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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Battles of Ypres
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(1914–18)
The town of Ypres is in Belgium, about 40km/25m southeast of Dunkirk. In October 1914, in *World War I, the German army was racing to reach the coast before turning south to the Channel ports. At the same time the Allies were moving to prevent their doing so. When the two armies met, the *British Expeditionary Force held a projecting salient in the first battle of Ypres (19 Oct.–22 Nov.), though they were nearly wiped out in the encounter. This salient remained for the next four years a key British section of the line.
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In the second battle (22 Apr.–25 May 1915) it was the area chosen by the Germans to launch an experimental assault with chlorine, the first use of poison gas on the western front; it gained them part of the projecting territory. The third battle (June–Nov. 1917) painfully extended the salient again for the Allies, ending with the capture by Canadian forces of Passchendaele as a new forward position; this campaign, winning a devastated terrain deep in mud at a cost of nearly 300,000 Allied lives (and as many German) has become one of the bleakest symbols of the war. In April 1918 the Germans made one final successful thrust against the Ypres salient; the Allies won it back in August.
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The road out of Ypres in the direction of Menin, about 19km/12m to the southeast, was the way to the front. So it was there that a new triple-arched Menin Gate was built in 1927, to a design by Reginald Blomfield, as a memorial to the armies of the British empire and in particular to the fallen who have no known grave. Inscribed on the walls are the names of some 55,000 men who fell in the salient and were listed as missing. Every evening, at 8 p.m., the traffic comes to a halt and the Last Post is sounded.
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