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The Yprbs Times.
their pitiful dole of ammunition, did all that human beings could and, incredible as it
seems to us now, Sir John French was actually reproved from home for wasting
ammunition. The Engineers exposed themselves so recklessly that a special Order of the
Day was issued commanding them to be more cautious, as they could not be replaced.
Before the end of the battle there was hardly a British brigade which could have
mustered the strength of a full battalion of fit men. Many battalions were down to the
numbers of little more than half a company. It is on record that a captured German
officer, voicing the bewilderment of his army, asked, n-ow that he was harmless behind
our lines, to be told where our reserves were hidden!
The First Battle of Ypres was primarily a triumph of the British Expeditionary
Force. But it must not be forgotten how the Indian troops under Sir J ames Willcocks
took over the line of the 2nd Corps and held it under extraordinarily uncongenial climatic
conditions with great gallantry until the battle was over. It has, also, already been told
that the French troops saved us on one critical occasion. They saved us on others
and it was French troops which, being pushed up as fast as Foch could spare them, finally
relieved us along all the line on November 21st. On the extreme left the Belgians, though
in the last stage of exhaustion," as Sir John French has testified, withstood heavy attacks
until the German offensive was drowned in the floods. And there is glory enough for all.
In other ways, besides in its critical influence on the course of the War, the First Battle
marked an epoch. In it the first of our Territorial troops came into actionthe
Oxfordshire Hussars and the London Scottish, who by their gallantry won the highest praise
from their Commander-in-Chief. In this battle we first came in contact with German
minnenwerfer or trench mortars. Here, too, for the first time, experiments were made
with hand grenades. The Flying Corps, again, was proving its usefulness as a fighting arm.
Almost every day," said Sir John French, new methods of employing them are dis
covered and put into practice." Here, before the end of the battle, our men for the first
time learned the horror of Flanders mud and of trench feet. In the later stages there
were cases wherein, when a relief was in progress, men had to be dug out of the mud
before they could be relieved. The 2nd and 3rd Coldstream Guards held trenches where
they were above their knees in water for 23 days on end.
Above all, the battle marked the end of the War of Movement. Where Haig stood
on October 21stwhere the Worcesters and the Household Brigade chargedwhere the
cavalry fought on November 1stthere, within a mile or so, the War stood for four long
years.
But, when everything else is said, what every historian who tells of the battle will
dwell on to the end of time, is the sheer, dogged bravery, the invincible endurance of the
British soldiers. In the military history of all nations there is nothing more worthy to
be commemorated than the feats which we commemorate to-day.
