Northern detail showing Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive, from a map of the 1918 German offensives on the Western Front from The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Ferdinand Foch. The white area north of the German advance shows the British strategic retreats of April 15/16 and April 27 that shortened the line of the Ypres salient. © 1931 by Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.

German Offensives

Of Mar. 21 (Picardy)

Of May 27 (Aisne-Marne)

Of July 15 (Champagne-Marne)

Of Apr. 9 (Flanders)

Of June 9 (Compiegne)

Front and situation of the German Armies March 20, 1918 (on the eve of the offensive)

Front at the end of the offensive

Scale of miles

Other views: Front, Larger

Monday, April 15, 1918

". . . the British were saved by a combination of their own peril and the sound common sense of their Commander and his Chief-of-Staff, 'Tim' Harrington. In order to provide the essential reinforcement for the sagging line in the Lys valley, they decided to shorten their line around Ypres; so during the night of April 15th/16th, with what must have been infinite and heartbreaking reluctance, Plumer superintended the voluntary relinquishment of all the ground won at a cost of some quarter of a million casualties less than a year before.

Back from Houthulst and Poelcappelle, from Passchendaele itself, from Broodseinde and Polygon Wood, the troops wound their silent way through the communication trenches treading the graveyard of unnumbered friends."

Quotation Context

'Their Commander' was General Herbert Plumer who led the British Second Army through most of 1918. German commander Erich Ludendorff launched his second great offensive of that year, Operation Georgette, the Lys Offensive, on April 9, driving the British and their Portuguese allies back and from the ground gained at great cost in the 1917 Third Battle of Ypres, the Battle of Passchendaele.

Source

1918, the Last Act by Barrie Pitt, page 122, copyright © 1962 by Barrie Pitt, publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., publication date: 1963

Tags

1918-04-15, 1918-04-16, 1918, April, Plumer, Harrington, Ypres, Houthulst, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Broodseinde, Polygon Wood, Operation Georgette, Georgette, Lys Offensive, Foch Lys Offensive map