained on the first day, but that night rain began to fall. The ground all around the British attackers quickly turned into a quagmire. Churned up by the artillery bombardment of the German Front Line and rear areas, the ground the British were now having to advance across was badly damaged and filling up with of rainwater which could not drain away through the heavy clay soil.

Added to this, several small streams flowed through the area and their natural drainage channels had been destroyed. Due to persistent rain over the next few weeks the whole operation became literally bogged down in thick, sticky Flanders mud.

Conditions were so bad that men and horses simply disappeared into the water-filled craters. The German defensive line had been fortified during the previous months in their expectation of an attack here. The British advance turned into a battle of 8 phases, inching closer to the Passchendaele Ridge in a series of actions with limited objectives. The capture of the Passchendaele Ridge eventually took over 8 weeks to achieve.

The cost to both sides in human casualties was immense at between , and ,, although exact figures for British and German casualties continue to be a matter of discussion for military historians. The great tragedy for the British Army and the Imperial Forces of Australia, New Zealand and Canada, who suffered so many losses in the fight for the few miles from Ypres to the Passchendaele Ridge, is that only five months later almost all of the ground gained in the mud and horror of the battles for Passchendaele was recaptured by the German Army during its April offensive in