OUR PRESIDENT.
IMES
THE JOURNAL OF THE YPRES LEAGUE.
Vol. 2. No. 7.
Published Quarterly.
July, 1925.
I have been asked to write a short memoir about the late Field Marshal, who has
thus early been taken from us.
I do not propose to narrate all his great military services, but at once to call attention
to that phase that brought this League into existence, and endeavour to point out what
Ypres means to this country.
We will commence with the discussion between Sir John French and Mr. Winston
Churchill at the end of September, 1914, when Lille was the area settled upon for the
concentration of the British Force at the urgent representations of Sir John to move
North from the Aisne to a country more suitable to the action of cavalry and the defence
of the Channel ports. To this movement General Joffre gave his consent.
It was this far-seeing strategy that in my opinion will make the name of our President
ever famous in the future, and one for which Great Britain and her Dominions should be
ever grateful.
General Joffre pointed out it would be more convenient for our reinforcements to
disembark in the neighbourhood of Dunkirk.
I look on this period as the zenith of our Chief he used to talk with such pride of
his Expeditionary Force the splendid results of their training, the way they had fought
in the Retreat, Le Cateau, the crossings of the Marne and the Aisne every soldier
worked for him with confidence and the petty jealousies that trench warfare eventually
bred were non-existent. All of us who moved North with him were made to feel that
the defence of the Channel ports was vital (already in the Retreat we had experience of
our base at Havre).
It was a nightmare to think of what the loss of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne would
mean what submarine bases for the enemy, what extra burden on the back of our
glorious Navy!
It was on the 14th October, 1914, when the 4th Corps, with its famous 7th Division,
reached Ypres, and on the 16th that the B.E.F. moved towards the East for the last
time and held a line from Langemarck, Zonnebeke, Gheluvelt, Wytschaete to Armentières
how for years the ground west of this line was held by heroic deeds is known to all, but
few recognised as our Chief did the necessity of holding on to this Salienthe was
criticised in high quarters the writer did not agree with him, the difficulties seemed to
be overwhelming, the rim of the saucer," the soil of Flanders with its remarkable feature
of sub-surface water, the pavé roads, etc.
Who has forgotten that first great battle of Ypres, when the British Force was 24
hours and an Army Corps behind the enemy?
Who does not remember those days of trench feet, the never-ceasing crumps of
Black Marias" and "Woolly Bears," the shortage of ammunition: yet through all
