Ypres: The First Battle, 1914 (review)

In October 1914, Allied and German forces collided in a series of flanking movements in Northern France and Belgium. The resulting engagements, known collectively as the First Battle of Ypres, marked the end of mobile warfare on the Western Front for nearly four years. The German failure to break through Anglo-French defenses around the Belgian town of Ypres by mid-November doomed the Central Powers to a prolonged war against a numerically and economically superior Entente. Despite its importance, "First Ypres" has received relatively little recent attention from historians. Since 1967, Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley's Death of an Army has remained the standard account. Published on the ninetieth anniversary of the battle, Ian F. W. Beckett's study offers a new examination of First Ypres based on a much broader range of sources, including British and French archival materials as well as memoirs, contemporary accounts and modern scholarship.

Beckett discusses the battle in chronological fashion. He sets the stage by explaining the German and Allied decisions to seek an open flank in Flanders and the German eviction of Belgian forces from Antwerp in early October. He also offers a brief description of the composition, armaments and tactics of the British, French, German and Belgian armies, as well as the terrain on which they fought. Beckett then chronicles the intensifying series of engagements that comprised First Ypres, beginning with the Anglo-French advance of 9-19 October, followed by the German counteroffensives that pummelled the Allies over the next month. He focuses in particular on the events of 29-31 October and 11 November, as beleaguered British units resisted repeated German attacks around Ypres. The study concludes with a discussion of the way in which the battle was subsequently mythologized in Britain and Germany.

Throughout the book, Beckett provides a careful explanation of command decisions on all sides. It is his description of events at the tactical level, however, that breathes life into the battle. An eminent historian of the British Army, Beckett draws on a formidable array of personal diaries, letters, and memoirs of British soldiers to provide a compelling account of their ordeal at Ypres. While the experiences of their French, German and Belgian counterparts do not receive the same attention, Beckett's description of the desperate resolve of the "old contemptibles" demonstrates the principal theme that emerges from the book: that First Ypres was above all a "soldier's battle." As Beckett argues: "It had been an old-fashioned battle in many respects, riflemen being as significant in its outcome as artillery, and the decisions of junior officers as important if not more so than those of senior officers" (p. 176).

Alongside his account of the stirring exploits of junior officers and other ranks, Beckett notes the shortcomings of senior commanders on both sides. He points out the German failure to coordinate attacks and exploit their initial gains, as well as the dysfunction that prevailed in the upper ranks of the British Army in 1914. While readers familiar with current debates regarding command on the Western Front will find these insights interesting, Beckett does not use his study as a platform to address these debates explicitly. Nonetheless, this is a well-researched and readable book that should become the standard scholarly account of First Ypres.