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Preparations for Operations in Flanders in World War I
- Discover the preparations and plans made for operations in Flanders during World War I, including the construction of rail lines and roads.
- Learn about the strategic objectives of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in Flanders, such as capturing the Gheluvelt plateau and securing the Belgian coast.
- Understand the challenges and considerations in executing the offensive, including the unsuitability of tanks for certain areas and the need for manpower and artillery.
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Despite being outnumbered and poorly equipped, certain Bulgarian units offered fierce resistance, delaying the Entente advance in Zborsko. However, the collapse of the front line enabled the Allies to assault Bulgarian positions from multiple directions and eventually quell the last pockets of resistance. The Central Powers' defeat at the Dobro Pole played a role in the Bulgarian withdrawal from the war and opened the way for the subsequent capture of Vardar Macedonia. The Battle of Épehy was a battle of the First World War fought on 18 September 1918, involving the British Fourth Army (under the command of General Henry Rawlinson) against German outpost positions in front of the Hindenburg Line. The village of Épehy was captured on 18 September by the 12th (Eastern) Division. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front, was not eager to carry out any offensives, until the assault on the Hindenburg Line, influenced by mounting British losses from previous battles that year, over 600,000 casualties since March, 180,000 of them in the past six weeks. Rawlinson was kept reined in and advised by Haig to ensure his men were well rested for the eventual attack on the Line. When news arrived of the British Third Army's victory at the Battle of Havrincourt, Haig's mind was changed. On the day following the success at Havrincourt, 13 September, Haig approved Rawlinson's plan to clear German outpost positions on the high ground before the Hindenburg Line and preparations began. Battle Very few tanks could be provided for the attack, so artillery would have to be relied upon to prepare the way but in the interests of surprise they would not be able to provide a preliminary bombardment. The 1,488 guns would instead fire concentration shots at zero hour and support the infantry with a creeping barrage and 300 machine-guns were also made available. All three corps of the Fourth Army were to take part, with V Corps of the Third Army on their left flank and on their right the French First Army (under Debeney). The objective consisted of a fortified zone roughly 3 miles (4.8 km) deep and 20 miles (32 km) long, supported by subsidiary trenches and strong points. The German 2nd Army and 18th Army defended the area. On 18 September at 5.20 am, the attack opened and the troops advanced. The promised French assistance did not arrive, resulting in limited success for IX Corps on that flank. Épehy エプイー
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In January 1917, the Second Army (II Anzac, IX, X and VIII corps) held the line in Flanders from Laventie to Boesinghe with eleven divisions and up to two in reserve. There was much trench mortaring, mining and raiding by both sides and from January to May, the Second Army had 20,000 casualties. In May, reinforcements began moving to Flanders from the south; the II Corps headquarters and 17 divisions had arrived by the end of the month. In January 1916, General Herbert Plumer, the Second Army commander, began to plan offensives against Messines Ridge, Lille and Houthulst Forest. General Henry Rawlinson was also ordered to plan an attack from the Ypres Salient on 4 February; planning continued but the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme took up the rest of the year. At meetings in November 1916, Haig, the French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre and the other Allies met at Chantilly. The commanders agreed on a strategy of simultaneous attacks to overwhelm the Central Powers on the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts, by the first fortnight of February 1917. A meeting in London of the Admiralty and the General Staff urged that the Flanders operation be undertaken in 1917 and Joffre replied on 8 December, agreeing to a Flanders campaign after the spring offensive. The plan for a year of attrition offensives on the Western Front, with the main effort to be made in the summer by the BEF, was scrapped by the new French Commander-in-Chief Robert Nivelle. Nivelle planned an operation in three parts, with preliminary offensives to pin German reserves by the British at Arras and the French between the Somme and the Oise, then a French breakthrough offensive on the Aisne, followed by pursuit and exploitation. The plan was welcomed by Haig with reservations, which he addressed on 6 January.
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During the Battle of Arras the British Fifth Army was intended to help the operations of the Third Army, by pushing back German rear guards to the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) and then attacking the position from Bullecourt to Quéant, which was 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from the main Arras–Cambrai road. The German outpost villages from Doignies to Croisilles were captured on 2 April and an attack on a 3,500-yard (3,200 m) front, with Bullecourt in the centre was planned. The wire-cutting bombardment was delayed by transport difficulties behind the new British front line and the attack of the Third Army, which was originally intended to be simultaneous, took place on 9 April. A tank attack by the Fifth Army was improvised for 10 April on a front of 1,500 yards (1,400 m) to capture Riencourt and Hendecourt. The attack was intended to begin 48 minutes before sunrise but the tanks were delayed by a blizzard and the attack was cancelled at the last minute; the 4th Australian Division withdrawal from its assembly positions was luckily obscured by a snowstorm.
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A cavalry division was given to each army, to operate with the reserve divisions, two tank battalions were attached to the Second Army and a tank brigade to the Fifth Army to exploit the firmer going, should the advances take place. In the early morning of 4 October, news arrived at British Headquarters (HQ) of the great success of the attack. Brigadier-General Charteris, Chief Intelligence Officer at General Headquarters, was sent from Haig's Advanced HQ to the Second Army HQ to discuss a possible exploitation. Plumer did not agree that exploitation was possible, because eight more uncommitted German divisions were behind the battlefield and there were another six beyond them; Plumer preferred to wait until the expected German counter-attacks that day had been defeated. German artillery fire was still heavy and the Flandern II and Flandern III Stellungen (defence lines) behind the attack front could be occupied by the fresh German divisions. An attack on these defensive lines would need close artillery support, which would be impossible because the British artillery was behind a severely battered strip of muddy ground 2 mi (3.2 km) wide. As the magnitude of the victory became apparent, Plumer had second thoughts but by 2:00 p.m., accepted that the moment had passed. On the Fifth Army front, an attempt to get further forward was ordered by Gough and then cancelled, after a local German counter-attack was reported to have pushed the 4th Division off 19 Metre Hill. Rain fell again on 4 October, continued on 5 and 6 October then became a downpour on 7 October. On 5 October, General Birdwood commander of I Anzac Corps told Plumer that the exploitation would not be possible, as the Corps light railway and the Westhoek to Zonnebeke road could not carry forward all the artillery necessary. On 7 October Haig cancelled the exploitation attack to the second objectives (red line), intended for the afternoon of 9 October. The rain stopped that night and the ground began to dry on 8 October, until late afternoon when another downpour began. From 4–9 October, over 30 millimetres (1.2 in) of rain fell, in a month when average rainfall was 75 millimetres (3.0 in).
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Haig wanted reserve formations of infantry, artillery, cavalry and tanks to be ready to extend a successful attack. Gough and Plumer replied over the next couple of days, that they felt that Haig's proposals were premature and that exploitation would not be feasible until Passchendaele ridge had been captured from Passchendaele northwards to Westroosebeke. Gough and Plumer thought that this would probably take two more steps at three-day intervals and then another four days to repair roads over the captured ground. Haig considered that although a collapse of the German defence was a condition for exploitation of the attack due on 10 October which was not certain, he desired the arrangements to be made, since they would be available for a later date. At another conference on 2 October, Haig announced that operations at Ypres would continue for as long as the weather permitted, that six fresh divisions were being moved from quiet fronts to the Fifth Army and that the Canadian Corps was being moved to the Second Army. The arrangements to be made for immediate exploitation, should the attack intended for 10 October be as successful as hoped, were that each attacking division was to keep its reserve brigade lightly equipped and accompanied by two 60-pounder batteries, two 6-inch howitzer batteries and four field artillery brigades. If the infantry brigades conducting the morning attack reported a big success, their reserve brigades would continue the advance in the afternoon. The reserve brigades of the attacking divisions of I and II Anzac corps were to reach Drogenbroodhoek in the south, 3,000 yd (2,700 m) beyond Broodseinde, Passchendaele station on the Morslede road in the centre and gain touch with the Fifth Army on the Westroosebeke road north of Passchendaele. A reserve division of each corps was to be ready behind the front, which the Director-General of Transportation Major-General Nash, undertook to have on the battlefield in 3 1⁄2–4 hours, if given three hours' notice. The divisions in corps reserve would be ready by the following morning to advance beyond the reserve brigades, if German resistance crumbled.
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On 14 July, during the Battle of Bazentin Ridge, this southern section of the German second line was captured by the British Fourth Army of Lieutenant General Sir Henry Rawlinson. The possibility of "rolling up" the German second line by turning north now presented itself if Pozières could be captured. The British Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, lacked the ammunition to immediately execute another broad-front attack after 14 July. Believing that Pozières and Thiepval would become untenable for the Germans as the British continued their eastward momentum, Haig ordered Rawlinson to concentrate on the centre between High Wood and Delville Wood as well as the villages of Guillemont and Ginchy.
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This suggestion was opposed by the French and Italian delegations and the British General Staff, at least covertly and was discarded. The new French Commander-in-Chief, Robert Nivelle, believed that a concentrated attack by French forces on the Western Front during the spring of 1917, could break the German front and lead to a decisive victory. The Nivelle plan was welcomed by the British, despite many in the Cabinet and War Office being sceptical, because a French attack would mean a lesser burden falling on the British. Haig was ordered to co-operate with Nivelle but secured French agreement that in the event the offensive failed, the British would attack in Flanders with French support. On 9 April, British and Empire forces undertook a preliminary attack at the Battle of Arras and the Nivelle Offensive began on 16 April. The French attack gained ground at great cost but no breakthrough leading to open warfare and the decisive defeat of the German army occurred, leading to Nivelle being replaced by Philippe Petain, a collapse in morale and mutinies in the French armies. While the French recuperated, offensive action on the Western Front could only come from the BEF. It was not until June 1917 that the principle of a Flanders campaign was approved by the British Cabinet and more grudgingly by the Prime Minister, against his preference for an Italian campaign. Haig ordered General Herbert Plumer, the commander of the Second Army which occupied the Ypres Salient, to produce a plan in late 1916. Haig was dissatisfied with the limited scope of Plumer's plan for the capture of Messines Ridge and Pilkem Ridge – the name used in military circles for the higher ground around the small hamlet of Pilckem (Pilkem), within the dorp (village) of Boesinghe (Flemish: Boezinge). By early 1917, Haig felt that Nivelle's ambitious attempt at a decisive battle would either force the Germans to abandon the Belgian coast or that the German 4th Army in Flanders, would have divisions taken away to replace losses further south.
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The offensive had resumed on 20 September, using similar step-by-step methods to those of the Fifth Army after 31 July, with a further evolution of technique, based on the greater mass of artillery made available, to enable the consolidation of captured ground with sufficient strength and organisation to defeat German counter-attacks. At the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge, most of the British objectives had been captured and held, with substantial losses being inflicted on the six German ground-holding divisions and their three supporting Eingreif divisions. British preparations for the next step began immediately and both sides studied the effect of the battle and the implications it had for their dispositions. British offensive preparations Main article: The British set-piece attack in late 1917 On 21 September, Haig instructed the Fifth and Second armies to make the next step across the Gheluvelt Plateau, on a front of 8,500 yd (7,800 m). The I ANZAC Corps would conduct the main advance of about 1,200 yd (1,100 m), to complete the occupation of Polygon Wood and the south end of Zonnebeke village. The Second Army altered its corps frontages soon after the attack of 20 September so that each attacking division could be concentrated on a 1,000 yd (910 m) front. Roads and light railways were built behind the new front line to allow artillery and ammunition to be moved forward, beginning on 20 September; in fine weather this was finished in four days. As before Menin Road, bombardment and counter-battery fire began immediately, with practice barrages fired daily as a minimum. Artillery from the VIII and IX Corps in the south conducted bombardments to simulate attack preparations on Zandvoorde and Warneton. Haig intended that later operations would capture the rest of the ridge from Broodseinde, giving the Fifth Army scope to advance beyond the ridge north-eastwards and allow the commencement of Operation Hush. The huge amounts of shellfire from both sides had cut up the ground and destroyed roads. New road circuits were built to carry supplies forward, especially artillery ammunition.
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. It was fought by the Fifth Army (the Reserve Army had been renamed on 30 October) under the command of Lieutenant-General Hubert Gough, against the German 1st Army (General Fritz von Below). The intent of the British attack was to fulfil complementary objectives. Political discontent in London would be muted by a big victory, as would doubts of British commitment by its allies; British loyalty to the Chantilly strategy of 1915 would be seen to be upheld and the capture of Beaumont Hamel and Serre would go some way to redeem the failure of 1 July and obtain ground on which the British would have a tactical advantage.
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The ground was powdery to a depth of 30 ft (9 m) and when wet, had the consistency of porridge. The ground dried quickly, except where water was held in shell-holes and after a few dry days became dusty. British offensive preparations Main article: The British set-piece attack in mid-1917 Brigadier-General J. H. Davidson intervened again on 1 August, with a memorandum urging caution on Haig and Gough. Davidson recommended that the preliminary operation by II Corps not be hurried, a full artillery preparation and relief of the divisions already engaged, should be completed before the operation, as tired and depleted units had often failed in attacks in the past. Two or three clear days were needed for accurate artillery fire, especially as captured ground on the Gheluvelt plateau, gave better observation and German maps revealed the positions of German machine-gun emplacements, which being small and concealed, would need precise shooting by the artillery to destroy. Capture of the black line from Inverness Copse north to Westhoek, would be insufficient to cover an advance from the Steenbeek further north and large German counter-attacks could be expected on the plateau, given that its retention was fundamental to the German defensive scheme. Two more divisions were sent to II Corps as a reinforcement. Few of the pillboxes captured on 31 July, had been damaged by artillery-fire and before the attack, the 109th Brigade commander Brigadier-General Ricardo, arranged three-minute bombardments on selected pillboxes and blockhouses by the XIX Corps heavy artillery, with pauses so that the artillery observers could make corrections to contradictory maps and photographs. It was discovered that on many of the targets, the shell dispersion covered hundreds of yards, as did wire-cutting bombardments. On 2 August, at the suggestion of Brigadier-General Hugh Elles, commander of the Tank Corps, it was decided that the surviving tanks were to be held back due to the weather, to ensure that they could be used en mass later on, although some were used in late August.
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