Current Information:

Enlisted-Woolwich

The Race to the Sea - September-October 1914

By the middle of September 1914, the Aisne battlefield had stagnated into trench warfare and in order to break this impasse, both sides tried to outflank each other in a general movement northwards. Moving up through Picardy, Artois and Flanders, the race was over by 19th October when the North Sea was reached. The Western Front, a line of trenches stretching from Belgium to Switzerland, was now a reality. Initially it was the French army that conducted this movement whilst the British Expeditionary Force remained on the Aisne but by 6 October British reinforcements were needed to help beat off German attacks around Lille. They moved north and along with reinforcements from Britain, they took up new positions in Flanders, on the left of the Allied line and much closer to the Channel ports.

The battle of La Bassée

This was fought by II Corps (3rd and 5th Divisions) between 10th October and 2nd November 1914 and as the name suggests it focused on an area around the town of  La Bassée in northern France. It was part of the Race to the Sea and it determined the line of the Western Front in that sector. There were some initial British successes but La Bassée remained firmly in German hands. German reinforcements arrived and  the village of Neuve Chapelle was captured by them. Towards the end of October, the fighting on this front died down as the attention of both armies switched to Ypres.

On 25th October, the 2nd Yorkshire Light Infantry battalion of 13 Brigade, 5th Division, were in trenches at Richebourg l’Avoue. Enemy aircraft appeared overhead early in the morning and they directed artillery fire onto these positions. This shell fire continued, largely unabated until 3pm when there was an infantry attack which 2nd Yorkshire Light Infantry managed to repel. On 27th October, the day on which Joseph Taylor was killed, the battalion withdrew from their trenches on the left of the line in the face of an enemy attack but rallied when they reached the main road behind them and retook the positions. The battalion diary also recorded that there was heavy shelling throughout the day.