Qualla: Battle of Armentières

Battle of Armentières: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit E. Wyrall, 1921, Public domain. By the third week of October 1914, the German and French armies had finished trying to outflank each other up the length of northeastern France. Each had reached for the other's open northern flank and found infantry there waiting. The race north had run out of country. Around the small Flemish town of Armentières, between 13 October and 2 November, the British III Corps and the German 6th Army fought one of the last battles of manoeuvre on the Western Front — and when it was over, no one was moving any more. The trenches that defined the next four years of the war began to be dug here, in fields between Armentières and the Lys.

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Image: E. Wyrall, 1921 | Public domain

Battle of Armentières: The Race to the Sea

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 1) J. E. Edmonds 2) * author=, Public domain. After the German advance on Paris stalled at the Marne in early September, both armies began edging north, each trying to find an undefended flank to wheel around. Joffre pulled the French Second Army out of Lorraine. Falkenhayn moved the German 6th Army out of the same region. A...

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Image: 1) J. E. Edmonds 2) * author= | Public domain

Battle of Armentières: The Country They Fought Over

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Harry Wood at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Flanders in October is unkind to soldiers. The plain is almost flat, cut by the canalised Lys and a dense network of drainage ditches, with the water table never far below the surface. As soon as you dig, you find water. Trees grow in long lines along the field hedges; the countr...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Harry Wood at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Armentières: The Battle Itself

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. On 20 October the German 6th Army opened a general offensive from Arras up to Armentières, four corps attacking at once along a front intended to break the Allied line before the British and French could entrench. The 18th Brigade, holding a salient near the village of Ennetières...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Battle of Armentières: Among the Reservists

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michelin, Public domain. On the German side, one of the regiments brought into the line opposite the BEF around Messines and Wytschaete was the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry — the List Regiment, raised hurriedly in Munich in August. Among the volunteers serving as battalion runners was an Austrian-born ...

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Image: Michelin | Public domain

Battle of Armentières: The End of Movement

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michelin, Public domain. By 2 November the official Battle of Armentières was over. Pulteney's III Corps held a line from Frelinghien to Le Gheer to Ploegsteert Wood; the German XIII and XIX Corps held an almost mirror-image line a few hundred metres east. The two armies stayed where they had stopped. No...

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Image: Michelin | Public domain