Back to the Front by Stephen O’Shea Read Free Book Online Page B

Kaiser's armies, overextended and far
     from their supply lines, blinked first.
    The giant German attacking force then retreated northward, to the heights overlooking the next major river: the Aisne, in
     Champagne. There they dug trenches, set up machine-gun nests, and mowed down waves of infantrymen foolishly ordered to take
     a run at the German lines. They could not be budged. It was late September 1914. Realizing, temporarily, that the best way
     to defeat a dug-in army was not to attack it head-on, the Allied generals had their exhausted troops attempt flanking movements—that
     is, they tried to swing around and attack their opponents from the side. This led to a series of fierce battles up through
     northern France and eventually back into Belgium, as each adversary frantically tried to encircle the other. It came to be
     known as "the Race to the Sea," but was more akin to a zipper closing. With each failed flanking movement, the armies dug
     in, extended the miles of trenches, and moved farther north to attack again.
    In Flanders they hit the sea. It was the end of October. The German high command sensed that, at Ypres, the ragged British
     lines that were just forming could be easily smashed. It was their last chance to thwart Stellungskrieg, or the war of position that the framer of the Schlieffen Plan had so single-mindedly striven to avoid. The Kaiser came to
     watch. His officers, anticipating the Aryan prose of a German army a generation later, issued the following message to their
     troops on October 30, 1914:
    The breakthrough will be of decisive importance. We must and therefore will conquer, settle forever the centuries-long struggle,
     end the war, and strike the decisive blow against our most detested enemy. We will finish the British, Indians, Canadians,
     Moroccans, and other trash, feeble adversaries, who surrender in great numbers if they are attacked with vigor.
    They did not succeed, but only by a hair-breadth. In one particularly dramatic moment during the murderous melee, a British
     commander rounded up a squadron of cooks to plug a gaping hole in the lines to the east of Ypres; in another, a major launched
     a foolhardy counterattack because he had not enough men left alive to mount a credible defense. Both tactics worked, stalling
     the German assaults at a critical juncture and thus thwarting their plans for a rout. There would be no breakthrough, ever.
    It was late November 1914. The digging started in earnest from Nieuport to Switzerland. The Western Front went underground,
     as did an unimaginable number of young men killed in the three-month-old war. British propagandists, stunned by the near extermination
     of the 100,000-man force sent across the Channel in August, searched for a symbol to keep civilian enthusiasm at a fever pitch.
     They found one in Ypres. It would have to pass for the infantry's apotheosis, a sort of Anglo Alamo in the muddy slough of
     Flanders. Only here the fort would not be overrun, the enemy would not get through the gates. No matter what the cost, Ypres
     would not be surrendered.
    Thus was born the Salient, the death trap into which the English general staff would place its citizen army. A German officer
     remarked that British soldiers were "lions led by donkeys."
    4. Ypres
    Ypres. leper. Eee-pruh.
    The problem with Ypres is its name. A place name, especially one connected with war, should have enough syllables to withstand
     constant barroom repetition. Wounded Knee, Normandy, Nagasaki, Waterloo: all words that easily roll off the tongue and into
     memory. Not so this little Belgian city. Ypres's recent history is not only unspeakable, it is unpronounceable, which may
     explain why the town's epoch-making role has faded to almost total obscurity. The British soldiers of the time obviated the
     problem altogether by calling the place "Wipers."
    Not that the Great War made the city's name. As with all places along the Western Front, there was life here before