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Backed by some 250 pieces of heavy artillery, ''Armeegruppe Fabeck'' began its attack on October 29, moving along both sides of the road from Menin to Ypres and pushing the BEF I Corps back throughout the day. The most significant fighting that day occurred around the crossroads hamlet of Gheluvelt, roughly halfway between the two towns, which the Germans seized along with a number of British prisoners and by nightfall had come within two miles of Ypres. Bitter fighting ensued over the next two days, as the BEF, their formations broken up by the assault, assembled makeshift collections from motley units to repulse further German attacks. The Germans nearly broke through again near Gheluvelt on October 31, but a counterattack by the 2nd [[Worcestershire]] Regiment restored the line, while Foch sent some French units to stabilize the general situation. Though the front lines had been pushed back westward toward Ypres, there still had been no German breakthrough.
Backed by some 250 pieces of heavy artillery, ''Armeegruppe Fabeck'' began its attack on October 29, moving along both sides of the road from Menin to Ypres and pushing the BEF I Corps back throughout the day. The most significant fighting that day occurred around the crossroads hamlet of Gheluvelt, roughly halfway between the two towns, which the Germans seized along with a number of British prisoners and by nightfall had come within two miles of Ypres. Bitter fighting ensued over the next two days, as the BEF, their formations broken up by the assault, assembled makeshift collections from motley units to repulse further German attacks. The Germans nearly broke through again near Gheluvelt on October 31, but a counterattack by the 2nd [[Worcestershire]] Regiment restored the line, while Foch sent some French units to stabilize the general situation. Though the front lines had been pushed back westward toward Ypres, there still had been no German breakthrough.
===Battle of Nonne Bosschen===
Following the climax of the fighting around Gheluvelt, and the arrival of French reinforcements, another relative lull ensued during the first week of November. Many battalions in the BEF had been reduced to fewer than a hundred effectives each, while the German ''Armeegruppe Fabeck'' had averaged losses of 3500 men per day since it became operational. Smaller-scale attacks continued north of Ypres, first with an attempted offensive by Foch on November 6, then with a renewed German push to the Yser River on November 9; none of these, however, significantly altered the general situation.
On November 10, this "lull" was broken by another large-scale German offensive against the BEF positions near Ypres, the brunt of the assault (delivered by ''Armeegruppe Fabeck'' and additional units from the Fourth and Sixth Armies) along a line extending from around Gheluvelt northward through a small patch of forest dubbed "Polygon Wood" by the British soldiers, to another small wooded area north of the Menin-Ypres road, known as ''Nonne Bosschen'' ("Nun's Wood" or "Nun's Copse"). By far the most serious fighting occurred on the 11th; massed rifle fire from the BEF defenders broke up German assaults in the Polygon Wood sector, but along the Menin road, the Prussian Guard and the German 4th Division advanced on the Hooge chateau, only two miles from Ypres, and were just barely driven back by hastily-armed service personnel from the rear and by fragments of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Though subjected to heavy artillery fire that day and the next, Allied soldiers nonetheless held the line once again, and by November 13, with rainy weather setting in and obstructing infantry advances, the German threat had been largely contained.
Over the next week, the intensity of the fighting receding once again, Foch and French reorganized the Allied defensive line, dividing it into distinct sectors. On November 17, the Fourth Army ceased its attacks, and several German units were shortly thereafter detached for service on the [[Eastern Front]]. Though skirmishing continued, as elsewhere along the front, the First Battle of Ypres is generally considered to have ended on November 22, when active operations on both sides terminated.<ref>Keegan, ''The First World War'', p. 135.</ref>
==References==
==References==