Julie

=The Third Battle of Ypres: Passchendaele=

What was the Battle of Passchendale?
A three month battle raging from the 31 July to the 6 November 1917, The Battle of Passchendaele was fought between the Allied forces and the German Army around the Ypres Salient in West Belgium, the last Belgian city to be recovered from the Germans, making it an important political symbol for both Germans and the Allies. Despite Passchendaele just being a small village lying approximately eight kilometres from the start of the British Offensive, it took over three months for the Allied forces to capture the village, just to enlarge the Ypres Salient, sacrificing the lives of at least 260,000 German soldiers and 300,000 Allied soldiers including over 55,000 Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians. British Field-Marshal Douglas Haig, along with the two other commanders-in-chief, German General Erich Ludendorff and French General Philippe Pétain, are often reproached for regarding the whole of the Western front as an unremitting battle, one that had started with the Battle of the Somme in 1916, one of the bloodiest battles in history with over one million casualties, finishing with the Battle of Passchendaele. Some say that it was the success of the attack on Messines Ridge that pushed Haig to continue with Passchendaele. On the 7th June 1917 nineteen strategically placed mines exploded exactly under newly occupied German trench lines killing 10,000 troops. This success tried to be carried out again throughout the battle of Passchendaele but failed every time. This is often said to be because of the extreme weather conditions. The historian Trevor Wilson commenting on the success of the Passchendaele campaign said that “Haig’s objectives…were ridiculously wide ranging…operations were not geared to take account, even, of factors such as the weather” and after looking at accounts written by soldiers at the battle of Passchendaele, one can recognize this to be true.

“The living conditions in our camp were sordid beyond belief. The cookhouse was flooded, and most of the food was uneatable. There was nothing but sodden biscuits and cold stew. The cooks tried to supply bacon for breakfast, but the men complained that it smelled like dead men” // Robert Sherriff, Soldier in the East Surrey Regiment // “Floods of rain and a blanket of mist have doused and cloaked the whole the Flanders plain. The newest shell-holes, already half-filled with soakage, are now flooded to the brim. The rain has so fouled this low, stoneless ground, spoiled of all natural drainage by shell-fire, that we experienced the double value of the early work, for today moving heavy material was extremely difficult and the men could scarcely walk in full equipment, much less dig. Every man was soaked through and was standing or sleeping in a marsh. It was a work of energy to keep a rifle in a state fit to use” // William Beach Thomas, journalist //

Looking at these extracts, we can see that severe weather conditions affected morale for all soldiers, on either side of the battlefield. To make matters even worse, continuous shelling in the area had destroyed the drainage system and with the heaviest rainfall seen in 30 years, the soil had turned into thick mud, comparable to quicksand with water-filled shell craters. This thick mud, took the lives of many soldiers who drowned in it. Along the trenches, duckboards were laid across the marshes to allow troops to walk through carrying equipment often up to 45kg, however sometimes the soldiers would slip and plummet into the craters from the paths, drowning before they would be rescued. For the soldiers still in combat, fighting was very difficult, all their equipment was filled with mud, to use tanks was an impossible task, the airplanes couldn’t fly properly and shells would land in the mud, not allowing them to explode as they usually would have done.

Was Passchendaele a mistake?
After the end of World War One, Douglas Haig’s reputation was severely damaged, but why? His philosophy was that continuous, aggressive attacks would win the battle, these tactics may have previously worked, but as previously mentioned, the amount of rain that fell on the Western Front during these months greatly affected the combat from both sides, costing thousands of lives belonging to ordinary men. There is also the factor that only five kilometres of land was gained from this three month battle, albeit this land was quite important to both Germans and Allies, being the last Belgian town under German occupation and being at the height of the Ypres Salient, but with about 140,000 deaths from both sides, this comes up to approximately five centimetres gained for the life of each soldier. I personally think that the worst aspect of this battle is that fact that in 1918, during Operation Michael, a German offensive that commenced on the 21st March, along with the Battle of Lys, in April 1918, the Germans regained this territory in three days. Although in the later months of 1918, the Allies once again took the land from the Germans, this shows that so many deaths and casualties, that ruined the lives of so many families, were, in effect, meaningless.

Three Useful Weblinks
> This website gives quotes from the historian Trevor Wilson on the Battle of Passchendaele, i can then state whether i agree with these or not. > As well as giving information, this website gives stories from soldiers, and extracts from texts written about Passchendaele. > detailed information about all stages of the battle.
 * http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/historian/hist_wilson_06_passchendaele.html
 * http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWpasschendaele.htm
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele