In my opinion the war can only be won here in Flanders.
Sir Douglas Haig1
7–31 May 1917
The British had first passed through Flanders, a low-lying, agricultural area of western Belgium, in the autumn of 1914. After the so-called ‘Race to the Sea’, when the opposing forces had worked northwards after the Battle of the Marne, the British found themselves holding the line at the Flemish town of Ypres. Famous for its wool trade with England, and noticeable for miles around by its thirteenth-century Cloth Hall, Ypres would become an enduring symbol of Allied defiance. By the end of 1914, after furious attacks by the German Fourth and Sixth Armies failed to break through, the British still held the town, although by now it was pockmarked by shellfire and ringed with trenches. In a war when up to a quarter of British dead would have no known grave, around Ypres this figure climbed to a third; an appalling indication of how treacherous, yet vital, this ground was.2
The intensity of the fighting around Ypres in 1914 was testament to its strategic importance. The German gas attack of April 1915 (known as the Second Battle of Ypres), which caused panic and blew a hole in the Allied line, only underscored why Britain could not lose this position. It was here where British strategic interests pressed most clearly on the battlefield–she had, after all, gone to war to uphold Belgian independence. Flanders was uncomfortably close to the Channel ports where the bulk of the BEF’s supplies were landed and through which their communications to England ran. If the British were ever to be forced from their trenches, then there was very little depth to their position. From the ramparts of Ypres, it was barely sixty miles to Boulogne and even closer to Calais and Dunkirk. A strong German attack might cause the catastrophic collapse of their line, hence the British Government’s chronic insecurity about the situation in Flanders. The grim naval situation only added more weight to these considerations. On 23 November 1916–in the final days of Asquith’s premiership–the War Committee of the British Cabinet had stated that there was ‘no measure’ to which it ‘attached greater importance than the expulsion of the enemy from the Belgian coast’, primarily because of the submarine bases at Ostend and Zeebrugge.3 These bases were a permanent menace to the movement of supplies and men across the Channel, and the Admiralty had long been concerned about the sowing of mines across the straits of Dover. The declaration of unrestricted warfare only heightened these concerns.4
For Germany, too, Belgium was a key war aim. The Reich had long imagined knitting the Low Countries together into some kind of economic union with the Fatherland and giving up most or all of Belgium was anathema to the German Government. In September 1914, Bethmann Hollweg announced that even if Belgium were allowed to continue to exist, it would be reduced to a ‘vassal state’ within the German Empire, occupied by German troops and becoming ‘economically’ a German province. Luxembourg and Holland would also be brought ‘into closer relationship’ with Berlin.5 In military terms, it was essential that Germany maintain control of the key rail junction at Roulers and the important U-boat bases along the coast. While there were places on the Western Front the German Army could give up, this was not the case with Belgium. Here the Germans would stand and here they would fight.
There may have been compelling strategic reasons why the British should attack in Flanders, but as a battlefield it could hardly have been less suitable for major offensive operations. ‘Water is unquestionably the predominant landscape feature’, wrote the historian Peter Barton, ‘for after rain it is everywhere held in place on or close to the surface by the geological sub-stratum, a bed of largely impervious clay up to 100 metres in thickness.’6 Drainage in this area was always difficult and slow, and the landscape was criss-crossed with narrow ditches–known as bekes–which were intended to carry the water away, but after heavy rain became, in places, impassable small rivers. The high water table, barely a metre under the surface, also meant that on much of this sector it was impossible to build trenches of the depth and complexity seen on other parts of the line, so recourse had to be made to the construction of breastworks above the surface. While these certainly helped to keep troops out of the water, they were never as sturdy or as protective as deep trenches, and casualties were, on average, always higher in the Flanders sector than they were on other parts of the line.
It was not just the problem of water that helped Ypres to acquire notoriety unlike any other place on the Western Front. Essentially, Ypres was faced with a low range of wooded hills to the south and east, which formed a kind of natural amphitheatre (‘like the rim of a saucer’, as one veteran put it).7 This high ground ran from Messines, south of Ypres, and continued up to the northeast around the village of Passchendaele. From this main spur sprang a series of lesser ridges–‘really no more than rises’ wrote the official historian–named after the villages that crested them–Bellewaarde and Gheluvelt; Pilckem and Frezenberg; Zonnebeke and Gravenstafel–right up to the Passchendaele Ridge. To the casual observer these heights may not have seemed particularly imposing. They were barely fifty metres above sea level (although parts of the Gheluvelt Plateau reached a dizzying 55–60 metres), but they gave the occupier a definite advantage in a war of position.8 German troops overran this ground in 1914 and had held it ever since, enjoying the unrestricted view it gave them over the town. This meant that the battered defenders soon found themselves in a salient–a bulge in the line that was overlooked by the enemy on three sides. An unhealthier spot of the Western Front would have been hard to find.
One man who had never forgotten the importance of Flanders was Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF. It was Haig’s corps, their ranks thinned by heavy casualties, who had halted the Prussian Guard just in front of Ypres in November 1914, Haig himself rallying troops along the shell-swept Menin Road. In just two weeks of bitter fighting, Haig’s I Corps had been reduced from 18,000 men to barely 3,000 effectives.9 And so, three years later, Haig found himself commanding the most powerful army Britain would ever field, nursing a sense of unfinished business. When he had agreed to operate under Nivelle, Haig had arranged with the French commander that should the offensive on the Chemin des Dames fail, then he would ‘prepare to launch attacks near Ypres to clear the Belgian coast’; a plan that was approved by the War Cabinet on 14 March.10 Now that Nivelle had been replaced, Haig was released from his orders to subordinate the BEF to French command and, finally, he was free to dust off plans that had already been maturing some months; his so-called ‘northern operation’.
Proposals for some kind of Belgian campaign had been circulating at GHQ since the winter, but no firm agreement had been reached. In November 1916, as the Battle of the Somme was ending, Haig asked General Sir Herbert Plumer, commander of the British Second Army, to look into the matter. Plumer, an old warrior who sported a bushy white moustache, had been in the Salient since the early months of 1915 and had garnered a reputation for the care and attention with which he planned operations.11 He took about a month to respond and argued that any offensive should comprise three simultaneous assaults: against Hill 29 on the rising ground at Pilckem (north of Ypres); against Hill 60 and Mount Sorrell (on the heights southeast of Ypres); and then against the Messines–Wytschaete Ridge (to the south). Possession of these heights would ‘not only improve our position enormously but their capture is an essential prelude to an advance either eastwards or north-eastwards, which will be of great strategic importance’. Nothing more was added and Plumer made no mention of any subsequent operations that would presumably have to take place before a grand offensive along the Belgian coast could be mounted.12
Plumer’s plans brought him little favour with GHQ. In line with the aggressive direction that General Nivelle wanted to take in the spring, Haig felt that Second Army had not got into the spirit of things and that, typically, Plumer was being too cautious. He tasked his Chief of Staff, Sir Launcelot Kiggell, with writing to Plumer on 6 January to bring his attention to the way in which the Field Marshal wanted things to proceed. Because the French and British attacks (under Nivelle) would have already taken place (and ‘the enemy will have been severely handled’), it was to be assumed that most of the German reserves would have been engaged. Therefore, under such circumstances, ‘it is essential that the plan should be based on rapid action and entail the breaking through of the enemy’s defences on a wide front without delay’. Because Plumer’s plans seemed to be based upon ‘a sustained and deliberate offensive’, GHQ wanted him to resubmit his recommendations for ‘inflicting a decisive defeat on the enemy’ and freeing the Belgian coast by the end of the month.13
At the same time as urging on Plumer, Haig also set up a sub-section of the General Staff at Montreuil (under Lieutenant-Colonel C. N. MacMullen) to work out their own plan of operations. They were reminded that Plumer’s proposals for ‘a steady, deliberate advance’ had already been rejected and that the ‘whole essence is to attack with rapidity and push through quickly’.14 Not content with two plans being drawn up, Haig also approached one of his other army commanders, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, and asked him to look again at the Ypres problem, on the assumption that he would command some element of it–possibly an amphibious landing from the coast that would link up with the main assault. When Rawlinson–who had little familiarity with Flanders–went to Ypres he was unable to agree on army boundaries with Plumer and so was not able to produce a plan, leaving Haig wondering what on earth was going on.
At the end of January, Plumer sent off his amended proposals to GHQ. Although he had been told to push for ‘rapid action’, Plumer could not be moved from his natural caution about advancing too far. The Messines–Wytschaete Ridge should be taken in three stages, before the ‘northern operation’ secured the crest of Pilckem Ridge along a six-mile front. Presumably–although this was not made explicit–a series of further advances would then be mounted towards Passchendaele and on to the Belgian coast. While this was fine in itself, Plumer claimed that for this operation he would need over forty divisions and about 5,000 guns–resources that were simply not available. By this time Rawlinson had been able to consider the operation and argued that the attacks on the ridges should not be simultaneous. In other words, given the constraints on the number of guns, they should attack Messines first, and then–within two or three days–mount a further push towards Pilckem and Gheluvelt. This would allow just enough time to redeploy their artillery to support the attacks on the other ridges.15
The problem, as Haig saw it, was that neither Plumer nor Rawlinson seemed able to give him what he wanted. They were too cautious; obsessed with securing the high ground and not placing enough emphasis on rushing forward in a dramatic manoeuvre that would break the line. Belying his reputation as a methodical, somewhat plodding staff officer, Haig was always drawn to decisive offensives and, in this respect, shared much with the ill-fated General Nivelle. In part this was because of what he had learnt at the Staff College at Camberley back in 1896. Battle was, he was told, composed of four distinct elements: manoeuvre, the preparatory or wearing-out stage, the decisive engagement, and then the pursuit–presumably with cavalry.16 For Haig this process from manoeuvre to pursuit became an article of faith. It was how he planned his battles and how he fought his war: frequently believing that the moment for decisive action had arrived and that he must rise to it.17 This had been one of the main problems behind the Somme offensive of 1916, when Haig had disregarded the concerns of his army commander (Rawlinson), and urged him to adopt a highly ambitious and, as it proved, disastrous ‘all out’ attack. Whereas Rawlinson wanted to conduct a more limited operation that would gradually blast its way through the German defences, one trench at a time, Haig overruled him.18 For Haig the powerful, almost Napoleonic, thrust through an enemy’s defences would be the central point of any offensive, and as long as it was pressed with determination and high morale then, surely, his troops would not fail. It was these principles that he took with him on to the battlefields of 1917.
On 7 May, just three days after the Paris conference, Haig held a meeting with his army commanders at Doullens and briefed them on how he saw the campaign proceeding. Now that Nivelle’s offensive had been terminated, it was essential to consider what other operations should be conducted for the rest of the year. Haig made it clear that he was now absolutely focused on operations in the north to free the Belgian coast. He had decided that the attack in Flanders would be split into two phases. The first would be the capture of the Messines Ridge on or around 7 June, which would secure the southern flank for any subsequent offensive. Once this had been completed, a second and decisive main attack would go in. This ‘northern operation’ would attack the high ground east of Ypres, shatter the German defensive position in Flanders, and allow for a major advance, which would take place ‘some weeks later’. Meanwhile, operations at Arras would be brought to a halt, while guns and men were gradually sent north, in preparation for what Haig hoped would be the decisive blow.19
But who would command the assault? Haig decided to leave Plumer in charge of the preliminary operation at Messines. Second Army knew the ground, and ever since the trenches had solidified in 1915, work had begun on a series of huge mines about 80–120 feet under the German lines. Over the next two years, twenty-five mines were planted, laboriously and at great risk, through a deep layer of blue clay, right under the noses of the German defenders. These would be essential in any assault on such a commanding position, and Plumer was hopeful that they would be highly effective if properly coordinated with artillery and infantry.20 This was exactly the kind of operation that Plumer excelled at and Haig was happy to let him get on with it. As for Rawlinson, doubts about his competency, his failure to secure a clean breakthrough on the Somme the previous summer, and his penchant for preferring limited attacks to more decisive operations meant that Haig was never entirely convinced of his suitability for the main attack. There was, as he saw it, only one commander left who could possibly mount the kind of breakthrough he desired: Hubert de la Poer Gough, commander of the British Fifth Army, and a man very much in Haig’s mould. A week before Haig briefed his army commanders at Doullens, he informed Gough that, following Plumer’s attack at Messines, he would command the main ‘northern operation’ in Flanders. Surely if anyone could break out of the Ypres Salient, it would be Gough.
For Haig, the decisive moment had now arrived. For the first time, the British Army had a chance to seize the initiative and escape from the shadow of her allies, and he was determined to take it. But the idea of mounting such an ambitious series of operations did not meet with universal acceptance. Although Smuts had raised the possibility of an attack in Flanders on 1 May, other senior British politicians looked upon it with considerable unease. Lloyd George later claimed that the Government could in no way be blamed for what subsequently happened. He had not seen detailed plans until the attack on Messines had already taken place, and, in any case, there was no formal agreement that a major effort should even be made in Flanders. His understanding was that the conference in Paris had merely committed them to maintaining pressure on the Western Front, while reserving the right, at some future point, to reconsider other operations. Therefore Haig’s eagerness to get started in Flanders was of his own making and directly against the guidance he received from London.21