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1917 original pen and ink drawing of a sentry in the dunes of the Belgian coast viewing a ship on the horizon. Possibly by W Wenber, Leading Seaman.
A map of the Belgian battlefield from Bruges to Ostend and the Belgian coast to Blankenburg. German forces took Ostend on October 17, 1914. Bruges was an important German submarine base with canals connecting it to the North Sea ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge, ports the British attacked the night of April 22–23, 1918 in an attempt to block the canals. Zeebrugge is just off the map to the right.
Detail from the Memorial to the French Moroccan Division at Vimy Ridge. The theaters and battles in which the division played a role are recorded on the sides of the monument. © 2013, John M. Shea
Northern detail showing Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive, from a map of the 1918 German offensives on the Western Front from The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Ferdinand Foch. The white area north of the German advance shows the British strategic retreats of April 15/16 and April 27 that shortened the line of the Ypres salient. © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
French (and one British) soldiers in what appears to be a hastily-improvised line. An official photograph on the British Front in France taken May 3, 1918. French reserves came to the aid of the British during the German Offensives of 1918. Operation Michael on the Somme had been fought from March 21 to April 5, and Operation Georgette on the Lys River from April 9 to 29.
"There was a moment immediately [after the wind change dispersed the smoke screen] when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim coast and the hidden harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells; the wavering beams of the searchlights swung round and settled to a glare; the wildfire of gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank; and the darkness of the night was supplanted by the nightmare daylight of battle fires. Guns and machine guns along the Mole and batteries ashore awoke to life, and it was in a gale of shelling that Vindictive laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the Mole, let go an anchor, and signed to Daffodil to shove her stern in. Iris went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise." ((1), more)
"I regret that the effort to block Ostend did not succeed. The Brilliant, Commander A. R. Godsal, with the Sirius, Lieutenant-Commander H. N. M. Hardy, in her wake, did not sight the buoy [marking the channel into Ostend harbour] in its charted position at midnight, as was expected. When the Ostend piers should have been seen, breakers were observed on the Brilliant's starboard bow, and although her helm was put to starboard, she grounded. The Sirius immediately put her helm hard over and her engines full astern, but being already badly damaged by gunfire, she did not answer her helm and collided with the Brilliant's port quarter. Both being then fast ashore, one with her port engine immovable, the other in a sinking condition, they were blown up where they were stranded." ((2), more)
"The counter attack [at Villers-Bretonneux], executed the night of the 24–25th, was entrusted to some Australian battalions. They carried the high ground and the village by assault while, on the right, the Moroccan Division of the French First Army regained some ground north of Hangard. In order to consolidate the reëstablished situation, General Debeney continued his movement forward, while at the same time General Fayolle sent two divisions northwards, so as to be in a position to intervene between the Somme and the Luce." ((3), more)
"Beginning on the night of April 18 [1918], four divisions in the [French Army Detachment of the North] entered the front lines in the Mount Kemmel sector, north of the Hazebrouck salient. Although the Flanders front remained quiet after the eighteenth, the enemy launched a strong attack on April 25, striking the newly formed Army Detachment and the British to its north. Although some soldiers fought very well, the French lost Mount Kemmel, and the British scathingly criticized them for losing that important observation point. After an attempt to regain Kemmel the following day failed, British criticism of their ally escalated." ((4), more)
"On the 26th [April 1918], four tanks of the 1st Brigade had an interesting experience.The Allied forces on this part of the line consisted of a most curious mixture of arms and races.The scene, for example, in a neighboring wood about ten days before is thus described by the historian of the 1st Battalion:'The Bois d'Abbé presented a most picturesque spectacle, and any one taking the trouble to walk through it could have had the unique experience of seeing practically every branch of both the British and French Armies represented. In this wood were to be found Tanks of all descriptions, Mark IV.'s, V.'s, Whippets and French Rénaults, heavy and light infantry, British infantry, Australians, French cavalry and infantry, Moroccans, and lastly a detachment of the Legion of Frontiersmen mounted on little Arab ponies, which presented a strange contract to the heavy Percherons of the artillery.'On April 26, it was in company with the Moroccan Division that the 1st Battalion fought." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from a British Admiralty statement on the April 22–23, 1918 raid on Ostend and Zeebrugge, ports on the North Sea connected to the German submarine base at Bruges (Brugge) by canals. Under the command of Roger Keyes, the British raided the two coastal cities to block the canals, sinking aging warships across them. The flotilla had already set out twice before, but had been turned back by weather conditions. But on the 22nd, eight monitors, six old cruisers, eight light cruisers, fifty-two destroyers, sixty-two motor launches, twenty-four coastal motorboats, two submarines, two Mersey River ferryboats, and one picket boat, bearing nearly one thousand men, made their way, the coastal motorboats laying and maintaining the smokescreen. At 11:56 PM the wind shift exposed the fleet to the batteries on shore and on the two-mile long breakwater, the Mole. The Vindictive was the primary landing craft, and was held in place against the Mole for much of the operation by Daffodil, one of the ferries.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 134, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(2) Excerpt from the report of Roger Keyes on the attempt to block the canal from Ostend to Bruges, Belgium, the night of April 22–23, 1918. The North Sea ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge were connected to the German submarine base at Bruges by canals. The British raid on the two ports was an attempt to block the canals, sinking aging warships across them. The operation had some success at Zeebrugge, maneuvering blockships into the canal. At Ostend it was unsuccessful, in part because the Germans had moved a buoy on which the raiders were relying.
Naval Battles of the First World War by Geoffrey Bennett, page 276, copyright © Geoffrey Bennett 1968, 1974, publisher: Pan Books, publication date: 1983
(3) German commander Erich Ludendorff's 1918 drive for victory began on March 21 with Operation Michael, an attack north and south of the Somme River. In April he moved north to the Lys River on the Franco-Belgian border with Operation Georgette. On April 23, after three weeks of relative quiet, he again struck the Somme sector, seizing Villers-Bretonneux from the British and Hangard from the French, high ground that threatened further progress westward towards Amiens. The villages of Villers-Bretonneux and Hangard are south of the Somme, between it and the Luce River.
The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, translated by Col. T. Bentley Mott by Ferdinand Foch, page 296, copyright © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., publisher: Doubleday, Doran & Co., publication date: 1931
(4) The second of German commander Erich Ludendorff's 1918 drives for victory, Operation Georgette, the Battle of the Lys, began on April 9 on the Lys River along the Franco-Belgian border in Flanders. French reserves reinforced the British line after the latter had been driven back with heavy losses, but could not hold Mount Kemmel, adding failure to the criticism that they had moved too slowly to support their ally.
Pyrrhic Victory; French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty, page 444, copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2005
(5) Excerpt from The Tank Corps by Major Clough Williams-Ellis & A. Williams-Ellis. The Moroccan Division fought at Hangard Wood on April 26, 1918. Percheron is a breed of draft horse that originated in western France and that has been used as a war horse, in agriculture, for pulling stage coaches, and hauling goods.
The Tank Corps by Clough Williams-Ellis & A. Williams-Ellis, pp. 174–175, publisher: The Offices of "Country Life," Ltd. and George Newnes, Ltd., publication date: 1919
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