by Nick Lloyd
Such a description would surely belong to the BEF of 1917 as it struggled through one of the most murderous battles in the history of warfare. It was, without doubt, a remarkable army, composed of men from all sections of British life, as well as thousands of volunteers from the overseas Dominions–from Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand–who crossed the seas, ‘from the uttermost ends of the earth’, to fight and die for King and Empire. That it maintained its morale and kept going through that awful summer and autumn, without sinking into defeatism or flaring up into mutiny, was nothing short of miraculous.
The horror of what happened on that battlefield would never fade. In 1920 the war reporter Philip Gibbs–who had seen Third Ypres at first hand–wrote that ‘nothing that has been written is more than the pale image of the abomination of those battlefields, and that no pen or brush has yet achieved the picture of that Armageddon in which so many of our men perished’.39 Gibbs’s remarks remain true to this day. No matter what words are used to describe what happened–‘awful’ and ‘terrifying’; ‘monstrous’ or ‘appalling’–they all ultimately feel pale and unsatisfactory. Perhaps they will always be, to a certain extent, inadequate in conveying the enormity of the battle with its peculiar sights, sounds and smells: bombardments that ripped men to pieces; gas fumes that choked the lungs and blistered the skin; awe-inspiring air battles that were as lethal as they were spectacular; quicksand-like mud that could suck the unwary traveller down into a bottomless abyss; and, finally, the sight of thousands of white headstones, clustered like small forests, marking the route of the advance. But the stark facts remain. Whatever the flawed reasoning behind the battle, the achievements of the BEF in fighting through the maelstrom of Passchendaele–what a Canadian soldier, Private George Bell, called ‘the most awful place in the world’–should never be forgotten.40
1. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. He promised to deliver a ‘knock out blow’ against Germany, but was deeply opposed to Haig’s offensive in Flanders. His failure to stop the battle would haunt him for the rest of his life.
2. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, was convinced that the war could be won in Flanders, but proved unable to achieve decisive victory in 1917.
3. General Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was a bluff and no-nonsense soldier, but found himself caught between Lloyd George’s opposition to an attack in Flanders and Haig’s determination to mount a decisive operation.
4. Kaiser Wilhelm II (centre) studying maps at the German High Command with Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (left) and General Erich Ludendorff (right). Despite remarkable operational success in 1916–17, Germany ultimately proved unable to secure lasting strategic gains.
5. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, commander of Germany’s northern Army Group. He would have liked to pre-empt the British offensive in Flanders with a spoiling attack, but shortages of manpower and ammunition ruled it out.
6. General Sir Hubert Gough, commander of the British Fifth Army, was chosen to lead the main assault at Ypres. A ‘thruster’, he was loyal to Haig but distrusted by the rest of the army.
7. British stretcher-bearers pose for a photograph in the ruins of Pilckem during the first day of the battle, 31 July 1917.
8. Men of a pioneer battalion getting out of light railway trucks, Brielen, outside Ypres,31 July 1917.
9. ‘If I were asked to name the heroes of the Third Battle of Ypres, my vote would go to the pack horses which brought up the field artillery ammunition.’ Pack mules loaded up with shells move up to the front somewhere near Ypres, 1 August 1917.
10. British troops moving forward over shell-torn ground near Pilckem, 16 August 1917, during the ill-fated Battle of Langemarck.
11. Crown Prince Rupprecht distributing medals in Flanders. By the autumn of 1917, the German High Command admitted that the circumstances in Flanders ‘exceeded the horror of anything previously experienced’.
12. Kaiser Wilhelm II pays a visit to Flanders, August 1917 (presumably along the coastal sector). From the left the front three men are Crown Prince Rupprecht, the Kaiser, and Sixt von Armin (Chief of Staff of the German Fourth Army).
13. Wounded German soldiers at the command post of 19 Infantry Regiment, somewhere near Ypres, August 1917.
14. Soldiers of 5th Bavarian Division in trenches near Gravenstafel, August 1917. The division took a key role in repulsing British attacks during the Battle of Langemarck.
15. General Sir Herbert Plumer, commander of the British Second Army, took over the main assault from Gough in late August 1917. His care and attention to detail were legendary. He would become perhaps the most beloved and successful British general of the war.
16. A shell bursts near a party of British stretcher-bearers and German prisoners near Zillebeke, during the Battle of the Menin Road, 20 September 1917.
17. The view from Stirling Castle (a strongpoint south of the Menin Road) on 23 September 1917, showing derelict tanks amid a sea of shell holes. In the distance lies Sanctuary Wood, the scene of fierce fighting on 31 July.
18. The bodies of German soldiers lying outside a group of concrete blockhouses near Zonnebeke, 23 September 1917. By 1917 British infantry were trained and equipped to deal with such strongpoints, but attacking them always required great courage. Of the sixty-one Victoria Crosses that were awarded during the battle, over forty were for individual attacks on enemy pillboxes.
19. A German bombing patrol, with messenger dog, probably taken in late September 1917.
20. A German observation patrol, September 1917. German counter-attacking tactics were dependent upon good observation of the battlefield, but this was frequently not possible because of mist, rain, smoke and dust.
21. Men of the West Yorkshire Regiment shelter in a captured German pillbox along the St Julien–Gravenstafel road during the Battle of Polygon Wood.
22. Royal Field Artillery ammunition limbers moving up the Menin Road, 26 September 1917. The Menin Road was a vital logistics route throughout the battle, but was regularly swept by heavy fire.
23. Aerial view of Polygon Wood, 5 September 1917. By the time it was captured by Australian soldiers on 26 September, the wood had been reduced to nothing but ‘charred and splintered stumps standing about three or four feet high… totally devoid of any life’.
24. German prisoners captured during the Battle of Polygon Wood, 26 September 1917. The man facing the camera is showing the classic ‘thousand yard stare’ common to those who have faced extreme trauma.
25. A group of German prisoners make their way through the ruins of Ypres on 27 September 1917 after being captured on the Tower Hamlets Spur. The Battle of Polygon Wood was the second ‘step’ taken by Plumer and illustrated, yet again, how effective ‘bite and hold’ could be.
26. The headquarters of 3rd Australian Division in the ramparts of Ypres. Sir John Monash, the commander, described it as being ‘like the underground workings of mines, narrow tunnels, broadening out here and there into little chambers, the whole lit by electric light’.
27. 24/Australian Battalion dug-in on the Broodseinde Ridge, 5 October 1917. The Battle of Broodseinde was one of the most successful battles of the campaign and provoked panic in the German High Command.
28. Senior German officers, including Sixt von Armin (centre, looking up) and Field Marshal Hindenburg (second from right), meet some of their men after the Battle of Broodseinde. By early October the German High Command admitted that it could do nothing to stop properly executed limited attacks.
29. A German soldier takes the opportunity to snooze in the entrance to a blockhouse, somewhere in the Ypres Salient.
30. German troops and transports in the village of De Ruiter, southwest of Roulers, sometime in the autumn of 1917.
31. British 60-pounder guns firing in the mud near Langemarck, 12 October 1917. Despite herculean efforts, it was not possible to move enough guns and shells forward to support the assault on Pa
sschendaele.
32. Dead and wounded Australians in a cutting along the Ypres–Roulers railway,12 October 1917. This was taken by the Australian official photographer, Frank Hurley, who described coming across an ‘awful sight: a party of ten or so telephone men all blown to bits’.
33. Captain Clarence Jeffries (of 34/Australian Battalion) was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his actions on 12 October 1917 during the doomed push towards Passchendaele. After taking out a number of pillboxes, he was shot and killed.
34. Troops of 10 Australian Brigade drying their clothes on 14 October, two days after the abortive First Battle of Passchendaele. After spearheading the attacks since late September, the fighting on 12 October marked the end of Australia and New Zealand’s involvement in the battle.
35. Sir Arthur Currie with his staff at the headquarters of the Canadian Corps at Poperinge. When Currie was asked to take the Passchendaele Ridge he was unimpressed, reportedly saying that it ‘was not worth a drop of blood’ and would cost 16,000 casualties.
36. Canadian success at Passchendaele was dependent upon painstaking (and frequently backbreaking) logistical preparation. Canadian pioneers carrying trench mats pass German prisoners on the Passchendaele battlefield.
37. Wounded Canadians take cover behind a pillbox, November 1917.
38. ‘The worst place in the world’. A Canadian soldier attempts to cross the Flanders battlefield. To capture the Passchendaele Ridge in such conditions was arguably Canada’s finest achievement during the First World War.
39. The Cloth Hall, Ypres, lit by moonlight. For those who served in the Salient, the march past the eerie ruins of the town was an unforgettable rite of passage.
40. View of Passchendaele church in the summer of 1917 before it was completely razed during the fighting for the village.
41. ‘The defenders cowered in their water-filled craters without protection from the weather, hungry and freezing, continually exposed to the overwhelming enemy artillery fire.’ A photograph taken in April 1918 showing the terrible ground conditions in which the later stages of the battle were fought. This was what the Germans called the Trichterfeld (‘crater field’).
42. Tyne Cot CWGC Cemetery. Lying on the outskirts of Passchendaele, Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, with almost 12,000 servicemen commemorated or buried within its walls. The Cross of Sacrifice (centre) is built upon the ruins of an imposing German pillbox that was captured in October 1917. When King George V visited Flanders in 1922, he asked poignantly whether there could be ‘more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war’.
Acknowledgements
Over the course of the three years that it has taken to research and write this book, I have been assisted by a small army of historians, librarians, archivists and friends. First of all, I would like to thank my agent, Peter Robinson, for his constant advice and support, as well as the great Eleo Gordon at Viking, who has been a wonderful editor. Passchendaele: The Lost Victory of World War I is one of the last books that Eleo has been involved with and it has been a privilege, as well as great fun, to work with her on it. Her successor, Daniel Crewe, has ensured that the transition to a new editor has been a seamless process. Mark Handsley also copy-edited the manuscript with commendable thoroughness. In the US, Dan Gerstle has been extremely supportive of the project and his close reading of the text has helped to eliminate a number of inconsistencies, resulting in a better book. The wisdom of a number of fellow historians, researchers and scholars, freely given, has been invaluable throughout and I would like to thank the following: Mrs Delia Bettaney; Dr Jonathan Boff; Dr Tony Cowan; Dr Marcus Faulkner; Dr Robert Foley; Dr Tim Gale; Dr Saul Kelly; Dr William Mitchinson; Philipp Rauh; Professor Andrew Rice; Edwin Ride; and Professor Peter Simkins.
I am fortunate in being able to work at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at the UK Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Wiltshire. To be surrounded by some of the finest military historians in the world, as well as a student body of enormous operational experience and knowledge, is both stimulating and deeply challenging. I am a better historian for it and would like to salute my colleagues, both civilian and military, and my students, past and present, for their input. Shrivenham is also home to one of the great defence libraries in the world and the collection of the JSCSC library is always the starting point for any project. As always, the staff have been extremely helpful, thoroughly professional, and happily willing to overlook my occasional misdemeanours.
During the course of writing Passchendaele: The Lost Victory of World War I, I have travelled to a number of libraries and research centres, whose staff have been unfailingly helpful: the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv and Bavarian State Library in Munich; the Canadian War Museum, and Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College London; the Maughan Library, London; and The National Archives of the UK at Kew. Financial support for these trips has been provided by the Defence Studies Department, which has always been incredibly supportive of my scholarship. A special note should go to my colleague at Shrivenham, Dr David Hall, who has been of enormous assistance. I am grateful to him for accompanying me to Munich to conduct archival research on the German Army. He was an excellent companion and freely shared with me his extensive knowledge of German history, culture, football and–perhaps most importantly–German beer.
This book is dedicated to my daughters, Eleanor and Isabel, and my wife, Louise, who make everything possible and worth while. This book is for them–in the way of an apology for spending so much of my time hunched over my computer in my office, typing and typing away.
Cheltenham, England
October 2016
Nick Lloyd is an English historian and writer. He is Reader in Military & Imperial History at King’s College London, based at the Joint Services Command & Staff College in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, UK. He is the author of four books including Hundred Days: The Campaign that Ended World War I (Basic Books, 2014). He lives with his family in Cheltenham, England.
Also by Nick Lloyd
Hundred Days: The End of the Great War
The Amritsar Massacre: The Untold Story of One Fateful Day
Loos 1915
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