What is "second battle of ypres"

n. battle in World War I (1915); Germans wanted to try chlorine (a toxic yellow gas) as a weapon and succeeded in taking considerable territory from the Allied salient [syn: Ypres, battle of Ypres]

During World War I, the Second Battle of Ypres was fought from for control of the strategic Flemish town of Ypres in western Belgium after the First Battle of Ypres the previous autumn. It was the first mass use by Germany of poison gas on the Western Front. For the first time, a former colonial force (the 1st Canadian Division) defeated a European power (the German Empire) on European soil (in the battles of St. Julien and Kitcheners' Wood, engagements during the battle).