Hooge in World War I
In
Within a 0.62 mi (1 km) radius of Hooge are the sites of
Background
Hooge
For much of the war, Hooge was one of the easternmost sectors of the Ypres Salient, being almost constantly exposed to enemy attacks from three sides. After the First Battle of Ypres in 1914, the front line of the salient ran through the Hooge area and there was almost constant fighting in the region over the next three years, during which Hooge and the Château de Hooge, a local manor house were destroyed.[1] Around the village, the opposing front lines were almost within whispering distance of each other. With its ruined village and a maze of battered and confusing trench lines, the area was regarded as a hazardous area for the infantry, where snipers abounded and trench raids were frequent. Both sides saw Hooge as a particularly important area and a key target for heavy artillery bombardment.[2]
Geography of the Ypres Salient
Ypres is overlooked by
Possession of the higher ground to the south and east of Ypres gives ample scope for ground observation, enfilade fire and converging artillery bombardments. An occupier also has the advantage that artillery deployments and the movement of reinforcements, supplies and stores can be screened from view. The ridge had woods from Wytschaete to Zonnebeke giving good cover, some being of notable size like Polygon Wood and those later named Battle Wood, Shrewsbury Forest and Sanctuary Wood. In 1914, the woods usually had undergrowth but by 1917, artillery bombardments had reduced the woods to tree stumps, shattered tree trunks and barbed wire tangled on the ground and shell-holes; the fields in gaps between the woods were 800–1,000 yd (730–910 m) wide and devoid of cover. Roads in this area were usually unpaved, except for the main ones from Ypres, with occasional villages and houses. The lowland west of the ridge was a mixture of meadow and fields, with high hedgerows dotted with trees, cut by streams and ditches emptying into canals. The main road to Ypres from Poperinge to Vlamertinge is in a defile, easily observed from the ridge.[4]
Military operations
1914
First Battle of Ypres
During the First Battle of Ypres (19 October – 22 November 1914), the Franco-British captured the town of Ypres from the Germans, the Château de Hooge was used by the commanders of the 1st Division and 2nd Division for a joint divisional headquarters. When the château was shelled by German forces on 31 October 1914, the divisional commanders Major General S. H. Lomax and Major-General Charles Monro) were injured, as were several members of their staffs, and some British soldiers were killed and Lomax died of his wounds several months later.[1] By the end of the battle in November 1914 the Germans had been driven back but the front line of the Ypres Salient ran around Hooge.[5]
1915
Military mining
From the spring of 1915, there was constant underground fighting in the Ypres Salient at Hooge, Hill 60,
Second Battle of Ypres
The British were forced to retreat from Zonnebeke, Veldhoek and the
Raid on Hooge Chateau
On 2 June 1915, German artillery bombarded the Hooge area from 5:00 a.m. to noon leaving only two walls of the chateau standing, after which infantry attacked and captured the chateau and stables. A counter-attack on the night of 3/4 June recovered the stables but the Germans held onto the chateau.[10]
Actions of Hooge
On 19 July, the Germans held Hooge Chateau and the British the stables and no man's land either side was 70–150 yd (64–137 m). Inside the German salient was a fortification under which the 175th Tunnelling Company had dug a gallery 190 ft (58 m) long and charged a mine with 3,500 lb (1,600 kg) of ammonal but waterlogged ground required the explosives to be loaded upwards. The mine was sprung at 7:00 p.m. and left a crater 120 ft (37 m) wide and 20 ft (6.1 m) which was rushed by two companied of the 8th Brigade, 3rd Division. No artillery-fire had been opened before the attack and the Germans were surprised as bombers of the 8th Brigade advanced 300 yd (270 m) but then had to retire 200 yd (180 m) when they ran out of bombs. The trenches near the crater were consolidated and connected to the old front line, the 8th Brigade losing 75 casualties and taking 20 prisoners. On 22 July, the 3rd Division attacked east of the new line during the evening and the 14th (Light) Division attacked further north at Railway Wood but lacking surprise, both attacks failed.[11]
On 30 July the Germans attacked Hooge against the front of the 14th Division, which had held the line for a week. The area had been suspiciously quiet the night before and at 3:15 a.m. the site of the stables exploded and jets of fire covered the front trenches, the first German flame thrower attack against British troops. A simultaneous bombardment began, most of the 8th Rifle Brigade was overrun and the rest retreated to the support line. A second attempt to use the flame throwers was frustrated by rapid fire but attempts to counter-attack failed and most of the captured trenches were consolidated by the Germans.
1916
Battle of Mont Sorrel
On 3 June 1916, the northern flank of the German attack at Mont Sorrel, Reserve Infantry Regiment 22 attacked towards Hooge but was repulsed. The Canadians were reinforced, defeated three night attacks before retiring before dawn to avoid being overrun. On 6 June the Germans sprung four mines under the front line at Hooge and captured the support trenches and remnants of the front trenches on the right. A counter-attack was considered but priority was given to the attacks due further south and the reserve line converted to be the new front line to avoid the costly occupation of such exposed ground.[14]
1917
Third Battle of Ypres
A raid by the 8th Division in II Corps, was made on Hooge on the night of 10/11 July, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Roland Haig. The raiders assembled so close to the barrage that several soldiers were wounded and then a machine-gun caused more casualties. The German resistance was so determined that only one prisoner was lifted and after 44 minutes the raiders retired, claiming 70–80 Germans killed for 36 casualties. On 31 July, the first day of the Battle of Pilckem Ridge, the 8th Division advanced towards Westhoek and the 24th Brigade advanced through Hooge, over the Menin road and took its objectives relatively easily. The southern flank then became exposed to the concentrated fire of German machine-guns from Nonne Boschen and Glencorse Wood in the area to be taken by the 30th Division.[15]
1918
Battle of the Lys
The Germans retook Hooge in April 1918 as part of the Spring Offensive but were driven back from the area by the British on 28 September[16] as the offensive faltered.
Underground warfare
1915
After the Second Battle of Ypres and the
There is some urgent [mining] work to be done at once in a village [Hooge] on a main road east of Ypres. We hold one half and the job is to get the G[ermans] out of the other, failing that they may get us out and so obtain another hilltop from which to overlook the land. It is a significant fact that all their recent attacks round Ypres have been directed on hill tops and have rested content on the same, without trying really hard to advance down the slopes towards us.
— Cowan[2]
The tunnellers dug a gallery about 190 ft (58 m) long under the German position and placed a 3,500 lb (1,600 kg) charge. As Hooge was on the apex of the Ypres Salient, it was considered a most dangerous job and the British command initially relied on volunteers.[2] The 175th Tunnelling Company commander wrote,
[Hooge] was a small village in ruins on top of the ridge, Hooge meaning height, astride the Menin Road. On the north side of the road was a chateau with a separate annex standing in its own grounds by a large wood. Behind the chateau was Bellewarde Lake. In front of the chateau and east of the village proper were the racing stables (...). The stables were at the very apex of the salient. They were actually in our front line. The trenches were shallow and primitive, even the front line ones, and to reach the front lines some tunnels had been driven under the road and part of the ruins. No Man's Land between us and the Germans was littered with blackened corpses (...) and the stink was abominable. (...) Our objective was to sink a shaft, then tunnel under the chateau and annex and blow them up.
— Cowan[2]
The work was completed in five and a half weeks. The first attempt at tunnelling started in a stable and failed because the soil was too sandy. A second shaft was sunk from the ruins of a gardener's cottage nearby. The main tunnel was in the end 190 ft (58 m) long, with a branch off this after about 70 ft (21 m), this second tunnel running a further 100 ft (30 m) on. The intention was to blow two charges under the German concrete fortifications, although the smaller tunnel was found to be off course. The explosive—used for the first time by the British—was
At 7:00 p.m. on 19 July 1915, the mine was fired. The explosion created a hole some 6.6 yd (6 m) deep and almost 44 yd (40 m) wide.[17] The far side of the crater was then taken and secured by men from the 1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders and 4th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. Ten of the latter were killed by debris from the mine as they waited in advanced positions.[18] The Germans tried to recover their lost position but were driven back by the British infantry and a heavy artillery bombardment.[17] The mine fired by 175th Tunnelling Company at Hooge on 19 July 1915 was only the second British offensive underground attack in the Ypres Salient. On 17 April 1915, 173rd Tunnelling Company had blown five mines at Hill 60 using gunpowder and guncotton but none of these mines were even half as powerful as the Hooge charge. While the mine enabled the British infantry to take Hooge, the Germans soon took back all and more of the ground they had lost.[2] By 30 July the German units had managed to take control of the château and the surrounding area.[19]
When 177th Tunnelling Company arrived at Hooge in November 1915, underground warfare in the area was far from over.[2] One of the busiest areas for the miners on both sides was Railway Wood, an area at Hooge where the old Ypres–Roeselare railway crossed the Ypres–Menen road. Aerial photographs clearly show the proliferation of mine warfare in the Railway Wood sector during the unit's presence there, with craters lying almost exclusively in no man's land between the British and German trenches.[20] With both sides trying to undermine their enemy, much of the unit's activity at Railway Wood consisted of creating and maintaining a shallow fighting system with camouflets, a deeper defensive system as well as offensive galleries from an underground shaft.[21]
1916
On the morning of 28 April 1916, a German camouflet killed three men of 177th Tunnelling Company, including an officer (Lieutenant C.G. Boothby). The men were trapped underground and their bodies not recovered. After the war, they were commemorated nearby at the RE Grave, Railway Wood. On 6 June 1916, the Experimental Company of the Prussian Guard Pioneers succeeded in blowing four large mines under the British trenches at Hooge held by the 28th Canadian Battalion.[22] After intense and sustained fighting, the Germans also retook the crater created by the British mine on 19 July 1915 as well as the British front line.[23] The German surprise offensive also captured the neighbouring Observatory Ridge and Sanctuary Wood—the only high ground on British hands in the whole of the Ypres Salient. Canadian units later regained Observatory Ridge and Sanctuary Wood, but not Hooge.[2]
1917
While engaged at Hooge until August 1917, the 177th Tunnelling Company also built a forward accommodation scheme in the Cambridge Road sector along the rear edge of Railway Wood, halfway in between
177th Tunnelling Company was involved in constructing new dugouts beneath the
Commemoration
Hooge and Bellewaarde
Among those killed in the fighting in Hooge was
Although the crater created in Hooge by the British mine on 19 July 1915 was filled in after the war as untenable and the repository of hundreds of bodies, several other large mine craters that were created over the course of the fighting can still be seen.
The "Hooge Crater Museum", founded in 1994, is opposite Hooge Crater CWGC.[31] To the west of Hooge is the "Menin Road Museum".
- war cemetery in October 1917.[31] buried here is Patrick Bugden VC (1897–1917), killed during the Battle of Polygon Wood.[32]
- Memorial to the King's Royal Rifle Corps, Hooge
- Birr Cross Roads Cemetery is located along the Menin Road, just west of Hooge. There are now 833 Commonwealth soldiers buried or commemorated here, of which 334 are unidentified.[33]
- Memorial to Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, Westhoek
Railway Wood
- Liverpool Scottish Memorial, Railway Wood
- RE Grave, Railway Wood: A short distance north-west of Hooge. The memorial marks the spot where twelve soldiers (eight Royal Engineers of the 177th Tunnelling Company and four attached infantrymen) were killed between November 1915 and August 1917 while tunnelling under the hill near Hooge during the defence of Ypres; their bodies were not recovered.[34][35] One of the twelve men commemorated here is Second Lieutenant Charles Geoffrey Boothby (1894–1916), whose wartime letters to his girlfriend were published in 2005.[36]
Sanctuary Wood
Extensive woodlands, known locally as 'Drieblotenbos Hoge Netelaar' but called 'Sanctuary Wood' by British soldiers who took refuge here in November 1914.
- Sanctuary Wood Cemetery
- Sanctuary Wood Museum Hill 62
- Memorial to Lieutenant Keith Rae
- Mount Sorrel, which lies next to Hill 62. All of these are locations the Canadians held or recaptured from the Germans during the offensive operations in early June 1916.
Gallery
-
View of Hooge from the south, with Hooge Crater Cemetery clearly visible
-
Hooge Crater Cemetery entrance with Cross of Sacrifice and the stone-faced circle designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in memory of the many craters nearby
-
Mine crater at Railway Wood near Hooge, located just behind the Royal Engineers' Grave
-
RE Grave, Railway Wood, a memorial to men of the 177th Tunnelling Company
Footnotes
- ^ a b Edmonds 1925, pp. 323–324.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Barton 2004, pp. 148–154.
- ^ Edmonds 1925, pp. 128–129.
- ^ Edmonds 1925, pp. 129–131.
- ^ Edmonds 1925, pp. 414–417.
- ^ Barton 2004, p. 165.
- ^ Edmonds & Wynne 1995, p. 29.
- ^ Edmonds & Wynne 1995, p. 353.
- ^ Edmonds 1928, p. 97.
- ^ Edmonds 1928, pp. 97–98.
- ^ Edmonds 1928, pp. 102–103.
- ^ Edmonds 1928, pp. 103–105.
- ^ Edmonds 1928, pp. 106–109.
- ^ Edmonds 1993, pp. 234, 239.
- ^ Bax & Boraston 2001, pp. 124, 128–130.
- ^ Commonwealth War Graves Commission, undated, accessed 16 February 2007
- ^ a b c http://www.webmatters.net/belgium/ww1_hooge.htm access date 24 April 2015
- ^ Hooge on ww1battlefields.co.uk, accessed 25 April 2015
- ^ a b Battlefields 14-18, undated, accessed 16 February 2007
- ^ Barton 2004, p. 123.
- ^ Barton 2004, p. 119.
- ^ Jones 2010, p. 139.
- ^ With the British Army in Flanders: Hooge Crater, access date 26 April 2015.
- ^ Barton 2004, pp. 216–218.
- ^ Barton 2004, p. 150.
- ^ Barton 2004, p. 262.
- ^ Barton 2004, p. 228.
- ^ ANDERSON, GERARD RUPERT LAURIE. Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
- New York Times. 1 December 1914.
- ^ WWI Battlefields, undated, accessed 16 February 2007
- ^ a b firstworldwar.com Hooge Museum
- ^ Bean 1941, p. 815.
- ^ CWGC Cemetery Details: Birr Cross Roads Cemetery
- ^ www.wo1.be accessed 19 June 2006
- ^ wo1.be Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 19 June 2006
- ^ Stockwin 2005.
References
- ISBN 978-1-86227-237-8.
- Bax, C. E. O.; Boraston, J. H. (2001) [1926]. Eighth Division in War 1914–1918 (Naval & Military Press ed.). London: Medici Society. ISBN 978-1-897632-67-3.
- ISBN 978-0-7022-1710-4. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
- OCLC 220044986.
- ISBN 978-0-89839-218-0.
- OCLC 58962526.
- Edmonds, J. E. (1993) [1932]. Military Operations France and Belgium, 1916: Sir Douglas Haig's Command to the 1st July: Battle of the Somme. History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Vol. I (Imperial War Museum & Battery Press ed.). London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-89839-185-5.
- Jones, Simon (2010). Underground Warfare 1914–1918. Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-84415-962-8.
- Stockwin, A., ed. (2005). Thirty-odd Feet below Belgium: An Affair of Letters in the Great War 1915–1916. Tunbridge Wells: Parapress. ISBN 978-1-898594-80-2.
Further reading
- Histories of Two Hundred and Fifty-one Divisions of the German Army which Participated in the War (1914–1918). Document (United States. War Department). number 905. Washington D.C.: United States Army, American Expeditionary Forces, Intelligence Section. 1920. )
- OCLC 565246610. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
- OCLC 557523890. Archived from the original(PDF) on 26 August 2011. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
- Wyrall, E. (2002) [1921]. The History of the Second Division, 1914–1918. Vol. I (repr. Naval & Military Press ed.). London: Thomas Nelson and Sons. ISBN 978-1-84342-207-5. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
- OCLC 4142910. Retrieved 25 November 2016.