In Flanders Flooded Fields Read online

  Soon this groupement would become the Second Cavalry division. Hence, from a practical point of view the Field Army was now largely divided into an infantry and a cavalry component. This suited the king quite well for the upcoming operations.

  In the evening the British General Capper, arriving with his Seventh Infantry Division from Ostend, assumed command of the defence around Ghent. As a result of these reinforcements the same night the attacks by the Germans, advancing from Alost, were temporarily checked.

  At about the same time in Eecloo, the Army Orders for the next day, 10 October, were drawn up. Now that High Command grosso modo had decided on the Yser region to reconstitute its Field Army and give its soldiers a few days of rest, it was a matter of getting the men there without compromising a worst-case scenario, i.e. a possible retreat from national soil. The various army divisions got their entraining stations assigned and a massive rail-lift was organized from the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal to the area west of the line Ostend/Thourout.

  The Fifth Army Division was to entrain in Selzaete and Assenede, a few miles northwest of Selzaete. The Third Division was to entrain in Tronchiennes, just west of Ghent and the Sixth in Hansbeke, 13km west of Ghent. The Fourth Army Division finally would embark in Aeltre, 7km further west still. The Second was to stay in Selzaete for another day and destroy the sea-canal bridge. It would be the last to depart. The Second had arrived in Selzaete late on 9 October and would only leave on 11 October by rail. Its initial destination seems to have been the area between Bruges and Ostend since the Army Orders of 10 October at 17:30 indicated that the horses and rolling stock had to move to this region.

  It is interesting to note here that this would leave the Second Division – together with the Fourth in Ghistelles – close to Ostend in case of an evacuation order.

  10 October

  For the Third, Fourth and Sixth Army Divisions this meant the use of the railway line Ghent-Bruges-Thourout. For the Minister of War and his High Command this was a logical choice: from Thourout the railway continued towards Ypres, Poperinghe and Hazebrouck in France. King Albert too considered it a good decision: in Thourout a branch line split off towards Nieuport and its seaport facilities!

  Although the majority of the army would be on trains for two days it was not considered a tactical risk. To mask the withdrawal the Groupement Clooten would take up positions along the canal and the Cavalry Division would cover the move south of Ghent.

  It seems as if the decision to move General Headquarters to Ostend was taken at the last minute. The original and more logical destination would have been Bruges. The French Admiral Ronarc’h wrote on the evening of 8 October, in Les Fusiliers-Marins au Combat;

  Le général [Pau] ajoute que le G.Q.G. Belge est à Eecloo aujourd’hui, sera à Bruges demain,…

  On Saturday morning at 07:00, the king and his officers departed from Eecloo to Ostend via Bruges, again on horseback. The queen left the town by car two hours later. Along the road she again distributed thousands of cigarettes to the soldiers. By 10:40 the queen met the king at the ‘Eecloo Gate’ outside Bruges and together they rode through the medieval city where people, surprised by the sudden royal visit, still managed to cheer and applaud. Once past Bruges the small convoy could pick up some speed and at lunchtime they arrived at the royal residence in Ostend.

  It is not clear though if the king went to the ‘Royal Villa’ on the sea promenade in Ostend itself or to the ‘Royal Chalet’, also with a seafront location, but isolated in the dunes 6km south-west of the city. On 15 December 1914 the Germans burned the latter down as it was seen as an excellent reference point for the British Fleet. Subsequently they constructed one of many heavy coastal battery emplacements in its place. Today the site is an important archaeological centre and open-air museum of coastal defence in both world wars.

  The chalet with the adjoining windy dunes and sunken passages was more intimate and would have suited King Albert’s nature better but for the planned formal meetings we assume that the more regal villa in the city was chosen.

  Ostend was by now turning into a British town. The Naval Division, having narrowly escaped from Antwerp, was being embarked to return to England. But in case the Germans succeeded in breaking through near Ghent, the Admiralty planned the dispatch of three warships to Ostend to cover the withdrawal and an eventual evacuation of their base. Besides the over 5,000 men of the Naval Division, the British Navy was to embark some 12,500 Belgian recruits and volunteers for transport to Cherbourg. In addition to these troop movements, the orders provided for dealing with the removal of Belgian stores and up to 10,000 wounded then in the city.

  All this work nevertheless was subject to the needs of Rawlinson’s forces in case they required assistance. A special instruction indicated that enough vessels were to be kept in immediate readiness with steam up for the next forty-eight hours to re-embark all of the British forces should the emergency arise.

  Meanwhile though a decision had been taken by the British government in London that would thwart the plans of the king of the Belgians.

  With the full-scale retreat from Antwerp, the Expeditionary Force for the Relief of Antwerp had become in fact redundant. But since these troops were on the continent anyway they had been renamed Fourth Corps and made a part of the BEF under the overall command of Sir John French with headquarters in St Omer in northern France. This meant that Sir Henry Rawlinson now got his orders from Field Marshal French instead of the Cabinet in London. Since his supply lines still ran through the port in Ostend though, Rawlinson maintained his headquarters at the Terminus Hotel in this well known upscale seaside resort. Moreover he was still waiting for the arrival of the Eighth Infantry Division that had been promised to him.

  This ambiguous situation on the ground is perhaps responsible for the fact that not only King Albert but also General Rawlinson and even General Pau, assumed that the Anglo-French presence in north-western Belgium would be further expanded. But Sir John French had other plans. Soon everyone would find out that the British Eighth Division was to be diverted to France and hence the BEF, still in the process of detraining in the Hazebrouck area.

  In the morning Rawlinson had a meeting with Pau in which both men discussed the withdrawal of the Belgian Army and the way in which to cover it. While General Joffre had advised Belgian High Command to have its army follow the Lys River from Ghent towards Courtrai and promised to cover this retreat with the fusiliers marins and the British Seventh Division, the Generalissimo became increasingly irritated by the apparent lack of action upon his directive. On 8 October, Joffre sent a cable to Pau inquiring about the whereabouts of the British Seventh Division. The end of it read:

  Let him [General Capper, the commander of the division] know how important it is for him to act with light units on the communications of the German Cavalry that is now in the Ypres-Menin area in a rather difficult position.

  The area mentioned was 40km south of Ostend, far from Rawlinson’s initial field of action and the movements of the Belgian Army. As long as the Belgians were not in a safe environment Rawlinson was apparently not willing to engage in any action that lay outside his orders from Kitchener. As such Pau had to inform Joffre in the late morning that he and Rawlinson had agreed on the protection of the Belgian Army and on the need to harass the enemy in the Ypres region, but:

  … On this second point the execution has been suspended because of the opposition by Lord Kitchener.

  Joffre and French had always agreed on the fact that all British forces on the continent should act on a unified front, under a unified command. But Kitchener had sent Rawlinson and his force to Belgium for the purpose of assisting in the defence of Antwerp. Since the city had fallen, Rawlinson had been ordered to cover a quick Belgian withdrawal towards France. But the king of the Belgians, in taking his army along the long road beside the Dutch border and the Belgian coast, thus deprived Joffre of the use of a significant part of the British forces whom he, Joffre, anxiously wanted to deploy
in the Lille area.

  At 14:00 Rawlinson and Pau met the king in the Blue Room at the Royal Chalet. Also present were Baron Charles de Broqueville, the Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel Wielemans, and the members of the Military House of the king, the Lieutenants General Jungbluth and Hanoteau and Captain Commandant Galet.

  Before the meeting the king himself had written down the different questions he expected an answer to:

  1.

  How many days will it take to rebuild our army and when will it be ready to take the field again?

  2.

  What role can it be assigned?

  3.

  What front will the army be able to take on in a defensive mission?

  4.

  We ask that our army, as much as possible, can fight on our own soil.

  5.

  What is the exact situation of the Allied forces so we can determine a safe region for the rebuilding of our army and allow our soldiers some respite?

  The first question seems to be unrelated to the others that more clearly involved French and British cooperation. Strangely enough in his book, General E. Galet skips the answer to this question. Nonetheless, the shorter the time to reorganize, the closer the Belgian Army could stay behind the actual Anglo-French front line or, in other words, the greater the chance to stay on national soil.

  The second and third questions considered a request to the Anglo-French Commanders to assign the Belgian Army a meaningful, but defensive, role in any future operations. To the astonishment of all General Pau replied that he had not been given any instructions on this matter. It confirmed the uneasy feeling of the king and his advisers that the Generalissimo saw this conflict as a pure Franco-German military feud: every available soldier, be it French, British or Belgian, was supposedly subordinate to the French cause.

  After this surprising answer the king could only address the last and, in fact, the most urgent problem: the actual tactical situation and the related question of a safe haven. Fortunately here General Pau could be more specific.

  The French were preparing the Dunkirk Fortified Place and wanted to keep the surrounding region free to manoeuvre. More south, at St Omer and Hazebrouck, the BEF was in the process of de-training and was being covered by the French 87th Territorial Division and French cavalry. To counter this assembly of forces the Germans were mounting an attack on this area from two sides: one from Courtrai in the northeast and one from Lens in the south-east.

  The last question clearly indicates that King Albert was still in doubt whether or not the Furnes-Ambacht region would be the ‘ultimate’ safe haven for his army. As long as he had no clear picture on the advance of the Entente forces into Belgium, there could be no talk of a safe haven on Belgian soil, hence his desire to stay close to the coast and its harbours.

  General Pau proposed to transport the Belgian Army to the only rear area still free of any major military operations: Boulogne/Calais/St Omer. There the Belgians would be able to recover in safety. Simultaneously the Belgian base would be transferred from Ostend to the port of Boulogne.

  All this clearly went against Joffre’s plans. More than anything else this proposal appears to have been a private venture, hatched by a compassionate Pau and a sportsmanlike Rawlinson during their early morning meeting.

  The king did not explicitly agree with the idea. After all Boulogne was already 70km from Belgian soil.

  We suspect that, from the allied side, Pau had done most, or all, of the talking since Rawlinson did not speak any French. This would explain why the latter apparently mixed up the conclusions of the meeting and subsequently misinterpreted the reaction of the king. He wrote from Ostend:

  We [he and Pau] succeeded in persuading them to send the Belgian Army to France, in inducing the Government to move to Dunkirk, and the king himself to go to Havre.… [Our italics]

  General Galet, after the war, used this quote in his book, but without the text in italics. Could this be a smoke screen by this royal intimus to cover the real intentions of his Master?

  Nevertheless King Albert reiterated his desire for the Belgian Army to be assigned a sector on Belgian soil once the recovery stage was completed. All in all, the meeting did not last half an hour.

  For the king and his entourage the results were disappointing. A retreat towards Boulogne would mean abandoning Belgian soil altogether. This was not a comforting thought and constitutionally a dangerous move. In the end it could even prove to be fatal for the survival of the country.

  When the meeting had ended General Harry Jungbluth followed the government into exile to Le Havre. As Professor Emeritus Henri Haag wrote in 1990: ‘… a fictitious incarnation of the Sovereign …’.

  On 9 April 1915 de Broqueville managed to have the royal mentor retire anew. Nevertheless, throughout the war Jungbluth and the king kept on meeting in secret, sometimes even from separate motorcars somewhere along the open road of unoccupied Flanders.

  Why Jungbluth, in early October 1914, left for Le Havre has always remained a mystery. The future of the country was still very much in doubt, the front line was continuously moving in the wrong direction and the relationship with the friendly powers was rather formal, uncertain and littered with unfulfilled promises. The young monarch would certainly have felt more comfortable with the intellect and wisdom of his mentor on his side in the upcoming days. Definitely something more, unwritten, was at stake here.

  If we indeed assume that King Albert’s ‘secret plan’ had been all along to eventually evacuate his (infantry) troops to England instead of retreating into France the reasoning is as follows: His mentor in Le Havre could have taken command of both remaining cavalry divisions that would have covered the embarkation of the Belgian Army from Nieuport. Unavoidably these units would have had to retreat into France but would thus have been shielded from being absorbed into the French Army – a nightmare scenario for the king – because they would still have been under ‘royal’ command. Once in France they could have waited – as Jungbluth’s ‘private army’ – and protected the Belgian government until the timely return of the monarch with a re-invigorated military force.

  One of the king’s personal interests had always been history and this proposal by Pau and Rawlinson brought to mind the precedent of President Benito Juárez of Mexico. This footnote in international history might seem quite unrelated to our story but for King Albert it was part of his family’s recent past and to his government it was a rather unpleasant reminder of a royal adventure gone sour. To better understand the dilemma facing the Belgians in October 1914 it will help us to elaborate on this subject.

  In 1861 a well-known lawyer of Indian descend, Benito Pablo Juárez had been constitutionally elected as President of Mexico. Two years into his term a French Expeditionary Force, in a wicked scheme put together by Napoleon III of France, occupied Mexico City and installed Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, archduke of Austria, as Emperor of Mexico. Due to the campaigns by the French Legion Juárez and the forces loyal to him, had been forced into a series of retreats that had ended at Ciudad del Norte (nowadays Ciudad Juárez) on the Rio Bravo del Norte, opposite El Paso, Texas. In June of 1865 the French commander in Mexico, Marshal Bazaine, urged the ‘Emperor’ to resort to severe measures in order to silence the remaining opposition. To justify his proposal the Marshal appealed to an unconfirmed rumour, afterwards shown to be false, that Juárez had left Mexican territory and taken refuge in Texas.

  Emperor Maximilian reluctantly agreed but, soon after the ensuing crack-down, across the border in the United States the American Civil War came to an end and the government in Washington became more and more nervous about the French military escapades south of the border. With President Juárez still on Mexican soil the Americans had a strong legal case against the puppet regime in Mexico City. Finally, two years later, in 1867 Napoleon III was forced to withdraw his troops. Soon afterwards the imperial reign in Mexico City collapsed, Maximilian was captured by Juárista troops and later executed.

>   At first sight this story has nothing to do with Belgium but it was King Albert’s own, close family that had been involved in this ill-fated affair. Maximilian had married Princess Charlotte, daughter of Leopold I5 and sister of Prince Philippe, Albert’s father. As such of course, Empress Charlotte was King Albert’s aunt. Shortly before Maximilian’s capture by presidential troops in 1866, his imperial spouse had left Mexico and returned to Europe in an effort to raise financial and military support for her husband’s enterprise. In fact Albert’s father, in October of that year, had hastily rushed to Rome to escort his sister, then suffering from a severe nervous breakdown, to her Miramar Castle on the Adriatic. Later on, when her condition worsened, he had brought her to Brussels.

  All this had happened almost fifty years before but Aunt Charlotte, although mentally very unstable, was still alive and being taken care of in a chateau near Brussels.

  But here the story does not end. King Leopold I, in a paternal effort, had dispatched a corps of some 2,000 Belgian volunteers to Mexico to help his son-in-law establish the core of an Imperial Mexican Army. The campaign nevertheless was ill-fated: in September 1865 the Belgian Legion suffered a significant military blow at a place called Tacambaro which had caused great uneasiness among the political establishment in Belgium. The end came a year later when the force suffered an outright defeat at Ixmiquilpan, 120km north of Mexico City. Upon this news the embarrassed government in Brussels pulled the plug on this royal adventure and disbanded the corps at the end of 1866.

  This unhappy enterprise nevertheless did set a precedent in international law from which King Albert could but draw two important lessons. First, as long as the legitimate head of state remained on national soil no foreign power would dare to establish a new regime in the country. Evidently, and with hindsight, it would prevent the German Emperor from setting up a pro-German regime in Belgium.