On this day in history, the Second Battle of Ypres began in 1915.
Following just a few days after the heavy fighting at Hill 60, the second of three costly battles on the Ypres salient was intended to mask German troop transportation to the East for a push at Galicia and to shorten the line around Ypres by reducing the salient.
The plan was to deploy the asphyxiating chlorine gas on or around the 14th of April when the winds were favourable and for infantry to follow behind to punch a giant hole in the British line and push them back West of Ypres. At 5pm on the sunny breezy spring afternoon of April 22, 1915, an ominous sickly haze of greenish yellow chlorine gas floated silently towards the French and British lines. Some 200 tons of chlorine gas had been deployed with particular effect on the left flank of the salient defended by French colonial troops.
Those troops flooded back creating a large gap in the allied line but the severity of the unfolding crisis was not fully realised by the Germans despite ground being taken around the Pilkem Ridge, just two and half miles from Ypres.
Canadian troops were thrown into the line around St. Juliaan to desperately close this gap.
Some 200 gassed Algerians reinforced by Canadian machine gun platoons on the exposed and precarious Canadian left flank near the village of Poelkapelle fighting a desperate and gallant battle, managed to secure, despite heavy losses, a shortened left flank and keep from being overrun and rolled up from behind. The Canadian 3rd Infantry Brigade's successful counter-attack on Bois des Cuisinièrs, the old oak forest translated as “Kitcheners’ Wood” by the British and Canadian troops, marked the initial stabilisation of the situation, but the battle was still fraught and desperate with gaps in the line being exploited by German troops and German machine gun fire raking the rear of the allies' old front line.
By the morning of the 23rd of April, further British and Canadian reinforcements had arrived and had begun to work their way towards the French remnants at the Yser canal.
Over the coming weeks the battle bogged down and the toll of wounded and dead mounted without much territorial gain from either side and the battle would eventually peter out on the 25th of May.
During the Second Battle of Ypres, Canadian officer John McCrae penned one of the most famous poems of the war, "In Flanders Fields" in tribute to a friend who had died in the fighting.
Today, Ypres remains a benchmark destination to visit and walk in the footsteps of those who sacrificed and endured the horrors of the Western Front from 1914 to the very end of the war.
Sophie's Great War Tours would be delighted to walk with you and share these stories on location.