In Flanders Flooded Fields Read online

  But King Albert, with his sharp view on history, was perhaps more worried about France’s historical expansionist feelings towards its northern neighbour. When the French, as they predicted, made a swift offensive sweep through Flanders while the Belgian Army was being reconstituted in the quiet countryside off Boulogne, nothing could prevent Paris from abolishing the neutral status of Belgium by organizing a pro-French, perhaps even republican, government in Brussels!

  Secondly there was the situation of the army itself. In Mexico the Belgian troops had been volunteers, mainly equipped and financed by the mother country. But, as they were fighting on foreign territory, they had been deprived of their Commander-in-Chief. A similar, or even worse, situation would arise if the Army withdrew into France. Without the financial and political support of a tangible fatherland, the troops would be totally dependent on French goodwill for food and equipment, while the king would no longer be able to head his troops. In the end his soldiers could be considered volunteers, or even mercenaries, fighting under the French drapeau. This was a nightmare the king wanted to avoid at all cost. Without his cautious and concerned leadership the men would be gobbled up by the huge French war machine and subjected to the ruthless offensive doctrines of the French military establishment.

  On the opposite side of the front line, in occupied Brussels, there was German optimism that the Belgian authorities would soon leave the country, a move that would give the occupier a free hand in running Belgium. This is certainly evident from Hugh Gibson’s journal6. Gibson had already made a few diplomatic – and adventurous – trips through the front lines to Antwerp and even London in order to stay in contact with this government in Washington without being hindered by blatant German censorship.

  On the morning of Monday 12 October, Gibson met Freiherr von der Lancken, Head of the Politische Abteilung in Brussels. After the customary pleasantries, von der Lancken came to the point. According to him the German forces were rapidly advancing to the coast and it looked as if the Belgian government would soon leave the country. He asked Gibson:

  And, my dear colleague, what will your status then be?

  It was obvious that the Germans, once the Belgians were driven out of their country, would grab total power. Gibson was taken aback. But later that day, when the Spanish Ambassador, Marquis de Villalobar, got the same question from von der Lancken, he replied:

  Rodrigo de Saavedra y Vinent marquis de Villalobar, in 1914 the Spanish Ambassador to Belgium.

  Ons Land, 1919.

  My situation will be just the same as yours. We will both be representatives of our country in a land that is not ours. We will still both respect each other and make the best of it in the given circumstances.

  When a few days later the Germans had captured Ostend, Gibson intercepted through his many diplomatic channels in Brussels the rumour that the Belgian Government quite likely had left for the Channel Islands, in particular Guernsey. This was of course wrong, but if we accept that in every rumour there is a grain of truth it is interesting to look somewhat deeper into such a proposal. This destination would have been a handy diplomatic way out for the ‘Belgian problem’ within the Entente Cordiale.

  The Channel Islands were of course British, but with a special status. Not only would the Belgian government be welcomed here but Guernsey and Jersey were large enough to even accommodate, on a temporary basis, the Belgian Army and its monarch.

  After the conference with Rawlinson and Pau in Ostend had ended, two directives were drawn up. The first one concerned the transfer of the operational base from Ostend to Calais. This transfer would take place partly by sea, partly overland. As such the king did not yet approve of a definite move towards Boulogne. But with the choice of Calais he did acknowledge the desire of the French High Command to clear the area around Dunkirk.

  The second memo advised the railways to transport the Second Army Division, to be embarked the next day in Selzaete, straight to Calais, at least according to General Galet. But, as we have seen earlier, at 17:30 the Army Orders for the next day stated that, while the troops were to entrain, the horses and rolling stock of the Second Army Division were to move to localities between Bruges and Ostend. These orders apparently did not indicate a final destination for the division. A railway report moreover indicated that on 11 October thirty-five trains were provided to move the Second Army Division to Bruges.

  All other Army Divisions were to be assembled around their embarkation stations and prepare horses, artillery and other convoys for a march to the south-west.

  General Pau, in the meantime, informed Joffre that the Belgians were in no mood to stick to the Lys river in order to join the Franco-British lines but that they rather would move along the coast towards northern France.

  Rawlinson and Pau, during their meeting with the Belgians, had not only promised to protect their retreat, but had complied with the wish for a quick extraction from the battlefield. Both being closely involved in the northern theatre of operations they had seen firsthand the poor condition of the Belgian Army. While digging in around Ostend and awaiting further reinforcements, Rawlinson clearly expected the front line of his Fourth Corps to expand southwards and eventually link up with the bulk of the BEF detraining at Hazebrouck and directed towards Courtrai.

  The same day, in the western corner of the Belgian countryside where two days earlier British officers had used the telephone equipment of the Nieuport lockmaster, the stage was being set for the epic story about to unfold.

  Two high ranking British officers, presumably from Rawlinson’s staff, called on the same lockmaster and asked for a private meeting. Once alone in the office they unfolded an ordnance map of the region and asked if it would be possible to inundate the area between the Bruges Canal and the dunes, in the direction of Ostend. The lockmaster’s reply was negative. To clarify his answer he explained why such a manoeuvre was futile.

  For one thing the only structures to drain the polder on the Nieuport side were the Nieuwbedelf Gates. These sluices had only three openings, each 2.50m wide and 3.45m high. This was really insufficient to flood such a large area in a short time. The only way to increase the flow would be to cut the western dyke of the Bruges Canal itself and open the lock doors to this canal at the tail bay in Nieuport, adjacent the Nieuwbedelf Gates. (see map on p. 105)

  Idyllic view of the head bay – from the Bruges Canal – of the Count Lock just before the war. The Café du Comte stood to the left of the towpath just out of sight.

  City archive Nieuwpoort.

  Secondly, even if this procedure was successful he maintained, the main part of the land, especially the dunes and major roads, would remain dry because their lay was above the high water mark. Moreover, with regard to the twelve hours plus tidal cycle and the inner and outer water levels, one could only enter water from two to three hours in Nieuport while in Ostend, or even Zeebrugge, one could drain the same area during a period of nine to ten hours. So in order to maintain the flood he argued, it was crucial to command the canal itself and the drainage structures in Ostend. Otherwise the invading water could be drained in the north.

  Apparently not quite satisfied with this comprehensive answer, the officers subsequently wanted to know if eventually it would be possible to inundate the land east of the Bruges Canal. Here the lockmaster was more positive but added that it would be a slow process and that, again, they would need to control the canal and the drainage structures in Ostend.

  Obviously the British officers were investigating the possibility of a flood around their main debarkation point, Ostend. A thin layer of water would turn the fields into mud flats, leaving only the main access roads to Ostend dry, thus facilitating the defence of the place.

  It is understandable that after the lockmaster’s explanation the British officers were still disbelieving: they were indeed in control of Ostend and its drainage structures and wanted to keep the access roads to the city open. The region west of the Bruges Canal could therefore, in their eyes,
easily be flooded. But they kept their opinion to themselves.

  One of the officers, fluent in French, translated the lockmaster’s explanations for the other who carefully took note.

  Quite possibly this perfectly bi-lingual officer was Colonel Tom Bridges. Having been Military Attaché in Brussels before the war, Sir John French had sent him to Antwerp on 4 October. Remember the famous midnight run with his open Rolls Royce? Since then Bridges had stayed around and was now British Liaison Officer at Belgian GHQ.

  This was in fact not the first time in the war the British were interested in establishing a debarkation base at Ostend. It was not even the first time they projected a new bridgehead on the continent against the German invader.7 As early as January 1913, with a continental war in the air, the ever-energetic Winston Churchill, then already First Lord of the Admiralty, had thrown one of his numerous ‘fantastic’ ideas onto the table of Rear Admiral Bayly. He wanted his staff to investigate the possibility of seizing a base somewhere along the eastern North Sea shoreline. Rear Admiral Bayly got a team working on the project and eventually these men came up with some eight specific landing points between the Frisian Islands and the Kattegat Channel in Denmark: the Dutch Frisian islands of Ameland and Borkum, the German islands of Heligoland and Sylt, the Danish town of Esbjerg and the Laeso Channel in the Kattegat. On the Scandinavian Peninsula they studied Kungsbacka Fjord in Sweden and Ekersund in Norway. The report eventually disappeared in an admiralty drawer until a year later the Great War erupted. So far for the plans.

  On 21 August the small Belgian garrison of Ostend had been pulled out in order to join the concentration of the army at Antwerp. But in the evening of the same day the civilian authorities in the well-known cité balneaire got word that German cavalry was heading towards the town and might appear within a few days. As these troops, and perhaps more to follow, could jeopardize the supply lines of the Belgian Army, the British Admiralty was informed and here it was decided to make a demonstration off the Belgian port with a light cruiser and two divisions of destroyers.

  Upon arrival in Ostend the next day, Admiral Christian commanding the flotilla found out that his naval guns would not be able to give off any effective fire on an enemy approaching the port. The sand dunes masked the northern coastal road leading into Ostend from his guns while the road from Bruges could only be held by ground troops occupying the canal bridge a few kilometres east of the town. The road from Thourout, coming from the south, was protected from naval gunfire by the city itself. Asking for further instructions by wireless he was ordered to withdraw the whole force.

  Two days later however, Belgian gendarmes based in Ostend had to fend off an advance party of Uhlans coming from Thielt, losing five men in the skirmish. Subsequently, at 19:00 the Belgian Ambassador in London received a cable from the Mayor of Ostend asking for the urgent dispatch of British ships and a landing force.

  The British Admiralty, eager to defend any Channel port threatened by the enemy, at first wanted to land a few hundred men from the ships to assist the gendarmerie in driving off any German cavalry but then the scope of the enterprise rapidly expanded.

  The BEF, only recently engaged in the battle, had been on the retreat from Mons to Maubeuge and now to Le Cateau. The retreat would only end six days later and 130km further south, at the outskirts of Paris. Faced with such an overwhelming German wave, the BEF needed some immediate relief. The ever-imaginative Winston Churchill at the Admiralty was the only one in Great Britain who could offer a diversionary move. With his 1913 invasion idea still at the back of his mind he was eager to divert the German attention from his comrades in the embattled BEF.

  For just such a venture the Royal Naval Division was being raised, but it was still in embryonic stage and quite unfit for service. The only troop available to him being the Marine Brigade a landing on German soil would be suicidal. In order not to aggravate the European conflagration it was also out of the question to land a diversionary force on the neutral Dutch coast. So the only possibilities left were the Belgian and French shorelines. It would be much more advantageous to land on friendly soil but nevertheless far enough north to draw prompt attention from the German Imperial Staff.

  The result was that in the early morning of 27 August the Royal Marine Brigade – Devonport, Portsmouth and Chatham battalions – landed at Ostend. On account of its size and composition it was merely a show of force rather than a real fighting unit. But the brigade was to be considered an advance guard to seize a foothold for the arrival of further forces. It would signal German High Command that the British were determined to take them on, without having to rely on the protection of a ‘safe’ French debarkation port.

  Perhaps not a coincidence, the commander of the force was one of the few officers that had worked on Winston’s project for landing points on the German North Sea coast only a year earlier. Royal Marine Brigadier General Sir George Grey Aston had been professor of fortifications – in the late 1880s at the Royal Naval College – and by the outbreak of the war he was still working for the Special Services Branch of the Admiralty War Staff.

  Once in Ostend he did not get any time to implement the rules that had been laid out in the scenarios they had developed for such a landing. As he later wrote:

  There was not even time to run round in a car and look at the lie of the ground. Early in the evening [of 27 August], I started in a borrowed car to visit the outposts and have a look at the country outside the town, in case we should have any fighting.

  While the Royal Marines were in Ostend word came from the French that they were to embark 16,000 Belgians at Le Havre. These were the troops of the Fourth Army Division that had fought around Namur in southern Belgium and had withdrawn into France. The destination of this army division was for some time uncertain. At first Ostend was, for technical reasons, regarded as unfavourable. Then it was proposed to use Zeebrugge instead: the civil population there was small, the quay accommodation better and the naval artillery could provide better support by having monitors enter the canal leading to Bruges. Shortly afterwards the French even proposed to use Dunkirk to disembark the Belgians. In the end the Belgians were transported to Ostend where they arrived from 30 August on and immediately rejoined the Belgian Field Army.

  The situation of the BEF though was getting more precarious each day and on 29 August Sir John French decided that his main supply base would have to be transferred from Boulogne and Le Havre on the Channel coast, to St Nazaire on the Bay of Biscay. This massive relocation brought about such an important shift in priorities at the Admiralty – St Nazaire was 300km farther away from the front line – that it was decided to bring the British ships from Ostend back to England and direct the Royal Marines to Dunkirk to await further orders.

  To complete this interlude we want to add that in Dunkirk the marines joined the eclectic force of Commander C.R. Samson. This unit included some ten aeroplanes – the Eastchurch Squadron – sixty more or less armoured cars and a few hundred recently requisitioned double-decker buses. In London’s society circles the force was belittlingly dubbed ‘Churchill’s Dunkirk Circus’ but it cannot be denied that these daredevils in October 1914 made numerous hazardous but very valuable reconnaissance flights over, and road trips through, northern France and Belgium.

  On 10 October, back at the Royal Chalet in Ostend, nothing seemed to warrant a Belgian withdrawal from national soil, for now at least. As the Germans had not shown up in front of the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal the king ordered the Groupement Clooten to stay put. As he feared that his own High Command might prematurely withdraw and disband this interim cavalry force, King Albert at first had confirmed that General Clooten would keep the forces assigned to him at least for the next day. In the mean time High Command itself was still interested in the French proposal: the cavalry division was warned to prepare:

  … in case you would be ordered to cover at a later date the movements of the army on the left [west] bank of the Lys River … [Our italics]

/>   At 19:00 General Pau admitted defeat in his efforts to steer the Belgians along the Lys into France. In his cable to the Generalissimo he blamed his failure on the Belgian desire to avoid any contact with the enemy. He could only confirm what the king silently was working towards:

  Tonight the Belgian Army will be in the region of Thourout-Dixmude-Ostende where it will rest. [sic]

  NOTES

  1. Elisabeth’s father was a well-known German eye surgeon and she herself had been trained as a nurse. She spoke six languages and in her spare time played the violin.

  2. This canal is locally better known as the Plassendalevaart after the hamlet situated at its entrance to the Ostend-Bruges Canal. Originally however the Ostend branch did not exist. We will refer to this canal as the ‘Bruges Canal’. Plasschendaele is not to be confused with Passchendaele, the village between Roulers and Ypres, famous for the battle that took place there in October-November 1917.

  3. Ambacht is an old Flemish word for a judicial subdivision in rural areas. In this instance the subdivision had its seat in the town of Furnes. Today the region is better known as the Westhoek [West Corner].

  4. The Entente Cordiale was an agreement signed by the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, and the French Ambassador, Paul Cambon, in London on 8 April 1904 with the aim of settling long-standing disputes between both countries regarding their respective colonial possessions.

  5. Leopold von Saksen-Coburg-Saalfeld (1790–1865). At twenty-five Lt. Gen. in the Russian Army. In 1817 widower of the British Princess Charlotte. First king of the Belgians since 21 July 1831. Remarried in 1832 to Louise Marie d’Orléans, daughter of King Louis Philippe of France.