German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
Der KanalStraße von CalaisThe English Channel and the Strait of CalaisReverse:Panorama des westlichen Kriegsschauplatzes 1914/15 Von Arras bis Ostende.Die Panorama-Postkartenreihe umfaßt mit ihren 9 Abschnitten Nr. 400 bis 408 den gesamten westlichen Kriegsschauplatz von der Schweizer Grenze bis zur Nordseeküste.Panorama of the western theater of operations 1914/15 from Arras to Ostend. The panoramic postcard series includes nine sections, with their No. 400-408 the entire western battlefield from the Swiss border to the North Sea coast.Nr. 408Wenau-Postkarte Patentamtl. gesch.
"On the 31st [October], decimated, dejected, defeated, the Germans abandoned their project of crossing the Yser; they retreated abandoning guns and mortars engulfed in mire, enormous quantities of weapons, thousands of corpses, and many wounded.In this epic struggle the Belgians, who numbered 60,000, lost a fourth part of their effectives, but they killed and wounded more Germans than there were soldiers in the Belgian army; they had covered the left wing of the Allies, and shattered the German effort which had threatened Dunkirk and Calais."
Excerpt from an address by Carton de Wiart, Belgian Minister of Justice, in London, June, 1915. Since mid-October 1914, the Germans had been trying to break through the Belgian line from Dixmude to the North Sea, on the left of the Allied line. Driven nearly entirely from their country, holding a small portion of it on the North Sea coast, and having retreated behind a railway embankment rising above the flat farmland of Flanders, the Belgians inundated the land before them.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. II, 1914, p. 321, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
1914-10-31, 1914, October, Battle of the Yser, Belgian Army