The city of Ypres (Ieper), situated within a deadly salient of the Western Front, suffered so much throughout the course of the First World War that by Armistice Day there was not a single building in the municipality that remained in tact. Four years of shelling had reduced its ancient core to rubble.
- First Battle of Ypres, (19 October - 22 November 1914)
- Second Battle of Ypres, (22 April - 25 May 1915)
- Battle of Messines, (7 - 14 June 1917)
- Third Battle of Ypres (Battle of Passchendaele), (31 July - 10 November 1917)
- Battle of the Menin Road (20-25 September 1917)
- Fourth Battle of Ypres - Battle of the Lys, (9 April - 29 April 1918)
- Fifth Battle of Ypres, (28 September - 2 October 1918)
One Canadian soldier, Sergeant John.Armstrong Brice, described the devastation in a letter home:
I don't suppose there is any place on earth in quite such a mess as the surface of the earth surrounding Ypres. For over six miles in depth the land is nothing but a sea of shell- craters
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“I should like us to acquire the whole of the ruins of Ypres… A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the World.”
- Winston Churchill, January 1919
"I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile, thou whiteness, Ypres,
How mighty in thy misery, how royal in thy ravishing,"
- Edmund Blunden, On Reading that the Rebuilding of Ypres Approached Completion
After the war, Ypres was rebuilt in a remarkable campaign of restoration.
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| Manchester Evening News 24 July 1967 |
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