Battles at Ypres essays

Battles at Ypres essays During the first battle of Ypres, both sides tried to use the best tactical features possible. Ammunition in this battle was so low that most guns were withdrawn from the line and some of the guns with ammo left were limited to one shot every half of an hour. The City of Ypres was virtually at sea level resulting in a complex drainage system. The Belgians warned the British that their position on the Germans would destroy their complex drainage system of dykes and canals from all of the heavy artillery fire. Some very harsh lessons were being learned in this battle as well. One of these lessons were that it was unsafe to have an important headquarters in a vulnerable position. The British made this mistake once and they were sure not to do it again. The Germans were doing unusually better than they had thought. They did not realize they had roughly 50,000 British casualties and 20,000 French casualties resulting in mass OVERKILL. They also didn't realize that they were kill ing some of the best and most experienced regiments of the British army. As winter set in , and that meant snow, rain, sleet, hail, and floods, both sides dug into the trenches as best they could. The Germans had the higher and dryer ground so they could build stone establishments near the front. Looking at the British side, they were all wet, sticky, smelly, had had some of the worst cases of trench foot in the war. The second battle of Ypres was not meant to be a major one. This battle also introduced poison gas to the Western Front. Later on, the whole Ypres area would be saturated with gas of every kind, mainly mustard gas, but phosgene and others would soon appear. Troops were trained on how to smell the different gasses. The CO's said phosgene smelt of musty hay. Some of the troops reported that it smelt of sweet hay but by the time they smelt it was usually too late. The G ...