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The front ran along the Yser river (IJzer) and Yser Canal (Ieperlee) in the far north-west of Belgium and defended a small strip of the country which remained unoccupied. The front was established following the Battle of the Yser in October 1914, when the Belgian army succeeded in stopping the German advance after months of retreat and remained ...
The Battle of the Yser (French: Bataille de l'Yser, Dutch: Slag om de IJzer) was a battle of the First World War that took place in October 1914 between the towns of Nieuwpoort and Diksmuide, along a 35 km (22 mi) stretch of the Yser River and the Yperlee Canal, in Belgium. [4]
The Belgian fortifications on the Yser Front along the canal bank consisted of a trench and a series of bunkers, all designed to halt the German advance. To the north of the Belgian fortifications is an area where the German army successfully crossed the Yser Canal and erected a concrete bunker, only a few yards away from where the Belgian army ...
Yser front, 1914 The Battle of the Yser took place in October 1914 along a 35 km (22 mi) long stretch of the Yser river and Yperlee canal in Belgium. [ 44 ] On 15 October c. 50,000 Belgian troops ended their retreat from Antwerp and took post between Nieuwpoort and French Fusiliers Marins at Diksmuide, which marked the end of the "Race to the Sea".
The Germans had nothing to gain from an attack, so the short Belgian front was an island of relative calm as gigantic battles raged elsewhere on the Western Front. The total of Belgian soldiers killed came to about 2.0% of its eligible young men (compared to 13.3% in France and 12.5% in Germany).
Following the Battle of the Yser in October, the Belgian army remained entrenched along the Yser Front and was left with a number of armoured cars which could not be used. In early 1915, the Russian Tsar Nicholas II formally requested military support from King Albert I and a self-contained unit was formed for service in Russia. [ 2 ]
The Yser Towers (Dutch: IJzertoren) are a monument complex near the Yser river at Diksmuide, West Flanders in Belgium. The first tower was built in 1928–30 to commemorate the Belgian soldiers killed on the surrounding Yser Front during World War I and as a monument to Christian pacifism .
The basin covers 1101 km 2 and is two-thirds located in Belgium. A ridge in France forms the watershed line with the Aa basin in the west; in the south and east, the West Flemish Hills and the Central West Flemish Hills form the boundary with the Lys basin; in the north, a line of dunes is the boundary with the North Sea coast.