Passchendaele

Between July and November 1917, in a small corner of Belgium, more than 500,000 men were killed or maimed, gassed or drowned - and many of the bodies were never found. The Ypres offensive represents the modern impression of the First World War: splintered trees, water-filled craters, muddy shell-holes. The climax was one of the worst battles of both world wars: Passchendaele. The village fell eventually, only for the whole offensive to be called off. But, as Nick Lloyd shows, notably through previously unexamined German documents, it put the Allies nearer to a major turning point in the war than we have ever imagined.

Passchendaele epitomises everything that was most terrible about the Western Front. The photographs never sleep of this four-month battle, fought from July to November 1917, the worst year of the war: blackened tree stumps rising out of a field of mud, corpses of men and horses drowned in shell holes, terrified soldiers huddled in trenches awaiting the whistle. The intervening century, the most violent in human history, has not disarmed these pictures of their power to shock. At the very least they ask us, on the 100th anniversary of the battle, to see and to try to understand what happened here. Yes, we commemorate the event. Yes, we adorn our breasts with poppies. But have we seen? Have we understood? Have we dared to reason why? What happened at Passchendaele was the expression of the 'wearing-down war', the war of pure attrition at its most spectacular and ferocious. Paul Ham's Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth shows how ordinary men on both sides endured this constant state of siege, with a very real awareness that they were being gradually, deliberately, wiped out. Yet the men never broke: they went over the top, when ordered, again and again and again. And if they fell dead or wounded, they were casualties in the 'normal wastage', as the commanders described them, of attritional war. Only the soldier's friends at the front knew him as a man, with thoughts and feelings. His family back home knew him as a son, husband or brother, before he had enlisted. By the end of 1917 he was a different creature: his experiences on the Western Front were simply beyond their powers of comprehension. The book tells the story of ordinary men in the grip of a political and military power struggle that determined their fate and has foreshadowed the destiny of the world for a century. Passchendaele lays down a powerful challenge to the idea of war as an inevitable expression of the human will, and examines the culpability of governments and military commanders in a catastrophe that destroyed the best part of a generation.

This fully-illustrated, easily-accessible, account of the battle of Passchendaele presents the background and details of Canada's coming of age in The Great War. During WWI, the battle for the tiny Belgium town Passchendaele was one of the most significant tests of Canadian courage and expertise. British Commander-in-Chief General Douglas Haig had devised one of the most controversial stratagems of the entire war: Allied forces would attack headlong into the heavily fortified German entrenchments, capture the town of Passchendaele and its highlands, and drive toward the coast to destroy German submarine bases. General Arthur Currie's Canadian Corps was called to the front for this attack. After their victories at Vimy Ridge and Hill 70, the Canadians had earned the nickname storm troopers for, like a storm, they could not be stopped. Even for the battle-hardened Canadians, Passchendaele was a living hell. Many drowned in the mud before ever seeing the enemy. Others died from deadly chlorine gas, and others from artillery shells that rained down in numbers over 175 per square metre. The Canadians seized Passchendaele, succeeding where all others had failed, and displaying high standards of leadership, staff work and training.The Corps had suffered 16,000 casualties; nine Victoria Crosses were awarded to acknowledge the extraordinary heroism. Though the actual value of the campaign is debated to this day, one thing is certain: Canadians had been tested against the worst horrors of the Great War, and they had proven their valour.

In WWI, a small band of Canadian soldiers challenged an enormous German Army.

In the autumn of 1917, after years of stalemate at Ypres, the British and French armies launched a massive offensive to take Passchendaele Ridge. Following an intensive bombardment, the Allies began their attack, but the low ground between the lines had been churned into a quagmire, and the attack was literally bogged down. All surprise had been lost, and the German defence in depth was well organised. For the first time the Germans used mustard gas, while German planes flew low to strafe the British infantry with machine guns. After two and a half months the British finally took the ridge they had been aiming for, but at the cost of over 300,000 Allied lives. German losses in the offensive were estimated at 260,000. Based on the archival holdings at the Imperial War Museum, this book gathers together a wealth of material about this horrific offensive. A history to appeal to the scholar and the general reader alike.

Nearly ninety years ago, on 31st July 1917, the small Belgian village of Passchendaele became the focus for one of the most gruelling, bloody and bizarre battles of World War 1. By 6th November, when Passchendaele village and the ridge were captured, over half a million British, French, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Germans had become casualties. Philip Warner, the noted historian of twentieth-century warfare and the author of over fifty books on military history, many published by Pen and Sword, has skilfully brought together all the elements of this horrific campaign - the historical background, personal accounts, strategies and tactics, the personalities and the political manoeuvres. He investigates the issues which had a crucial effect on the course of the battle, including the mutinous state of the French army, the bombardment which destroyed the drainage system, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's determination to continue operations despite the appalling weather and ground conditions, and the stormy relationship between Haig and Lloyd George. However, it is the determined fighting ability and the bravery of the allied soldiers, rather than the tactical plans of the commanders, that dominate this detailed and totally absorbing account of the harrowing four-month campaign called the Battle of Passchendaele. Passchendaele is a masterly and timely analysis of one of the most important battles in history.

Passchendaele In Perspective explores the context and real nature of the participants’ experience, evaluates British and German High Command, the aerial and maritime dimensions of the battle, the politicians and manpower debates on the home front and it looks at the tactics employed, the weapons and equipment used, the experience of the British; German and indeed French soldiers. It looks thoroughly into the Commonwealth soldiers’ contribution and makes an unparalleled attempt to examine together in one volume ‘specialist’ facets of the battle, the weather, field survey and cartography, discipline and morale, and the cultural and social legacy of the battle, in art, literature and commemoration. Each one of its thirty chapters presents a thought-provoking angle on the subject. They add up to an unique analysis of the battle from Commonwealth, American, German, French, Belgian and United Kingdom historians. This book will undoubtedly become a valued work of reference for all those with an interest in World War One.

The Third Battle of Ypres was officially terminated by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig with the opening of the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917. Nevertheless, a comparatively unknown set-piece attack - the only large-scale night operation carried out on the Flanders front during the campaign - was launched twelve days later on 2 December. This volume is a necessary corrective to previously published campaign narratives of what has become popularly known as 'Passchendaele'. It examines the course of events from the mid-November decision to sanction further offensive activity in the vicinity of Passchendaele village to the barren operational outcome that forced British GHQ to halt the attack within ten hours of Zero. A litany of unfortunate decisions and circumstances contributed to the profitless result. At the tactical level, a novel hybrid set-piece attack scheme was undermined by a fatal combination of snow-covered terrain and bright moonlight. At the operational level, the highly unsatisfactory local situation in the immediate aftermath of Third Ypres' post-strategic phase (26 October-10 November) appeared to offer no other alternative to attacking from the confines of an extremely vulnerable salient. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the affair occurred at the political and strategic level, where Haig's earnest advocacy for resumption of the Flanders offensive in spring 1918 was maintained despite obvious signs that the initiative had now passed to the enemy and the crisis of the war was fast approaching. A Moonlight Massacre provides an important contribution and re-interpretation of the discussion surrounding Passchendaele, based firmly on an extensive array of sources, many unpublished, and supported by illustrations and maps.