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“Just one
more push” to Passchendaele
 On
6th November 1917, after three months of fierce
fighting, British and Canadian forces finally took
control of the tiny village of Passchendaele in the West
Flanders region of Belgium, so ending one of the
bloodiest battles of World War I. With approximately a
third of a million British and Allied soldiers either
killed or wounded, the Battle of Passchendaele
(officially the third battle of Ypres), symbolises the
true horror of industrialised trench warfare.
General Sir Douglas Haig, the British Commander in Chief in
France, had been convinced to launch his forces at the
German submarine bases along the Belgian coast in an
attempt to reduce the massive shipping losses then being
suffered by the Royal Navy. General Haig also believed
that the German army was close to collapse and that a
major offensive …“just one more push”, could hasten the
end the war.
Thus the offensive at Passchendaele was launched on the 18th
July 1917 with a bombardment of the German lines
involving 3,000 guns. In the 10 days that followed, it
is estimated that over 4¼ million shells were fired.
Many of these would have been filled by the brave
Lasses of Barnbow.
The actual infantry assault followed at 03.50 on 31st July,
but far from collapsing, the German Fourth Army fought
well and restricted the main British advance to
relatively small gains.
Shortly after the initial assault, the heaviest rains in more
that 30 years began to fall on Flanders, drenching the
soldiers and the low lying fields over which the battle
was taking place. The artillery shells that had
bombarded the German lines only days before had not only
torn up the land but had also destroyed the drainage
systems that were keeping the reclaimed marshland dry.
With the continued pounding, the rain drenched ground
quickly turned into a thick swamp of mud.
Even the newly-developed tanks made little headway; unable to
move, they quickly became stuck fast in the liquid mud.
With each new phase of the offensive the rain kept
falling, filling the shell holes with water. The
clinging mud caked the soldier’s uniforms and clogged
their rifles, but that was the least of their worries as
in places the mud had become so deep that both men and
horses were drowned, lost forever in the stinking
quagmire.
The only solid structures in this sea of desolation were the
enemy's concrete pillboxes; from here the German
machine-gunners could scythe down any Allied infantry
that had been ordered to advance.
With the hopelessness of the situation apparent, General Haig
temporarily suspended the attack.
A fresh British offensive was launched on the 20th September
under the command of Herbert Plumer which eventually
resulted in some small gains being made including the
capture of a nearby ridge just east of Ypres. General
Haig ordered further attacks in early October which
proved less successful. Allied troops met stiff
opposition from German reserves being poured into the
area, and many British and Empire soldiers suffered
severe chemical burns as the Germans employed mustard
gas to help defend their position.
Unwilling to accept failure, General Haig ordered three more
assaults on the Passchendaele ridge in late October.
Casualty rates were high during these final stages, with
Canadian divisions in particular suffering huge losses.
When British and Canadian forces finally reached
Passchendaele on 6th November 1917 hardly a trace of the
original village structures remained. The capture of the
village did however give General Haig the excuse to call
an end to the offensive, claiming success.
In the three and half months of the offensive the British and
Empire forces had advanced barely five miles, suffering
horrendous casualties. Perhaps their only consolation
was that the Germans had suffered almost as badly with
around 250,000 killed or injured. In the aftermath of
the battle, General Haig was severely criticised for
continuing the offensive long after the operation had
lost any real strategic value.
 Perhaps more than any other, Passchedaele has come to
symbolise the horrors and the great human costs
associated with the major battles of the First World
War. British Empire losses included approximately 36,000
Australians, 3,500 New Zealanders and 16,000 Canadians -
the latter of which were lost in the last few days /
weeks of the final bloody assault. Some 90,000 bodies
were never identified and 42,000 never recovered.
These battles and the British Empire soldiers that perished
in them are today commemorated at the Menin Gate
Memorial in Ypres, the Tyne Cot Cemetery and Memorial to
the Missing.
Photographs courtesy of Memorial Museum
Passchendaele 1917
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