Royal Signals Museum - Postal Covers - The Despatch Rider

The first battle of Ypres 1914 - The Despatch Rider

The battles of the Ypres salient can be divided broadly into two phases, from 18 October to 30 November 1914, and 22 April to 24 May 1915. This envelope commemorates the first battle. At this time the allied line ran from the coast at Nieuport to North of Ypres and thence southwards to Verdun and the Swiss border. The British Expeditionary Force, under its Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Sir John French, held the critical Ypres Salient with the Belgians on its left and the French to the south. Field Marshal French in his book 1914 gives a vivid description of the scene from his vantage point on the top of a tower east of Kemmel, on the 27 October, when the battle was approaching the crisis point. "From this point of view an observer with strong glasses can compass almost the whole battlefield of Ypres, where seven British infantry and three cavalry divisions were extended on a front of from 25 to 36 miles.

t was a bright October day with brilliant sunshine, and the line of fire could be seen all along the high ground encircling the Ypres Salient to the north, the Wytschaete-Messines ridge to the east, and away to the Southeast down to the Lys valley almost as far as Armentieres, beyond which place the shell-bursts in the sky brought the right of the British battle line well into the picture.

The British hung on grimly to the salient, at heavy cost, some 58000 casualties during the period of the first battle, effectively destroying the original BEF which had sailed from England only three months before; but the German drive to the channel ports was halted.

The envelope illustrates a motor cycle despatch rider of the period. These men played an important part at a time when telephone communications were still limited, delivering instructions and battle reports against all odds. Originally the riders were volunteers, often supplying their own machines, the forerunners of the DRs of the Royal Corps of Signals. Modern electronic communications have rendered the trade of DR obsolete, but the tradition lives on with the famous White Helmets Motor Cycle Display Team of Royal Signals.

The three horseshoes emblem was the divisional sign of the 3rd Cavalry Division, which was engaged in fierce fighting from the earliest days of the battle.