Passchendaele

by Nick Lloyd

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  ——, Battleground Europe. Ypres. Passchendaele: The Fight for the Village (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007; first publ. 1997)

  ——, Battleground Europe. Polygon Wood (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 1999)

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  ——, Shock Troops. Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917–1918 (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008)

  Dancocks, D. G., Legacy of Valour. The Canadians at Passchendaele (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1986)

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  French, D., ‘Who Knew What and When? The French Army Mutinies and the British Decision to Launch the Third Battle of Ypres’, in L. Freedman, P. Hayes and R. O’Neill (eds.), War, Strategy, and International Politics. Essays in Honour of Sir Michael Howard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 133–53

  ——, The Strategy of the Lloyd George Coalition, 1916–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)

  Fuller, J. F. C., Tanks in the Great War 1914–1918 (London: John Murray, 1920)

  Fussell, P., The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; first publ. 1975)

  Giles, J., The Ypres Salient (London: Leo Cooper, 1970)

  Graham, D., and S. Bidwell, Coalitions, Politicians and Generals. Some Aspects of Command in Two World Wars (London: Brassey’s, 1993)

  Green, A., Writing the Great War. Sir James Edmonds and the Official Histories, 1915–1948 (London: Frank Cass, 2003)

  Greenhalgh, E., Victory Through Coalition. Britain and France during the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

  ——, The French Army and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)

  Grieves, K., The Politics of Manpower, 1914–18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988)

  Griffith, P., Battle Tactics of the Western Front. The British Army’s Art of Attack 1916–1918 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994)

  ——(ed.), British Fighting Methods of the Great War (London: Frank Cass, 1996)

  Harper, G., Massacre at Passchendaele. The New Zealand Story (Brighton: FireStep Books, 2011; first publ. 2000)

  Harris, J. P., Men, Ideas and Tanks. British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)

  Hart, P., Bloody April. Slaughter in the Skies over Arras, 1917 (London: Cassell & Co., 2006; first publ. 2005)

  Herwig, H., The First World War. Germany and Austria–Hungary 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997)

  Hooton, E. R., War over the Trenches. Air Power and Western Front Campaigns 1916–1918 (Hersham: Ian Allen, 2010)

  Leach, N., Passchendaele. Canada’s Triumph and Tragedy on the Fields of Flanders: An Illustrated History (Regina: Coteau Books, 2008)

  Lee, J., ‘Command and Control in Battle: British Divisions on the Menin Road Ridge, 20 September 1917’, in G. Sheffield and D. Todman (eds.), Command and Control on the Western Front. The British Army’s Experience 1914–1918 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2004), pp. 119–39

  Liddell Hart, B. H., The Real War, 1914–1918 (London: Faber & Faber, 1930)

  Liddle, P., (ed.), Passchendaele in Perspective. The Third Battle of Ypres (London: Leo Cooper, 1997)

  Lloyd, N., Loos 1915 (Stroud: Tempus, 2006)

  ——, The Amritsar Massacre. The Untold Story of One Fateful Day (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011)

  ——, Hundred Days. The End of the Great War (London: Viking, 2013)

  LoCicero, M., A Moonlight Massacre. The Night Operation on the Passchendaele Ridge, 2 December 1917: The Forgotten Last Act of the Third Battle of Ypres (Solihull: Helion & Company, 2014)

  Lupfer, T. T., The Dynamics of Doctrine. The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine during the First World War (Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1981)

  Macdonald, A., Passchendaele. The Anatomy of a Tragedy (Auckland: HarperCollins, 2013)

  Macdonald, L., They Called It Passchendaele. The Story of the Third Battle of Ypres and of the Men Who Fought in It (London: Penguin Books, 1993; first publ. 1978)

  Marble, S., British Artillery on the Western Front in the First World War. ‘The infantry cannot do with a gun less’ (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013)

  McCarthy, C., Passchendaele. The Day-by-Day Account (London: Cassell & Co., 1995)

  McGreal, S., Battleground Europe. Boesinghe (London: Leo Cooper, 2010)

  Millman, B., Pessimism and British War Policy 1916–1918 (London: Frank Cass, 2001)

  Morrow, Jr, J. H., The Great War in the Air. Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993)

  ——, The Great War. An Imperial History (London and New York: Routledge, 2004)

  Nicholls, J., Cheerful Sacrifice. The Battle of Arras 1917 (London: Leo Cooper, 1990)

  Palazzo, A., Seeking Victory on the Western Front. The British Army and Chemical Warfare in World War I (Lincoln, Nebr., and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000)

  Paschall, R., The Defeat of Imperial Germany 1917–1918 (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1989)

  Passingham, I., Pillars of Fire. The Battle of Messines Ridge, June 1917 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998)

  Pedersen, P., Anzacs on the Western Front. The Australian War Memorial Battlefield Guide (Milton: John Wiley & Sons Australia, 2012)

  Philpott, W. J., Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front, 1914–18 (London: Macmillan, 1996)

  ——, Attrition. Fighting the First World War (London: Little, Brown, 2014)

  Pierrefeu, J. de, L’Offensive du 16 Avril. La Vérité sur l’affaire Nivelle (Paris: Renaissance du Livre, 1919)

  Prior, R., and T. Wilson, Passchendaele: The Untold Story (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002; first publ. 1996)

  Pugsley, C., On the Fringe of Hell. New Zealanders and Military Discipline in the First World War (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991)

  Rawling, B., Surviving Trench Warfare. Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914–1918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992)

  Reynolds, D., The Long Shadow. The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon & Schuster, 2013)

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sp; Samuels, M., Command or Control? Command, Training and Tactics in the British and German Armies, 1888–1918 (London: Frank Cass, 1995)

  Sheffield, G., Forgotten Victory. The First World War: Myths and Realities (London: Headline, 2001)

  Sheldon, J., The German Army at Passchendaele (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007)

  Showalter, D., and W. J. Astore, ‘Passchendaele’, in D. Showalter (ed.), History in Dispute, Vol. 8, World War I: First Series (Farmington Hills: St James Press, 2002), pp. 218–24

  Simkins, P., Kitchener’s Army. The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–16 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988)

  Simpson, A., Directing Operations. British Corps Command on the Western Front 1914–18 (Stroud: Spellmount, 2006)

  Snelling, S., VCs of the First World War. Passchendaele 1917 (Stroud: The History Press, 2012; first publ. 1998)

  Spagnoly, T., The Anatomy of a Raid. Australia at Celtic Wood 9th October 1917 (London: Multidream Publications, 1991)

  Steel, N., and P. Hart, Passchendaele. The Sacrificial Ground (London: Cassell & Co., 2001; first publ. 2000)

  Terraine, J., The Western Front (London: Hutchinson, 1964)

  ——, The Road to Passchendaele. The Flanders Offensive of 1917: A Study in Inevitability (London: Leo Cooper, 1977)

  ——, The Smoke and the Fire. Myths and Anti-Myths of War 1861–1945 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980)

  Thompson, M., The White War. Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915–1919 (London: Faber & Faber, 2008)

  Thompson, R., ‘Mud, Blood, and Wood: BEF Operational and Combat Logistico-Engineering during the Battle of Third Ypres, 1917’, in P. Doyle and M. R. Bennett (eds.), Fields of Battle. Terrain in Military History (London: Kluwer, 2002), pp. 237–55

  Todman, D., The Great War. Myth and Memory (London: Hambledon and London, 2005)

  Travers, T., The Killing Ground. The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare 1900–1918 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2003; first publ. 1987)

  ——, How the War was Won. Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2005; first publ. 1992)

  Volkart, W., Die Gasschlacht in Flandern im Herbst 1917 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler & Sohn, 1957)

  Watson, A., Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

  ——, Ring of Steel. Germany and Austria–Hungary at War, 1914–1918 (London: Allen Lane, 2014)

  Wiest, A., Passchendaele and the Royal Navy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1995)

  Wolff, L., In Flanders Fields (London: Longmans, 1960)

  Woodward, D. R., Lloyd George and the Generals (London: Associated University Presses, 1983)

  Wynne, G. C., If Germany Attacks. The Battle in Depth in the West (Westport: Greenwood, 1976; first publ. 1940)

  Articles

  Adair, J., ‘The Battle of Passchendaele: The Experiences of Lieutenant Tom Rutherford, 4th Battalion, Canadian Mounted Rifles’, Canadian Military History, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Autumn 2004), pp. 62–80

  Brown, I. M., ‘Not Glamorous, But Effective: The Canadian Corps and the Set-Piece Attack, 1917–1918’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 58, No. 3 (July 1994), pp. 421–44

  Foley, R., ‘Learning War’s Lessons: The German Army and the Battle of the Somme 1916’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 75, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 471–504

  Fox, A., ‘“The word ‘retire’ is never to be used”: The Performance of the 9th Brigade, AIF, at First Passchendaele, 1917’, Australian War Memorial, SVSS Paper (2011), pp. 1–28

  French, D., ‘“Official but not history”? Sir James Edmonds and the Official History of the Great War’, The RUSI Journal, Vol. 131, No. 1 (1986), pp. 58–63

  ——, ‘Watching the Allies: British Intelligence and the French Mutinies of 1917’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1991), pp. 573–92

  Harris, P., and S. Marble, ‘The “Step-by-Step” Approach: British Military Thought and Operational Method on the Western Front, 1915–1917’, War in History, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2008), pp. 17–42

  Leach, N. S., ‘Passchendaele–Canada’s Other Vimy Ridge’, Canadian Military Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2008), pp. 73–82

  Liddell Hart, B. H., ‘The Basic Truths of Passchendaele’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, Vol. CIV, No. 616 (November 1959), pp. 433–9

  Lloyd, N., ‘“With Faith and Without Fear”: Sir Douglas Haig’s Command of First Army during 1915’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October 2007), pp. 1051–76

  Mainville, C., ‘Mentioned in Despatches: Lieutenant Allen Otty and the 5th CMR at Passchendaele, 30 October 1917’, Canadian Military History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring 2014), pp. 137–63

  McLeod, R., and C. Fox, ‘The Battles in Flanders during the Summer and Autumn of 1917 from General von Kuhl’s Der Weltkrieg 1914–18’, British Army Review, No. 116 (August 1997), pp. 78–88

  Palazzo, A. P., ‘The British Army’s Counter-Battery Staff Office and Control of the Enemy in World War I’, Journal of Military History, Vol. 63, No. 1 (January 1999), pp. 55–74

  Pugsley, C., ‘Learning from the Canadian Corps on the Western Front’, Canadian Military History, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter 2006), pp. 5–32

  Roskill, S. W., ‘The U-Boat Campaign of 1917 and Third Ypres’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, Vol. CIV, No. 616 (November 1959), pp. 440–42

  Stachelbeck, C., ‘Strategy “in a Microcosm”: Processes of Tactical Learning in a WW1 German Infantry Division’, Journal of Military & Strategic Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Summer 2011), pp. 1–20

  Terraine, J. A., ‘Passchendaele and Amiens I’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, Vol. CIV, No. 614 (May 1959), pp. 173–83

  ——, ‘Passchendaele and Amiens II’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, Vol. CIV, No. 615 (August 1959), pp. 331–40

  Travers, T., ‘A Particular Style of Command: Haig and GHQ, 1916–18’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1987), pp. 363–76

  Williams, M. J., ‘Thirty per Cent: A Study in Casualty Statistics’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, Vol. CIX, No. 633 (February 1964), pp. 51–5

  Woodward, D. R., ‘David Lloyd George, a Negotiated Peace with Germany and the Kuhlmann Peace Kite of September, 1917’, Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1971), pp. 75–93

  Wynne, G. C., ‘“The Other Side of the Hill”: The Fight for Inverness Copse, 22nd–24th of August 1917’, Army Quarterly, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (January 1935), pp. 297–303

  ——, ‘The Development of the German Defensive Battle in 1917, and Its Influence on British Defence Tactics: Part I’, Army Quarterly, Vol. XXXIV (April 1937), pp. 15–32

  ——, ‘The Development of the German Defensive Battle in 1917, and Its Influence on British Defence Tactics: Part II’, Army Quarterly, Vol. XXXIV (April 1937), pp. 249–66

  Glossary

  5.9: 15cm German field howitzer

  Army: Collection of corps (usually between two and seven) commanded by a General

  Army Group: Collection of armies (usually consisting of two or three)

  Battalion: Unit of infantry (nominally up to 1,000 strong) commanded by a Lieutenant-Colonel

  Battery: Organization of artillery pieces (usually containing between four and six guns)

  ‘Bite and hold’: Operational method that prioritized limited attacks against local points of tactical importance aimed at provoking wasteful counter-attacks

  Boche or Bosche: Slang term for Germans

  Brigade: Major tactical formation commanded by a Brigadier-General. Three brigades made up a British division (each brigade containing four battalions). French and German brigades operated on a different system, each with two regiments

  Corduroy road: Makeshift wooden road covered with sand, often used in swampy conditions

  Corps: Group of divisions (usually between
two and five) commanded by a Lieutenant-General

  Creeping barrage: Moving wall of shellfire that swept across the battlefield at a predetermined pace. Designed to keep defenders’ heads down and escort infantry on to their objectives

  Digger: Term for Australian troops

  Division: Basic tactical unit on the battlefield employing between 10,000 and 15,000 men, with supporting medical, engineering and artillery arms, commanded by a Major-General. By 1917 most divisions were not up to this strength, with many German divisions containing only around 8,000 infantry

  Eingreif Division: Literally ‘intervention division’. Specially trained reserve unit kept out of range of enemy artillery and brought forward to seal off enemy penetrations and counter-attack whenever possible. A key element of German defensive tactics in 1917

  Flanders Lines (Flandern Stellungen): A series of three heavily defended Flanders Lines ran from Lille to the Belgian coast

  Group: German corps assigned to a permanent sector of the front

  Hindenburg Line: Major German defensive system constructed during 1916–17

  Jagdgeschwader: German Air Service fighter wing (containing four Jagdstaffel)

  Jagdstaffel (‘Jasta’): German Air Service fighter squadron (usually containing between nine and twelve aircraft)

  Jäger: Elite German light infantry

  Landsturm: German militia units comprising inferior troops used for local defence

  Lewis gun: American-designed light machine-gun first introduced in 1915 and widely used in the BEF

  Materialschlacht: Literally ‘material battle’. German term for the kind of industrialized, mass warfare that emerged on the Western Front in 1916

  Minenwerfer: German heavy trench mortar

  Pillbox: Reinforced concrete blockhouse

  Poilus: Literally ‘hairy ones’. Slang for French soldiers

  Regiment: Organization of infantry battalions. French and German divisions contained four regiments (each of three battalions). The British regimental system differed from continental use and regarded the regiment as a permanent organizational unit for its battalions