Welsh Memorial Park, Ypres

Captain Thomas Walter Nash (25 November 1891 – 23 October 1918) was a British World War I flying ace credited with eight aerial victories.

Langemark is a village in the Belgian province of West Flanders, and a subdivision of the municipality of Langemark-Poelkapelle. The village has about 5,000 inhabitants. Besides the village center, there are also three smaller hamlets on the territory, Madonna, Bikschote and Saint-Julien/Sint-Juliaan. Written as Langemarck on French, British and German maps, the village is known in military history as the scene (see trench map) of the first gas attacks by the German army in the western front, which marked the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. Before and during the First Battle of Ypres, the German reserve corps suffered enormous losses: over 10,000 young soldiers (some only 15 years old), led by young officers without practical experience, died without achieving any objective. On 10 November 1914, about 2,000 soldiers died during an attempted breakthrough. One day later, the German Command (Oberste Heeresleitung) published the following communiqué: Westlich Langemarck brachen junge Regimenter unter dem Gesange‚ Deutschland, Deutschland über alles‘ gegen die erste Linie der feindlichen Stellungen vor und nahmen sie. Etwa 2.000 Mann französischer Linieninfanterie wurden gefangengenommen und sechs Maschinengewehre erbeutet.In west Langemarck, youth regiments singing Germany, Germany Above All advanced on front line enemy positions, broke and took them. Approximately 2,000 French line infantry and six machine guns were captured.A popular and enduring myth of heroic self-sacrifice for the nation known as the "Mythos von Langemarck" arose from the propagandistic story. For this reason, the Flemish division of the Waffen-SS was named 27th SS Volunteer Division Langemarck. The village was destroyed during World War I. There is now a major German war cemetery, the Langemark German war cemetery, (Soldatenfriedhof) in this location, which has about 40,000 burials.

The Battle of Pilckem Ridge (31 July – 2 August 1917) was the opening attack of the Third Battle of Ypres in the First World War. The British Fifth Army, supported by the Second Army on the southern flank and the French 1reArmée (First Army) on the northern flank, attacked the German 4th Army, which defended the Western Front from Lille northwards to the Ypres Salient in Belgium and on to the North Sea coast. On 31 July, the Anglo-French armies captured Pilckem (Flemish: Pilkem) Ridge and areas on either side, the French attack being a great success. After several weeks of changeable weather, heavy rain fell during the afternoon of 31 July. In the XIX Corps area in the centre and on the right of XVIII Corps, three reserve brigades advanced from the black line to the main objective (green line) and pressed on towards the red line, the furthest that exploitation on local initiative had been allowed for in the plan. It began to rain, cutting off the advanced British troops from view, just as German regiments from specialist Eingreif (counter-attack) divisions advanced over Passchendaele Ridge. To avoid being rolled up, the reserve brigades retreated, suffering many casualties, through the green line to the black line, which the British artillery-observers could still see; the German infantry were prevented from advancing further by massed artillery and small-arms fire. A substantial amount of ground had been captured by the British and French, except on the Gheluvelt Plateau on the right flank, where only the blue line (first objective) and part of the black line (second objective) were captured. A large number of casualties were inflicted on the German defenders during the attack and 5,626 prisoners were taken; the German Eingreif divisions recaptured some ground from the Ypres–Roulers railway northwards to St Julien, forcing the British back to the black line. For the next few days, both sides made local attacks to improve their positions, much hampered by the deluges. The rains had a serious effect on operations in August, causing more problems for the British and French, who were advancing into the area devastated by artillery fire and partly flooded by the unseasonable rain. A local British attack on the Gheluvelt Plateau on 2 August was postponed several times because of the weather until 10 August and the second big general attack, due on 4 August, did not begin until 16 August. The green line objectives on the Plateau were not captured until the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge on 20 September, after the principal role in the offensive was transferred to the Second Army and three weeks' sunshine and fresh breezes dried much of the ground. The Third Battle of Ypres became controversial while it was being fought, with disputes about the predictability of the August deluges and for its mixed results, which in much of the writing in English is blamed on apparent misunderstandings between Gough and Haig and on faulty planning, rather than on the resilience of the 4th Army.

Langemark-Poelkapelle (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈlɑŋəˌmɑr(ə)k ˌpulkaːˈpɛlə]) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of West Flanders.

The German war cemetery of Langemark (formerly spelt 'Langemarck') is near the village of Langemark, part of the municipality of Langemark-Poelkapelle, in the Belgian province of West Flanders. More than 44,000 soldiers are buried here. The village was the scene of the first gas attacks by the German army in the western front (see trench map), marking the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. During the First Battle of Ypres (1914) in World War I, inexperienced German infantry suffered severe casualties when they made a futile frontal attack on allied positions near Langemark and were checked by experienced French infantry and British riflemen. Contrary to popular myth, only fifteen percent of the German soldiers involved in the Battle of Langemark were schoolboys and students. Legend has it that the German infantry sang the first stanza of what later (1919) became their national anthem "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles", as they charged. The cemetery, which evolved from a small group of graves from 1915, has seen numerous changes and extensions. It was dedicated in 1932. Today, visitors find a mass grave near the entrance. This comrades' grave contains 24,917 servicemen, including the Ace Werner Voss. Between the oak trees, next to this mass grave, are another 10,143 soldiers (including 2 British soldiers killed in 1918). The 3,000 school students who were killed during the First Battle of Ypres are buried in a third part of the cemetery. At the front of the cemetery is a sculpture of four mourning figures by Professor Emil Krieger. The group was added in 1956, and is said to stand guard over the fallen. The cemetery is maintained by the German War Graves Commission, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge. Otherwise, this cemetery has two Commonwealth burials.

Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, or L&H, was a Belgium-based speech recognition technology company, founded by Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, that went bankrupt in 2001 because of a fraud engineered by the management. The company was based in Ypres, Flanders, in what was later called Flanders Language Valley (mimicking the Silicon Valley).

The St. Julien Memorial, also known as The Brooding Soldier, is a Canadian war memorial and small commemorative park located in the village of Saint-Julien, Langemark (West Flemish: Sint-Juliaan), Belgium. The memorial commemorates the Canadian First Division's participation in the Second Battle of Ypres of World War I which included fighting in the face of the first poison gas attacks along the Western Front. The memorial was designed by Frederick Chapman Clemesha and was selected following a design competition organized by the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission in 1920.

Bard Cottage Cemetery is a World War I, Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground near Ypres, Belgium. It is home to 1607 identified casualties. The cemetery is half a kilometre north of Essex Farm Cemetery.

Boezinge (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈbuzɪŋə]; West Flemish: Boezienge) is a village in the municipality of Ypres in the Belgian province of West Flanders. Boezinge can be reached via the N369 road in the direction of Diksmuide. It was an independent municipality until 1977.

The Menin Gate (Dutch: Menenpoort), officially the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium, dedicated to the British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient of World War I and whose graves are unknown. The memorial is located at the eastern exit of the town and marks the starting point for one of the main roads that led Allied soldiers to the front line. Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and built by the Imperial War Graves Commission (since renamed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), the Menin Gate Memorial was unveiled on 24 July 1927. In early 2023, the monument will close for extensive restoration works in time for the memorial's centenary in 2027.

The First Battle of Ypres (French: Première Bataille des Flandres, German: Erste Flandernschlacht, 19 October – 22 November 1914) was a battle of the First World War, fought on the Western Front around Ypres, in West Flanders, Belgium. The battle was part of the First Battle of Flanders, in which German, French, Belgian armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fought from Arras in France to Nieuwpoort (Nieuport) on the Belgian coast, from 10 October to mid-November. The battles at Ypres began at the end of the Race to the Sea, reciprocal attempts by the German and Franco-British armies to advance past the northern flank of their opponents. North of Ypres, the fighting continued in the Battle of the Yser (16–31 October), between the German 4th Army, the Belgian army and French marines. The fighting has been divided into five stages, an encounter battle from 19 to 21 October, the Battle of Langemarck from 21 to 24 October, the battles at La Bassée and Armentières to 2 November, coincident with more Allied attacks at Ypres and the Battle of Gheluvelt (29–31 October), a fourth phase with the last big German offensive, which culminated at the Battle of Nonne Bosschen on 11 November, then local operations which faded out in late November. Brigadier-General James Edmonds, the British official historian, wrote in the History of the Great War, that the II Corps battle at La Bassée could be taken as separate but that the battles from Armentières to Messines and Ypres, were better understood as one battle in two parts, an offensive by III Corps and the Cavalry Corps from 12 to 18 October against which the Germans retired and an offensive by the German 6th Army and 4th Army from 19 October to 2 November, which from 30 October, took place mainly north of the Lys, when the battles of Armentières and Messines merged with the Battles of Ypres. Attacks by the BEF (Field Marshal Sir John French) the Belgians and the French Eighth Army in Belgium made little progress beyond Ypres. The German 4th and 6th Armies took small amounts of ground, at great cost to both sides, during the Battle of the Yser and further south at Ypres. General Erich von Falkenhayn, head of the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, the German General Staff), then tried a limited offensive to capture Ypres and Mont Kemmel (Kemmelberg), from 19 October to 22 November. Neither side had moved forces to Flanders fast enough to obtain a decisive victory and by November both sides were exhausted. The armies were short of ammunition, suffering from low morale and some infantry units refused orders. The autumn battles in Flanders had become static, attrition operations, unlike the battles of manoeuvre in the summer. French, British and Belgian troops, in improvised field defences, repulsed German attacks for four weeks. From 21 to 23 October, German reservists had made mass attacks at Langemarck (Langemark), with losses of up to 70 per cent, to little effect. Warfare between mass armies, equipped with the weapons of the Industrial Revolution and its later developments, proved to be indecisive, because field fortifications neutralised many classes of offensive weapon. The defensive firepower of artillery and machine guns dominated the battlefield and the ability of the armies to supply themselves and replace casualties prolonged battles for weeks. Thirty-four German divisions fought in the Flanders battles, against twelve French, nine British and six Belgian divisions, along with marines and dismounted cavalry. Over the winter, Falkenhayn reconsidered Germany strategy because Vernichtungsstrategie and the imposition of a dictated peace on France and Russia had exceeded German resources. Falkenhayn devised a new strategy to detach either Russia or France from the Allied coalition through diplomacy as well as military action. A strategy of attrition (Ermattungsstrategie) would make the cost of the war too great for the Allies, until one dropped out and made a separate peace. The remaining belligerents would have to negotiate or face the Germans concentrated on the remaining front, which would be sufficient for Germany to inflict a decisive defeat.

The Battle of Broodseinde was fought on 4 October 1917 near Ypres in Belgium, at the east end of the Gheluvelt plateau, by the British Second and Fifth armies against the German 4th Army. The battle was the most successful Allied attack of the Third Battle of Ypres. Using bite-and-hold tactics, with objectives limited to what could be held against German counter-attacks, the British devastated the German defence, which prompted a crisis among the German commanders and caused a severe loss of morale in the 4th Army. Preparations were made by the Germans for local withdrawals and planning began for a greater withdrawal, which would entail the abandonment by the Germans of the Belgian coast, one of the strategic aims of the Flanders offensive. After the period of unsettled but drier weather in September, heavy rain began again on 4 October and affected the remainder of the campaign, working more to the advantage of the German defenders, being pushed back on to far less damaged ground. The British had to move their artillery forward into the area devastated by shellfire and soaked by the autumn rains, restricting the routes on which guns and ammunition could be moved, presenting German artillery with easier targets. At the Battle of Poelcappelle on 9 October, after several more days of rain, the German defence achieved a costly success, holding the approaches to Passchendaele village, the most tactically vital ground on the battlefield.