Publisher's Synopsis
On October 16th, 1914, the Ypres Salient, the theatre of three of the most deadly and critical battles in this War, was born. Up to that date the area it comprises--a few thousand acres at most--was merely a tract of well-tilled Flemish meadowland, with patches of forest and here and there a village or hamlet. Ten weeks before the Germans had invaded Belgium, and in the fateful and anxious time which followed, the Belgians had been pressed slowly back, those who had not been utterly crushed. Antwerp fell, and a mighty German host, foiled in its advance southward to Paris, was moving relentlessly towards the sea-coast, destroying and desolating the land as it came. A newly-landed British force advanced to check them and to take up a position in the long line of Allied troops. This force, the 7th Division, under Major-General Capper, and the 3rd Cavalry Division, commanded by Major-General the Hon. Julian Byng, marching through the quaint old Flemish city of Ypres, penetrated to a point six miles beyond the British, French, and Belgian alignment as it ran north and south.
