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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>
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>
==Aftermath==
By mid-November, attempts by either the Allies or the Germans to score a major breakthrough at Ypres had failed, and the various high commands had recognized that an open flank on the Western Front no longer existed. This had been emphatically demonstrated not only by the situation map in Flanders, and the increasingly elaborate fortifications thrown up on each side, but by the appalling casualties that resulted from attacking those fortifications. British losses from mid-October to late November have been reckoned at 55-60,000 men, French losses at 50-85,000, Belgian losses at 20,000+, and German losses at 135,000. These numbers come from the entire Western Front, but it is certain that the majority were incurred at or near Ypres. In the most severe fighting at Langemarck in October, individual units of the German reserve corps attacking the BEF defensive positions suffered casualty rates of up to 70 percent. Many of these reservists were student volunteers ages 18-20, and the large number of deaths among them led Germans to dub Ypres a ''Kindermord''--"Massacre of the Children" or "Massacre of the Innocents."<ref>J. E. Edmonds, ''Military Operations France and Belgium, 1914'' (1925), p. 466-68.</ref>
The high number of German casualties, and the failure to break through the Allied defensive line, has been widely credited as a testament to the courage and tenacity of the British soldier. Although often outnumbered two to one, and suffering very heavy losses themselves, the BEF units nonetheless successfully held out. This has been attributed to their ability to improvise functioning battle groups from decimated formations, the cohesion and strong historical identity of the British Army units, the quiet determination and devotion to duty of the individual soldier, and especially to their superior marksmanship in infantry rifle fire. So notorious did the BEF become for its rapid and well-aimed fire that a later legend grew that the Germans had mistaken the sounds of its rifles for machine guns.
Though experiences at the First Battle of the Marne and the individual clashes during the Race to the Sea had indicated the strength of defense over offense, it was only at Ypres that high-ranking army commanders accepted this lesson. Sheltered trenches for the infantry, backed by artillery and machine guns, with barbed wire and other obstructions in front, made it difficult at best for attackers to dislodge them, and virtually impossible to do so without sustaining very heavy casualties. The evolution of the [[trench warfare]] that would thereafter characterize the war on the Western Front was especially marked at Ypres.
==References==
==References==