Belgium 1914

Battle of the Yser

France 1915

Notre Dame de Lorette

France 1916

Battle of Fromelles

The Battle of the Somme

France 1917

Battle of Vimy Ridge

Advance to the Hindenburg Line

First and Second Bullecourt

Belgium 1917

Battle of Messines

Third Battle of Ypres

Battle of the Menin Road

Battle of Polygon Wood

Battles of Broodseinde, Poelcappelle and Passchendaele

France 1918

Defence of Amiens

Battle of Hamel

Battle of Amiens

Battle of Mont St Quentin

Hindenburg Line

Armistice

Treaty of Versailles

Ieper, A walk around Ieper (Ypres)

Ramparts Cemetery Rijselspoort (Lille Gate)

Download a PDF map of the walk around Ieper (Ypres)

At the end of Rijselstraat the road leaves the town under the Rijselspoort (Lille Gate) and crosses a causeway over the moat. To either side are the ramparts of Ypres built over earlier medieval walls by King Louis XIV’s great military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban. He was responsible for the fortification of more than 300 cities and towns in France, neighbouring countries and overseas between 1667 amnd 1707 including Ypres. Here the enthusiast for fortifications can find features such as the ‘bastion’, the ‘tenaille’, the ‘casemate’ and the ‘coutrine’.

During World War I shelters were dug into the ramparts to house large numbers of resting soldiers and other rear line units. Between August and November 1917, in the ‘Third Battle of Ypres’, Australian divisions often temporarily had their headquaters in the ruins when their infantry, artillery and other support units were in the front line. Australia’s official photographer, Captainn Frank Hurley, described how he ‘secured several pictures of our forces camped in small dugouts excavated in the surrounding ramparts’. Indeed, in Ypres all wartime living quarters tended to be underground to get away from the regular German shelling and the ramparts, with their thick walls, were an obvious spot in which to dig a shelter. One wit produced the following advert which appeared in the soldiers’ newspaper, The Wipers Times on 12 February 1916:

From the Rijselstraat to the right of the Rijselspoort a side lane leads up ramparts. A little way along is one of the most beautifully situated war cemeteries in the whole area – Ramparts Cemetery where the grass runs down to the water’s edge. Here lie 188 soldiers of the ‘Great War’ buried on dates which span the whole of the fighting in the Ypres Salient.

Down near the water, in Row I, Grave 4, is Lieutenant Walter Welch, Royal Field Artillery, who died on 30 October 1914 as the Germans battled to break through British lines to the east during the First Battle of Ypres. Corporal Samuel Walker, Royal Engineers, died on the day the Anzacs stormed ashore at Gallipoli, 25 April 1915, which was three days after the opening of the Second Battle of Ypres when the Germans first used poison gas on the Western Front against French forces holding the north–eastern section of the ‘Salient’. Not surprisingly, a number of graves feature dates between August and November 1917, the months of the great British offensive known as the Third Battle of Ypres, or more popularly ‘Passchendaele’. And here too are men who died in 1918 – such as Sapper Oliver Smith, Royal Engineers, in Row J, Grave 28 – as the Germans mounted their last great offensive in this area in April 1918.

This cemetery also reflects the imperial nature of the so–called British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium between 1914 and 1918. Apart from the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh soldiers there are Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians here. In December 1917 the New Zealand Maori (Pioneer) Battalion fought at Ypres and ten of their number lie in Ramparts Cemetery. One of them is Lance Corporal Edward Angel in Row J, Grave 2, who, as his parents told the Imperial War Graves Commission for recording in the cemetery register, ‘Also served at Gallipoli’. At the end of World War I Sir Apirana Ngata, a Maori politician much involved in the raising of the Maori Battalion, wrote a song to welcome the battalion home and to remember those who never came back:

There are 11 Australian graves at Ramparts, all of men who worked in support roles in salvage, headquarters, field ambulances, engineers and transports. Lance Corporal William Mawson, in Row B, Grave 11, was made Lance Corporal on 9 November 1917, the day of his death. He was killed putting up barbed wire towards Westhoek Ridge five kilometres to the east. Buried closely together in Row C, Graves 5–7, are Privates Frederick Grainger, Robert Charles and Percy Haffenden of the Australian Salvage Corps. It was the job of the salvage men to scour the battlefield for useful recyclable material and these three were doing their job near Hell Fire Corner on the Menin Road on 16 September 1917 when they were killed. Private Constantine Aroney told the Australian Red Cross of Charles’s death:

Another witness described Charles as an ‘oldish man’, 1.7 metres tall, fair, thick set and red faced.

Today the ramparts of Ypres provide a place to walk, jog, or just sit. Fishing is a popular on the opposite bank of the moat. The moat is also famous for its white swans who, in 1917, could be seen swimming around the ramparts towards what is now Ypres’ most famous war monument, the Menin Gate:

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© 2008 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - November 2008

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