Hooge

For much of the war, Hooge was one of the easternmost sectors of the Ypres Salient, being almost constantly exposed to enemy attacks from three sides. After the First Battle of Ypres in 1914, the front line of the salient ran through the Hooge area and there was almost constant fighting in the region over the next three years, during which Hooge and the Château de Hooge, a local manor house were destroyed.^[1] Around the village, the opposing front lines were almost within whispering distance of each other. With its ruined village and a maze of battered and confusing trench lines, the area was regarded as a hazardous area for the infantry, where snipers abounded and trench raids were frequent. Both sides saw Hooge as a particularly important area and a key target for heavy artillery bombardment.^[2]

Geography of the Ypres Salient

Ypres is overlooked by Kemmel Hill in the south-west and from the east by low hills running south-west to north-east with Wytschaete (Wijtschate), Hill 60 to the east of Verbrandenmolen, Hooge, Polygon Wood and Passchendaele (Passendale). The high point of the ridge is at Wytschaete, 7,000 yd (6,400 m) from Ypres, while at Hollebeke the ridge is 4,000 yd (3,700 m) distant and recedes to 7,000 yd (6,400 m) at Polygon Wood. Wytschaete is about 150 ft (46 m) above the plain; on the Ypres–Menin road at Hooge, the elevation is about 100 ft (30 m) and 70 ft (21 m) at Passchendaele. The rises are slight apart from the vicinity of Zonnebeke which has a gradient of 1:33. From Hooge and to the east, the slope is 1:60 and near Hollebeke, it is 1:75; the heights are subtle and resemble a saucer lip around the city. The main ridge has spurs sloping east and one is particularly noticeable at Wytschaete, which runs 2 mi (3.2 km) south-east to Messines (Mesen) with a gentle slope to the east and a 1:10 decline to the west. Further south is the muddy valley of the Douve river, Ploegsteert Wood (Plugstreet to the British) and Hill 63. West of Messines Ridge is the parallel Wulverghem (Spanbroekmolen) Spur and the Oosttaverne Spur, also parallel, lies further east. The general aspect south and east of Ypres is one of low ridges and dips, gradually flattening northwards beyond Passchendaele into a featureless plain.^[3]

Possession of the higher ground to the south and east of Ypres gives ample scope for ground observation, enfilade fire and converging artillery bombardments. An occupier also has the advantage that artillery deployments and the movement of reinforcements, supplies and stores can be screened from view. The ridge had woods from Wytschaete to Zonnebeke giving good cover, some being of notable size like Polygon Wood and those later named Battle Wood, Shrewsbury Forest and Sanctuary Wood. In 1914, the woods usually had undergrowth but by 1917, artillery bombardments had reduced the woods to tree stumps, shattered tree trunks and barbed wire tangled on the ground and shell-holes; the fields in gaps between the woods were 800–1,000 yd (730–910 m) wide and devoid of cover. Roads in this area were usually unpaved, except for the main ones from Ypres, with occasional villages and houses. The lowland west of the ridge was a mixture of meadow and fields, with high hedgerows dotted with trees, cut by streams and ditches emptying into canals. The main road to Ypres from Poperinge to Vlamertinge is in a defile, easily observed from the ridge.^[4]

1914

1915

1916

1917

1918

1915

After the Second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Bellewaarde (24–25 May), local operations continued around Hooge. In the Château grounds a captured British strongpoint was subjected to a mining attack by the 175th Tunnelling Company. In June 1915,

There is some urgent [mining] work to be done at once in a village [Hooge] on a main road east of Ypres. We hold one half and the job is to get the G[ermans] out of the other, failing that they may get us out and so obtain another hilltop from which to overlook the land. It is a significant fact that all their recent attacks round Ypres have been directed on hill tops and have rested content on the same, without trying really hard to advance down the slopes towards us.

— Cowan^[2]

The tunnellers dug a gallery about 190 ft (58 m) long under the German position and placed a 3,500 lb (1,600 kg) charge. As Hooge was on the apex of the Ypres Salient, it was considered a most dangerous job and the British command initially relied on volunteers.^[2] The 175th Tunnelling Company commander wrote,

[Hooge] was a small village in ruins on top of the ridge, Hooge meaning height, astride the Menin Road. On the north side of the road was a chateau with a separate annex standing in its own grounds by a large wood. Behind the chateau was Bellewarde Lake. In front of the chateau and east of the village proper were the racing stables (...). The stables were at the very apex of the salient. They were actually in our front line. The trenches were shallow and primitive, even the front line ones, and to reach the front lines some tunnels had been driven under the road and part of the ruins. No Man's Land between us and the Germans was littered with blackened corpses (...) and the stink was abominable. (...) Our objective was to sink a shaft, then tunnel under the chateau and annex and blow them up.

— Cowan^[2]

The work was completed in five and a half weeks. The first attempt at tunnelling started in a stable and failed because the soil was too sandy. A second shaft was sunk from the ruins of a gardener's cottage nearby. The main tunnel was in the end 190 ft (58 m) long, with a branch off this after about 70 ft (21 m), this second tunnel running a further 100 ft (30 m) on. The intention was to blow two charges under the German concrete fortifications, although the smaller tunnel was found to be off course. The explosive—used for the first time by the British—was ammonal supported by gunpowder and guncotton, making the Hooge mine the largest mine of the war thus far built. The main difficulties for the tunnellers were that the water table is very high, and that the clay expands as soon as it comes into contact with the air.^[17]

At 7:00 p.m. on 19 July 1915, the mine was fired. The explosion created a hole some 6.6 yd (6 m) deep and almost 44 yd (40 m) wide.^[17] The far side of the crater was then taken and secured by men from the 1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders and 4th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. Ten of the latter were killed by debris from the mine as they waited in advanced positions.^[18] The Germans tried to recover their lost position but were driven back by the British infantry and a heavy artillery bombardment.^[17] The mine fired by 175th Tunnelling Company at Hooge on 19 July 1915 was only the second British offensive underground attack in the Ypres Salient. On 17 April 1915, 173rd Tunnelling Company had blown five mines at Hill 60 using gunpowder and guncotton but none of these mines were even half as powerful as the Hooge charge. While the mine enabled the British infantry to take Hooge, the Germans soon took back all and more of the ground they had lost.^[2] By 30 July the German units had managed to take control of the château and the surrounding area.^[19]

When 177th Tunnelling Company arrived at Hooge in November 1915, underground warfare in the area was far from over.^[2] One of the busiest areas for the miners on both sides was Railway Wood, an area at Hooge where the old Ypres–Roeselare railway crossed the Ypres–Menen road. Aerial photographs clearly show the proliferation of mine warfare in the Railway Wood sector during the unit's presence there, with craters lying almost exclusively in no man's land between the British and German trenches.^[20] With both sides trying to undermine their enemy, much of the unit's activity at Railway Wood consisted of creating and maintaining a shallow fighting system with camouflets, a deeper defensive system as well as offensive galleries from an underground shaft.^[21]

1916

On the morning of 28 April 1916, a German camouflet killed three men of 177th Tunnelling Company, including an officer (Lieutenant C.G. Boothby). The men were trapped underground and their bodies not recovered. After the war, they were commemorated nearby at the RE Grave, Railway Wood. On 6 June 1916, the Experimental Company of the Prussian Guard Pioneers succeeded in blowing four large mines under the British trenches at Hooge held by the 28th Canadian Battalion.^[22] After intense and sustained fighting, the Germans also retook the crater created by the British mine on 19 July 1915 as well as the British front line.^[23] The German surprise offensive also captured the neighbouring Observatory Ridge and Sanctuary Wood—the only high ground on British hands in the whole of the Ypres Salient. Canadian units later regained Observatory Ridge and Sanctuary Wood, but not Hooge.^[2]

1917

While engaged at Hooge until August 1917, the 177th Tunnelling Company also built a forward accommodation scheme in the Cambridge Road sector along the rear edge of Railway Wood, halfway in between Wieltje and Hooge. The Cambridge Road dugout system was located within 100 metres (110 yd) of the front line. It was connected to the mining scheme beneath Railway Wood and eventually became one of the most complex underground shelter systems in the Ypres Salient. Its mined galleries were named after London streets for easy orientation.^[24]

177th Tunnelling Company was involved in constructing new dugouts beneath the Menin Road in the centre of Hooge, located in between 175th TC's July 1915 mine crater and the stables of the destroyed Château de Hooge.^[25] Parts of these dugouts now lie beneath the Hooge Crater CWGC Cemetery opposite the "Hooge Crater Museum". Further projects of the 177th Tunnelling Company in the area were the Birr Cross Roads dugout and dressing station beneath the Menin Road further west of Hooge,^[26] and the Canal Dugouts along the Ieperlee.^[27] Fighting in the Hooge sector continued until 1918, with the craters (tactically important in relatively flat countryside) frequently changing sides.^[19]

Hooge and Bellewaarde

Among those killed in the fighting in Hooge was Gerard Anderson, the British hurdler who participated in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and died in November 1914.^[28][29]

Although the crater created in Hooge by the British mine on 19 July 1915 was filled in after the war as untenable and the repository of hundreds of bodies, several other large mine craters that were created over the course of the fighting can still be seen.^[30] The most visible evidence remaining today is a large pond near the hotel and restaurant at the Bellewaerde theme park. The site is the result of work overseen by Baron de Wynck, who landscaped three mine craters (blown by German units in June 1916 as part of their offensive against Canadian troops) into the existing pond near the hotel (image). Further craters can be found in and around Hooge, Bellewaerde Ridge and Railway Wood.

The "Hooge Crater Museum", founded in 1994, is opposite Hooge Crater CWGC.^[31] To the west of Hooge is the "Menin Road Museum".

• Hooge Crater Cemetery: Hooge became the location for a war cemetery in October 1917.^[31] buried here is Patrick Bugden VC (1897–1917), killed during the Battle of Polygon Wood.^[32]
• Memorial to the King's Royal Rifle Corps, Hooge
• Birr Cross Roads Cemetery is located along the Menin Road, just west of Hooge. There are now 833 Commonwealth soldiers buried or commemorated here, of which 334 are unidentified.^[33]
• Memorial to Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, Westhoek

Railway Wood

• Liverpool Scottish Memorial, Railway Wood
• RE Grave, Railway Wood: A short distance north-west of Hooge. The memorial marks the spot where twelve soldiers (eight Royal Engineers of the 177th Tunnelling Company and four attached infantrymen) were killed between November 1915 and August 1917 while tunnelling under the hill near Hooge during the defence of Ypres; their bodies were not recovered.^[34][35] One of the twelve men commemorated here is Second Lieutenant Charles Geoffrey Boothby (1894–1916), whose wartime letters to his girlfriend were published in 2005.^[36]

Sanctuary Wood

Extensive woodlands, known locally as 'Drieblotenbos Hoge Netelaar' but called 'Sanctuary Wood' by British soldiers who took refuge here in November 1914.

• Sanctuary Wood Cemetery
• Sanctuary Wood Museum Hill 62
• Memorial to Lieutenant Keith Rae
• Canadian Hill 62 (Sanctuary Wood) Memorial, located beside Sanctuary Wood on the top of Mount Sorrel, which lies next to Hill 62. All of these are locations the Canadians held or recaptured from the Germans during the offensive operations in early June 1916.