Cloth Hall, November 22, 1914
http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/graphics/nw_ypres_clothhall_02.jpg bottom, also great reference
Cloth Hall, Sue's Photograph, September 2008
The First Battle of Ypres was over. The Germans had failed at the Marne and now at Ypres and the Cloth Hall was ablaze. On the flat coastal region of Flanders, Belgium, along the northern border area between Belgium and France, each side had struggled to outflank the other as their forces pushed northward towards the strategically important ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Bourlogne.
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“The battle had continued for a month and, helped by the arrival of French reinforcements and flooding of a stretch of the coastal region, the Germans failed to break through." E.M. Remarque All Quiet on The Western Front. Little, Brown and Company. Boston."
“On 25 October, King Albert I, commander of the Belgian army, ordered the land behind the Ijzer River to be flooded. On the coast at Nieuwpoort, the lock gates were opened before the next high tide and closed again before it began to ebb. With two high tides a day, it took several days to trap sufficient sea and block its various means of escape. But just as the Germans were about to make a final push on 29 and 30 October towards the Channel ports, the river and the flooded land became impassable. The Germans were compelled to retreat. Despite repeated attacks, the floodwaters secured the IJzer sector for the rest of the war.” http://www.inflandersfields.be/
By the middle of November the opposing forces were ‘dug-in,’ entrenched along a line over five hundred miles long from Switzerland to the North Sea. The First Battle of Ypres was to be the last major battle fought on the Western Front in 1914 but “each side made repeated bids to break through the other’s line. Each operation inevitably began as a frontal attack, and ended either in complete failure or in the capture of a pitifully small piece of ground at great cost.”
G.W.L. Nicholson. Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914-1919.Queen’s Printer. Ottawa. 1962. p 45
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The total casualties of the British Expeditionary Force between 14 October and 30 November 1914:
BEF casualties - killed, wounded and missing
Officers: 2,368
Other Ranks (British): 50,529
Other Ranks (Indian): 4,627
Unallotted: 631
Total casualties (including 'unallotted'): 58,155
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