Winter in Flanders

In this episode, we explore the four brutal wartime winters in Flanders during the First World War, focusing on the Western Front around Ypres from 1914 to 1918. Beginning with the establishment of the British front line at Ypres in late 1914, we examine how soldiers endured cold, mud, and constant danger during the Great War’s earliest winter, including the famous Christmas Truce of 1914.

Using firsthand accounts, battalion war diaries, and casualty records, we analyse how Christmas on the Western Front in Flanders changed as the war dragged on, and why later winters were very different from the early months of optimism. We also uncover compelling evidence of a lesser-known second Christmas Truce in the Canadian sector in December 1915.

The episode concludes with Christmas 1918, as civilians cautiously returned to the shattered city of Ypres in the aftermath of the First World War, reflecting on loss, survival, and the long road to recovery in Flanders.

Sign up for the free podcast newsletter here: Old Front Line Bulletin.

You can order Old Front Line Merch via The Old Front Line Shop.

Got a question about this episode or any others? Drop your question into the Old Front Line Discord Server or email the podcast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Winter is a time when I find my mind drifts to the battlefields and that landscape of the Great War, both past and present. Having experienced many a winter there myself, winters in that time in France during peace, not war, with no jeopardy except the coldness of winter's cruel hand, it nevertheless gave me even more of an appreciation for those men who went through it during the Great War. The winter is traditionally in the experience of warfare when armies go into winter quarters and are inactive, but the peculiar conditions of trench warfare, particularly on the Western Front, meant that inactivity was impossible. One side or the other would force a hand, or the elements themselves might create conditions in which soldiers could no longer just shelter, they had to act. So in this podcast, a bit like the episode we did about winter on the Somme, we will look at the four wartime winters in Flanders, starting with the famous one when the Christmas truce happened. We'll see what the British and Empire line consisted of during those periods, around Christmas in 1914, 1915, 16 and 17. We'll have a look at who was in the line then, which units, and see what we can find of their experience. We'll look for patterns and stories and we'll analyse the data in the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission archives online to look at those who died each Christmas day and what that tells us about the experience of that period of the winter in those wartime years. And to understand what we're looking at, it's worth remembering that in this area of Flanders this was under the command of the British Second Army for most of the Great War, one of what would become five armies on the Western Front. Units moved in and out of these armies. It was the kind of hierarchy, the structure of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, eventually encompassing all British and Empire Commonwealth troops. But the main constant for this sector was the commander of that second army, General Sir Herbert Plumer, Daddy Plumer as he was known. He was a kind of a cartoon caricature of what people think a First World War general looks like, a small, stocky guy with a big bushy moustache, quite old, but not old in his outlook, as the war years in Flanders would show. He took over command of Second Army in May 1915 as the Second Battle of Eat was coming to an end from the original commander, General Sir Horace Smith Dorian. And Pluma remained in command until December 1917, when Sir Henry Rawlinson took over Second Army, and then Pluma returned again for the final year of the war in March 1918. So, like I say, he was this great constant in terms of the command of that part of the British sector of the Western Front, and it was said that he knew that ground around Eape intimately. He knew its strengths, he knew its weaknesses, and he knew more importantly, what it cost Britain and the Empire to defend it over those years. The original headquarters of the Second Army was just across the border in France at Balliol, and then it moved to Castle on Castle Hill, a little bit further towards the coast, and it would remain there for most of the rest of the conflict. The command and the challenges of commanders within units like Second Army reflected the wider war really and mirrored the change and expansion of the British Expeditionary Force as a whole as the front extended and the size of the army, particularly in Flanders, grew too. So we'll begin our journey in nineteen fourteen, in that winter of nineteen fourteen. This was the first winter in Flanders and is the more famous one with the Christmas truce. We can call it in fact the Christmas truce winter. First of all, what was the British line come the end of nineteen fourteen on the Western Front at this time, and what had brought the British Army to Flanders by December of nineteen fourteen? Well when we look at the end of the fighting, the British Army had fought its first battle at Mons in August nineteen fourteen, then marched over two hundred miles in the so called retreat from Mons down to the Aisne and the Marne, where it had fought in the battles there in September and early October of nineteen fourteen, then it had pivoted north to Flanders and northern France, where it had fought around La Basse and Amentier and across the border in Flanders itself alongside French and Belgian troops in what became the first Battle of Yes, and come the end of that fighting, the British Army had suffered substantial casualties during those operations, and it was only fit in terms of the numbers that it had, despite the arrival of some new troops, it could only hold about twenty five thirty miles of the front. So come December nineteen fourteen the British sector extended from the village of Saint Elois, just to the south of Epe, down across in front of the Messines Ridge, down towards Plugstert or Plug Street Wood, crossed over the border near Frillingen, went towards Armontiers, and then across northern France in front of the Albers Ridge, down to Richburg, and then beyond to Festerbert and Gavinci, and ended effectively close to the La Basse Canal. That was the British sector at that time. Only a proportion of that was actually in Flanders itself, and depleted battalions of all those units that had fought in those great battles of nineteen fourteen were holding the line at this time. Very few were up to full strength. There were units that had been made up from men from the depots of their regiments, long serving veterans who had survived, and men who had perhaps been wounded at Mons or the Ain and the Marne, and had now returned to their battalions on the front. In some units, like the Second Battalion, the Royal Sussex Regiment, for example, one that I've particularly researched, the first kitchen of volunteers begin to arrive about this period because they've brought in a large number of men, train them in reserve battalions in Britain, and then the gaps in the regular battalions are so massive that they have to be plugged by someone. There's not enough reservists, there's not enough wounded men returning, and some of the first new army men are then sent over in that winter of nineteen fourteen-fifteen very early on to take over the ranks serving alongside those pre-war regulars. And of course this would mark the changing nature of those who served in the British Army in the Great War. This whole period was the beginning of that change from regulars to territorials and then the arrival of these new army men. It was very much a period of change, not in the least in the way that the war itself was being fought. One of the core headquarters of Second Army, the newly formed command structure that now occupied this northern end of the line in Flanders, reported for the trench system near Saint Loire. On the third division front, two mounting guns have been dug in with a view to covering ground which is dead to the 18 pounders. Classes of instruction in hand grenades and bomb throwing and in the use of trench mortars continue to be held. In the 3rd Division, a squad of grenadiers has been formed from the divisional cyclists. And that little note in the Corps headquarters diary shows the changing nature of warfare. Regular soldiers who've been sent overseas in August 1914 to fight a mobile war are now dug in and they're using weapons that are siege weapons really. Mounting guns to fire in close proximity, hand grenades to throw at the enemy, trench mortars to lob bombs across no man's land, and the importance of groups of men with these kind of high explosive weapons, even if they're improvised, because the Mills hand grenade had not yet arrived on the front at this point, so a lot of these bombs were jam tin bombs where an explosive charge was put into a jam tin with a wick fuse lit and then thrown at the Germans. But the creation of that grenadier squad from the divisional cyclists shows just how important these close quarter weapons were becoming in the emerging nature of trench warfare. There had been some attempts to try and break the stranglehold of this static warfare at Witchharter, White Sheet, and near Plugstert in December 1914 localized attacks which were often largely unsuccessful. In some cases men had been thrown into the open to attack enemy positions with entrenched rifle teams and machine gunners with almost no artillery support, and really there was only going to be one outcome of that. And what it meant was there was quite a lot of dead in no man's land in December 1914, which led to some ceasefires in different sectors before Christmas, before Christmas even happened, to bury the dead, which in turn would lead to an increased familiarisation between both sides, which in some cases led to a wider truce that Christmas. It was kind of the nucleus of it in some cases. The corps that was holding the front opposite the Messines Ridge reported for Christmas Day 1914. Between 3 and 4 PM, an informal cessation of hostilities which was initiated by the enemy on the front of neighbouring corps took place. The Germans opposite trenches held by the Norfolks and Cheshire's left their trenches and came out into the open unarmed. As it was obviously important to prevent the Germans coming right into our defences, the officers of the British regiments referred to thought it best to stop their further advance by letting our men meet them halfway between the trenches. Shortly afterwards both sides returned to their trenches. Now that's a fascinating contemporary glimpse into reporting, one of the very first reports of the Christmas truce. And it's almost justifying the truce, justifying that British troops had to go out into no man's land, they had to fraternise with the enemy to stop him from coming any further and into their own lines to have a good look around. So that's a kind of interesting spin on the events that had taken place in that sector. But while this is a winter that we associate with the Christmas truce, truces were not the whole story, as we have discussed on the podcast before, recently on the old frontline YouTube channel as well. It wasn't all peace in no man's land that day. The same corps headquarters reporting the Norfolks and the Cheshire's and their truce in front of Messines notes that one officer and twenty three other ranks became casualties that day, Christmas Day 1914, and that men of the Worcestershire Regiment had engaged and killed four German snipers, and a further two were hit in the evening. So there was activity, military activity, engaging the enemy, killing the enemy, even on that Christmas day. Wasn't universal peace right along the British line. And we've got a great account from Billy Congreve in Armageddon Road, the book about his war. Billy Congreve was a rifle brigade officer, he was on the staff of the third division in that northern part of the line at this point. His father was a corps commander who'd been awarded the Victoria Cross in the Boer War, and Billy Congreve would go on to be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his bravery on the Somme in nineteen sixteen. But this is him talking about that Christmas period of nineteen fourteen. The fog is bad and it's cold too, with the roads hard frozen. At breakfast we each received a card from the King and Queen, a very nice one too. The men are especially pleased. They'd heard about the Princess Mary's gift, but this Christmas card was kept very secret. We have issued strict orders to the men not to on any account allow a truce, as we have heard rumours that they will probably try to. The Germans did try. They came over towards us, singing, so we opened rapid fire onto them, which is the only sort of truce they deserve. Now that sentiment might surprise a few people. Here's a man who doesn't just want to engage the enemy, it's Christmas day, he wants to take the enemy on and he wants to kill them, but that is the purpose of soldiers, and a regular officer like Congreve wouldn't really, I think, have had much time for this idea of fraternisation. They didn't all want a truce. The physical conditions that were inhinted to there by Congreve were just as much an enemy as the Germans really, as another contemporary report explained. The sodden condition of the ground is a constant source of anxiety. The question of making the best use of buildings, the construction of breastworks and communications above ground protected by parapets are all being carefully considered and the work is progressing satisfactorily. Trench warfare was new. It was an evolving science. There was a few sketches in military manuals how to dig trenches, prepare dugouts, but not on this kind of scale, and it's clear that the weather was making that job of adapting much, much harder. The second battalion the Monashiers close to Plug Street Wood recorded in their battalion history, very heavy rains fell during December, and owing to the flatness of the ground drainage of the trenches was extremely difficult. Traffic along the communication trenches became at times impossible owing to their flooded condition, and reliefs and ration parties could frequently approach only over the top by night. All available men were constantly employed in trying to keep the trenches dry, some pumps and vast quantities of brushwood and planks being supplied for the purpose. But conditions at best were deplorable, and the sick list was correspondingly large, many men being affected by frostbite, and many more by a new disease developed under these wet conditions, commonly known as trench feet. So that first winter closed just as those early steps into the troglodite world of the Western Front began to take shape, taking the man at the front on that pathway of how the war would develop in the coming years and the coming winters. This kind of war was new in nineteen fourteen, and perhaps there was a degree of innocence, and could there ever be a truce again in the years that followed? Twelve months on we're in the winter of nineteen fifteen, and this winter we could describe as the Canadian winter in Flanders. The British line was now much wider around Epe, not just that short section of front line from Saint de Loire to the Franco-Belgian border. And following the fighting here at Second Epe in April and May of nineteen fifteen and the diversionary attacks for Loose in September, Ype had transformed from a largely French sector into a main British theatre of operations. As this winter approached in late 1915, the northeast sector from Bosinger around to Hoog and south towards Hill Sixty was held by a variety of British units, and beyond that there were positions held by the Canadians. The new Canadian Corps had been formed in September of 1915 by bringing together the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions, the first having seen the initial fighting in Second Epe, and the second had joined it that summer as reinforcements. Later in 1916 the Canadian Corps would be joined by two other Canadian divisions. At this stage it was commanded by General Sir Edwin Alderson, who'd been an officer in the British Army since the age of seventeen, fought in numerous nineteenth century wars, and during the Boer War had commanded units from the Canadian contingent that had fought in that conflict. What had the Canadians done in 1915? Now we mentioned the Second Battle of Ebe, that was very much an anvil of sacrifice for Canadian troops. When you go to the Canadian Memorial at Vancouver Corner today, you'll read about that 48 hour period in April 1915 when over two thousand Canadians were killed and four and a half thousand were wounded, gassed or taken prisoner. So it'd been a stoic defence by the Canadians of the ground northeast of Epe in that second battle of Epe, stopping the Germans from getting any nearer to the city itself. The Canadians had then bunkered down, some of them had fought at Festerbut in 1915 around an area that became known as Canadian Orchard, and then the second Canadian Division had come across after its training in Canada, training in Britain, and then movement to France in the summer of 1915, and that had joined them to form this Canadian Corps, and there was this Canadian sector south of Yape, which these Canadian units from the two divisions were defending. The front had stabilised by December 1915 in this area. It was a year on from the Christmas truce, and in the British sectors plans were already in place to bombard No Man's Lon on Christmas Day to prevent another truce from happening again. But a year on would anyone want a truce anyway? The idea behind the bombardment of No Man's Land from a high command point of view was to stop that fraternization again, but after a year of killing on the Western Front, the nature of soldiers had changed from pre war regulars, volunteers, territorials, new army men, and now the arrival of troops from the wider British Empire with the Canadians in the Canadian Corps. But I think more than that, I don't think there was on the part of British soldiers a desire to repeat the experience of the Christmas truce. But for the majority of the Canadians this was their first Christmas on active service, and perhaps amongst them there was a desire somehow to mark it. So was there a truce in nineteen fifteen in the Canadian sector? What we find when we begin to examine the Canadian story in december nineteen fifteen are examples of at least two attempted truces. The first of these lesser known stories from this period involves the sixteenth Battalion Canadian Infantry, the Canadian Scottish. They were a combat experience unit by that winter, and it went into the trenches shortly before Christmas Day, and the regimental history picks up on the story. At twilight on the evening of december twenty fourth, the sixteenth Battalion left Red Lodge to relieve the fifteenth in the front line, and to spend as part of the tour Christmas Day in the trenches. It was a worrying relief for just before marching out from the huts, company commanders were told that a man from another battalion had at dawn that morning strayed or deserted into the German lines. He had knowledge of the move in progress that night, the weakness of the Canadian defences, and other information useful to his captors. They were therefore warned to be prepared for shelling of the approaches during the relief or other things. Enemy action based on the intelligence which the enemy might have acquired. There was, however, no cause for alarm. The relief was carried through without any interference, and the men soon settled down. About a quarter before midnight, one of the enemy from a German outpost to the left of Trench one hundred forty two stood up, shot a very light into the night, and in a voice able to pronounce gutturals called over Guid Nick Jock and a Merry Christmas afterwards retiring leisurely into his own trench. It seemed quite the fitting thing to say. The night was calm and clear, the moon was between half and three quarters full, softening with subdued light the scars and unsightliness of the battlefield into a picture of shades and shadows and still stark forms. Quiet brooded over the scene, a voice in the German line, another nearby, a cough, a laugh, nothing more, no sight or sound of war. About one AM the divisional commander, Major General Curry, and the brigade commander, Brigadier General Lecky, came round the trenches to wish the troops a happy Christmas. The entire garrison stood too in the front line, shoulder to shoulder, to receive them. Surely a unique time and place for the exchanging of yule time greetings. Christmas Day itself was strange as the preceding night. During the morning neither side engaged in fighting. Both Germans and Canadians walked about in the open. The sixteenth battalion men stood on the firestep singing Scottish songs, and it was with great difficulty they were kept from wandering into no man's land towards the German lines. The enemy looked well fed and well clothed, having on a great variety of uniforms, slate colour, green, khaki. He seemed anxious to make advances and brought out bottles of wine in front of his wire with the evident hope of tempting the Canadian troops across. But in the early afternoon the peaceful scene was closed. First an artillery linesman ran out towards the German trenches, and shortly afterwards Gallagher of No. three company rushed into No Man's Land and was met by a German who exchanged souvenirs with him. Both sides cheered wildly whilst the latter incident was in progress. The officers felt that if such a state of feeling was permitted to continue, the situation would get out of hand, but before any decision was necessary on their part, a machine gun opened bursts of fire into the air, whereupon everyone ran to cover like rabbits, and all social intercourse came to an end. So passed the only Christmas which the sixteenth battalion spent in the trenches. True there was little opportunity except at the transport lines for enjoying the festivities of the season, but this mattered little to a Highland battalion. Its feast comes on New Year's Day, and the troops knew that by then there'd be in divisional reserve. Now this all took place beneath the village of Messines, in that southern part of the Eap Salient, and what was the official story of this is clear that there was an attempt at a truce, a kind of a truce. The Second Army Headquarters diary records that the enemy showed desire to fraternize on the Canadian Corps front, but a few rounds from our batteries stopped them. But this is far from the truth as digging deeper we find another truce incident on the front held by the twenty fourth Battalion Canadian Infantry, the Victoria Rifles of Canada. Part of the second Canadian Division, they'd been in France and Flanders holding the line since September of nineteen fifteen, and their regimental historian records what happened that Christmas day. Christmas Day dawned peacefully. Occasionally a shell burst within sight or hearing, a machine gun chattered, or rifles crackled from the opposing parapets. But these evidences of war died down as the day advanced, and the chaplain, the honourable Captain AP Stratford, touring the forward area with Christmas greetings and a message of good cheer, was able to reach all the men, except those in isolated posts to which access in daylight was impossible. Early in the afternoon shelling and rifle fire ceased completely, and soon German soldiers were seen lifting heads and shoulders cautiously over the parapet of their front line trench. Encouraged by the fact that no fire was opened up by men of the twenty fourth, a number of the Germans climbed up over the top, advanced into no man's land, and making signs of friendship, invited the Canadians to join them and celebrate the occasion. Regulations frowned on such action, but curiosity proved strong, and a group of Canadians, including a number from the twenty fourth Battalion, moved out to see what the enemy looked like at close range. Conversation proved difficult at first, but a number of the Germans spoke English fluently, and others, having rehearsed for the occasion, one must judge, endeavoured to establish their benevolence by constant repetition of the phrase Kaiser no damn good. For nearly an hour the unofficial peace was prolonged, the Canadians presenting the Germans with cigarettes and foodstuffs, and receiving in return buttons, badges, and several bottles of most excellent beer. By this time news of the event had reached authority, and preemptory orders were issued to the Canadians in No Man's Land to return to their own line forthwith. So despite that upbeat report at General Pluma's Second Army Headquarters about truces or the lack of truces, it's clear that these incidents marked an attempt and in some cases a successful attempt at having a truce. And this was the only time Canadians sought a truce like this in the whole of the Great War. There was never either a desire to have a truce again, that feeling of being there for your first winter, your first Christmas obviously is a factor in instigating these kind of truces, and again a year on for these Canadians having fought at the Battle of the Somme at Corselet and Regina Trench and now occupying the lines up at Vimy Ridge, I suspect the desire, the wish for any kind of truce was almost non existent. But it wasn't yet again it wasn't a universal truce along that Canadian Corps sector, as for example the records show two men from the Third Canadian Infantry were killed on this day, two of nineteen men killed in Flanders on that Christmas day nineteen fifteen. The mighty engine of war, which had been so much a part of the development of warfare on the Western Front, that engine of war rumbled on. It's the winter of nineteen sixteen, and nineteen sixteen, of course, was the year of the Battle of the Somme. But what happened in Flanders that year? Was it all quiet on the Western Front there? Well, far from it. In the spring of nineteen sixteen, at the village of Saint Loire, there was a major operation there involving British and then Canadian troops in March and April of nineteen sixteen, the explosion of mines, infantry attacks pushing the line forward a little bit, and establishing new positions around that crucial village just to the south of Epe itself. And then in June nineteen sixteen the Germans went on the offensive. The third Canadian Division took over the line from near Hoog, the Chateau, the Menin Road, through Sanctuary Wood, across to Observatory Ridge, and the Germans attacked their positions with mines, with charges placed under their front line trenches, blew a whole series of mines, particularly under units of the Canadian mounted rifles, German flamethrower and assault teams went in, and the third Canadian Division positions crumbled under that kind of attack. But counterattacks over the course of the next few days pushed the Germans back, but that localized battle turned into quite a sizable operation that cost thousands of Canadian casualties in June of 1916, including the loss of the most senior Canadian officer to die in Flanders during the Great War, Major General Mercer, who commanded the 3rd Canadian Division. So while the approach to the Somme was coming, there were still these kind of operations taking place, and in addition to that, static warfare was continuing, with men in the line and soldiers being killed and wounded and during these winter periods going sick on a daily basis. After another year of industrial killing, the chances I think of a truce were slim indeed in the winter of 1916, and on Christmas Day that year the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission records show that twenty four British and Commonwealth soldiers died that day, so the number each year is gradually increasing. Looking at the units represented amongst the dead, battalions from the 39th Division up at Bosinger and the Ulster Division down on the Messines front dominate. These were two divisions that had taken part in the Battle of the Somme, had fought a number of actions, the Ulster Division suffering over 5,000 casualties on the first day of the Somme in the attack at Chiapval and the Schwaben Redoubt. 39th Division taking part in the attacks near Hammel, Saint Pierre Divion along the Onc. And in the case of the Ulster Division, they were moved up to the Yape front in the summer of 1916. 39th Division arrived as the winter period was just beginning, and those two divisions found themselves at the kind of north and south positions of the Yape sector at that time. The 39th in the north, north of Yape, along the canal sector at Bosinger, and the Ulster Division to the south, facing Wicharter and Messines. On the Messines sector, the 9th Battalion, the Royal Irish Rifles, stand out as having two men killed that day. Looking at the war diary of the unit, they were in the line opposite Messines itself, almost in the exact same sector where the Canadian Scottish had been a year before trying to instigate that truce, and on Christmas Day it was celebrated in the morning with a ration party coming up to the Irish Rifles positions, and then the Germans shelled their front line trenches with a heavy bombardment for over an hour, and two Lewis machine gunners were killed in their post. Both of these men were buried in a nearby battlefield cemetery, which is today St. Quintin Cabaret Military Cemetery in the village of Wolvergum, just behind the Ulster Division Front. On that 39th Division sector up in the north near Bosinger, the 17th Battalion, the King's Royal Rifle Corps, lost the most that day. There's no mention of Christmas in their war diary, curiously. It describes their move up to the forward battlefield and then how the divisional artillery hit the Germans with a heavy bombardment on that Christmas morning. It then seems old Jerry Fritz wasn't too impressed with this, and they hit back with an equally heavy bombardment, bombarding the positions held by the 17th King's Royal Rifles close to the Esa Canal, and nine riflemen were killed and five wounded on Christmas Day nineteen sixteen, a heavy cost really, for a routine bombardment. The fallen of that battalion were all taken back for burial at their nearest battlefield cemetery, which was just the other side of the Easter Canal, at a place called Essex Farm, and in Essex Farm Cemetery today you'll find them in a row there. When we look at the casualties, several of them were family men with children back home, and others left grieving parents and one was only nineteen. That was the Christmas Day present for all of those families following this routine bombardment of the frontline positions just north of Epe. Winter nineteen sixteen had become a kind of routine. It was just another day on the Western Front. Moving on to the winter of nineteen seventeen, another twelve months has passed. Flanders by this stage has been transformed in nineteen seventeen, figuratively in terms of how important a battlefield had become with the attacks at Messines in June and the third battle of Eat from July to November of nineteen seventeen, but also literally transformed with the unparalleled bombardments that year which had completely destroyed the landscape. This was a new world that had been created by these bombardments in nineteen seventeen on a scale hitherto unseen on most other parts of the British front, where the entire landscape had been smashed to pieces by millions of shells, villages rubbed out, trackways rubbed out, all of the drainage destroyed, creating this vast flooded landscape and just woods that were matchstick woods. It was really akin to some kind of alien landscape to these men. Nothing like they'd ever seen, nothing like they'd ever experienced. And even though the fighting was now over, the winter was adding misery to this landscape, turning it cold, covering it with snow, freezing the water in the shell holes, making the duckboard tracks slick with frost and making it difficult for the men to move up and back from the forward area of the battlefield. And in the northeast sector where the advance had reached its peak in 1917, Paschendau and the Paschendale Ridge had been captured, and there was a kind of salient around the village of Paschendale. It was very much a kind of outpost, really. Many of the trenches were literally that, they were just connected up shell holes. And for units up in that front line at Paschendale Village, it might have taken more than half a day to move up from the city of Eape. Come out of Eape via the Menning Gate, come onto the Menin Road, cross Hellfire Corner, get onto the duckboard and railway sleeper roads that took you up across that smash landscape towards the forward zone of the battlefield. Those railway sleeper roads covered with Hessian sacking, always being repaired, always in fear of being blown off the pathways when you were taking those routes, blown into that swamp around you, where tanks and guns and horses and mules and the half buried bodies of men were acutely visible everywhere. Taking that journey could take half a day to get from Eape up to the front line. And it must have felt isolating to be holding a position like that at Christmas time nineteen seventeen so far from home, but so far from anything really. If you got hit up there, it could take as much as eighteen hours to get you back into safety in Eape, and in the back of your mind would be that thought could you would you survive that journey? In nineteen fifteen we had the Canadian Christmas. This one was the Anzac Christmas, as several Australian divisions and the New Zealand Division were all holding the line at Christmas time nineteen seventeen at Eape. The Australians had fought extensively at Eape in nineteen seventeen, with Monash's third Australian Division capturing the southern portion of the Messines Ridge. They'd then gone on to fight in the Third Battle of Eape around Zonabeek, Polygon Ward, the Menin Road, and in the subsequent push-up towards the Brunseinder Ridge and the earlier approaches, the early attacks towards Paschendale Village. The New Zealand Division had likewise fought at Messines. They'd captured the town, the village of Messines itself in that operation, then taken part in the fighting just to the west of Paschendale Village in October 1917, which had been some of the costliest engagements that the New Zealand Division had been involved in, and they kind of ended their year of fighting on the battlefield by taking part in an attack, a localized attack at the Polderhirk Chateau, just to the south of the Zonabique and Besselaire areas, where they'd captured some of that ground in December of 1917. For both of those formations, both of those nations, it had been a costly year 1917. C. W. Bean, the Australian official historian, states that Australian casualties at EAP in 1917, so the Aussies alone, were 38,093 officers and men, over 38,000 Australian casualties at EAP just in 1917. And from the New Zealand point of view, the regimental historian of the Canterbury Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, gives us insight into the Kiwi experienced that winter. Except in a few places close up to the front line, there were no communication trenches in the divisional sector, and on account of the mud all the traffic in the area was confined to a few duckwalk tracks, the position of which was well known to the enemy, who shelled them constantly. In ordinary circumstances these tracks would have been exceedingly unsafe, but the mud which rendered them necessary also smothered the enemy's shells and greatly reduced their danger area. However, obviously these tracks were at all times much more unsafe than communication trenches, and when the frost came, even very badly aimed shells could cause casualties to troops using these tracks. Snow fell before Christmas, but as it froze it did not add much to the discomforts, though the frozen ground increased the danger zone of shells to as great as an extent as the mud had previously reduced it. Later on, when frosty nights were followed by sunny days, numerous casualties were caused in the mornings by the contents of gas shells fired during the night which had remained in liquid form till the heat of the sun caused them to evaporate. So we've got a kind of hellish description there from the Canterbury Regiment history showing the terrible conditions that these New Zealand troops were holding and the dangers by frozen ground making the shells bounce and explode more fiercely as the soft ground had absorbed the explosions and then the muddy ground followed by sun winter sun causes latent gas to leak out of the ground and catch the New Zealand soldiers unawares. On the Australian Imperial Force sector, they held a bit of the ground between Hollobeak to the southeast of Eape and just east of the Messines Ridge. The historian of the 12th Battalion Australian Imperial Force gives a typical insight into what the period was like for Australian troops at this time. We celebrated our fourth Christmas away from home by relieving the 10th Battalion in the line on the night of the 24th-25th of December 1917, relief being complete at 5 AM. B Company was on the right and D Company on the left whilst A Company occupied a support position near Battalion Headquarters, and C Company was in reserve at Bethlehem Farm. The frontage held by the battalion was about a thousand yards and consisted of a line of posts in fairly good condition. Those in the left sector were more or less connected, but on the right an overland track had to be taken in moving from post to post. The 11th Battalion was our left flank unit, while the River Douve served as the right boundary, with the 7th Australian Infantry Brigade on the southern bank. During Christmas afternoon, the area around the battalion headquarters was heavily shelled for more than an hour, and a direct hit was obtained on A Company headquarters dugout which killed Captain Crookshank of the 10th Battalion, who was sheltering there, and slightly wounded Lieutenants Lines, Captain Burt, and he was evacuated with shell shock. Snow fell heavily during the night. The night and was fully three inches deep at daybreak. This had a tendency towards retarding the progress of the work in hand, as all new work had to be camouflaged and sprinkled with snow to prevent enemy aeroplanes from detecting the construction of the new posts in the support line. It also necessitated the issue of white duck patrol suits to allow the frontline companies to continue their activities in this direction and thus maintain the command of no man's land, which the Germans were apt to dispute at times. This was also, when we look at the wider records, it was also the most costly Christmas day of the war in Flanders, with Commonwealth War Graves Commission records showing fifty-three dead that day, nearly half of which were Anzacs. The New Zealand soldiers from units like the Canterbury Regiment and the Targo Regiment who fell beyond Polygon Wood and near to Polderhirk, they're buried in the Butts New British Cemetery within Polygon Wood itself today. The 27th Battalion, Australian Infantry, lost several men, now all buried at Prowse Point Cemetery. Their war diary shows they were actually on rest at Romera, a village away from the front, and it states very frosty, snow during the night. Battalion rested during the morning, in the afternoon, a party of five officers, twenty NCOs and two hundred and fifty-five men, preceded by train to the forward area. This was a light railway system that had been put in place, the infrastructure behind the battlefield that enabled the movement of men, supplies, equipment to and from the front line area. And when they got up to the railhead they were met by an officer of the Australian engineers who deployed them on wiring and digging parties in the front line. They then got hit by heavy shellfire just as the work was complete, and four men of that battalion were killed and three wounded. Among the British battalions holding the line at Eape at Christmas nineteen seventeen was the first fourth battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment. They were in the line east of Tynecot, in one of those extreme positions far far from Wipers. For them it was their second winter in Flanders, having served on the Eape Front in December nineteen fifteen. The first fourth East Yorks were part of the 50th Northumbrian Division, and the divisional historian, it's quite a good divisional history, wrote of conditions at this time as they moved up. The road along which we passed was in fairly good condition, thanks to the work of various labour units continually employed upon it. It was an important one for except when the visibility was very good, motor and horse transport took up supplies almost as far as the line of the Eat Rulers Railway. On either side was black waste, the ground had been so churned up that no green thing remained. Everywhere were shell holes, mud and water, wreckage of every description was strewn about. Occasionally we came upon the wrecked vehicles which had fallen prey to enemy shelling, and had been swept off the road and abandoned. Frequently we came upon sadder sites, the badly mutilated and rotten bodies of horses and mules, servants of man whose innocent lives he had taken to further his own ends. Here and there along the route a trenchboard track led off to the left hand side of the road into the mist and obscurity. Occasionally a pillbox which had weathered the storm loomed into view. The only signs of life in this region of death were weary parties, scarcely recognizable as human beings slowly making their way down from the line. Our guns of all calibers barked viciously on each side of us. Christmas seemed perhaps irrelevant to these men. As yet because of that huge physical gulf between the rear area and the front line northeast of Eap and how long it took to get anything up to the front line here close to Passhendale, the post had yet to reach the first fourth East York's. They supplied men for a carrying party to take up war material and food to the front line so those in the advance posts could eat that day. That meal, that supply of a Christmas dinner effectively to those men in the trenches, cost two men killed and six wounded. Christmas dinner had been served with a bitter pill in that final winter of the war in Flanders, as men sat in the wilderness of destruction, that alien world as far away from home as they could possibly be. These were the wartime winters, the wartime Christmases at Eaton Flanders during the Great War. It took the soldiers on the battlefield living through these winters, living through these Christmas days, from the regulars and territorials, all volunteers in nineteen fourteen, to within twelve months a wider British and Empire army still filled with volunteers by Christmas nineteen fifteen. A year later the trenches were now filling with conscripts. The army had changed again, casualties on those battles, some of which had been forded eap, had changed the type of soldier by necessity. Men were no longer volunteering, and they now had to be compelled to serve. And over halfway through the Great War, perhaps everything by nineteen sixteen had become routine. By the time of the Anzac Christmas in nineteen seventeen, the army was now largely conscripts, with the exception of the Australians who would remain all volunteers until the end of the conflict. What you get a sense of in that winter of nineteen seventeen, eighteen is war weariness. They've been at it for a long time. Some of these men had fought from the very beginning, the Australians have been at Gallipoli, Canadians have been out since the Second Battle of Epe, and it seemed as if this war somehow would never end. And living in that terrible landscape around Eap in that winter of nineteen seventeen, it must have made that feeling of hopelessness, of despair, and of weariness probably even more acute. When would this engine of war finally run out of steam? Each winter marked a change, signaled a turn, and gradually moved towards the peace that followed. At Christmas nineteen eighteen the first civilians were beginning to return. The war had ended with the armistice on the eleventh of November. The populations who'd lived in Flanders, in the villages, around the city of Yape and within Epe itself had been scattered far and wide, some across the borders, into the Netherlands, some into France, some back to Britain, and in that first Christmas of peace a handful returned to try and reclaim their lives. Epe to them must have looked like the ruins of an ancient civilization covered with a blanket of snow, lost in time lost for millennia. But amongst the rubble wooden huts were beginning to appear. People had come back to reclaim the fragments of their old life and rebuild, and they needed places to live, and they focused on the heart of Flanders, that city of Yape, and went out during the day to find their homes, find their farms, find the land that once had been theirs, and gradually reclaim it. This was a rebuild not just physically, but spiritually and mentally as well, and it took decades. The war had ended, the armies were beginning their preparations to return home, but they'd left behind a legacy of the dead in Flandersfields, made up of every Allied nation and dead on the other side of no man's land, dead from every part of Germany. The landscape here would never be the same again, never truly recover from the Great War, but nature gradually hid the scars, although that legacy even more than a century later is never far from the surface. Winter in Flanders today is full of life and children's laughter. The rebuilt city of Yape is a joy to visit at that time of year, but not far away from the funfair rides in the main square and the delicious Christmas treats are the echoes of other winters, crueler times in Flanders fields, other Christmases, the indelible scars of the past, scars that form part of that never ending Old Frontline. You've been listening to an episode of the Old Frontline with me, military historian Paul Reed. You can follow me on Twitter at Somcor, you can follow the podcast at OldFrontline Pod. Check out the website at oldfrontline.co.uk where you'll find lots of podcast extras and photographs and links to books that are mentioned in the podcast. And if you feel like supporting us, you can go to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash oldfrontline, or support us on buymea coffee at buymeacoffee.comslash oldfrontline. Links to all of these are on our websites. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again soon.