In the history of conflict there are few wars that conjure up a sense of horror and futility like the First World War. Known as The Great War, this global conflict was fought in every corner of the globe, atop mountains, in deserts, on the high seas and in the air. However is the the Western Front that most of us think of when the First World War is mentioned. The very vision of spectral soldiers slogging though mud and gas choked trenches stuffed with decomposing corpses is what seems to be part of the collective memory of The Great War. In many ways it is the battle of the Somme in 1916 and it's appalling causality count on the very first day, 20,000 British soldiers killed outright, that is seared into the conscience of the entire nation of Great Britain.
Yet, it is the battle of Passchendaele in 1917 that is perhaps worse. Passchendaele is derived from the Flemmish Dale of the Passion or less literally, the Valley of the Crucifixion. Aptly named for the ten of thousands of young men who would meet a grisly end there. Also known as Third Ypres, Passchendaele was fought from July 31st to November 6th, 1917 in a salient around the Belgium town of Ypres which stuck out into the Western Front like a tumor. Salients are funny things when dealing with static trench warfare........they make excellent targets on all three sides, which is exactly what the Germans did. Geography and geology play a part in the horrors of Passchendaele as well. That area of Flanders is actually below sea level and a series of dykes keeps the farmers fields from flooding. The soil is a thick clay which turns into quicksand and glue when water is added. Toss in a few million high explosive artillery shells raining down unendingly which destroys the dykes, and you have flooded fields which can't drain the water thanks to the clay. Into the horrible morass, close to a million British, French and German soldiers, that's a million for each side, would slug it out for the gains measured in yards of swampy terrain.
When the fighting started, British guns fired around the clock in an artillery barrage that lasted for seven days. By then, the ground was so saturated, many shells burrowed deep into the mud to explode harmlessly underground. The shells that did explode on the surface simply added to the soupy, poisoned ground. The Germans hid safe in their bunkers which had been constructed deep underground, many going mad from the unending noise. When the barrage lifted, the British soldiers climbed to the top of what was left of their trenches and attempted a slow and painful slog across no mans land toward the waiting machine guns. Wounded men who were too weak to crawl back to the lines, slowly drowned in the foul mud which was by now like quicksand. It's unknown just how many soldiers met their fate this way, but it's estimated that thousands of men slipped under the watery mud where they drowned and suffocated.
The commander of the great debacle was one Douglas Haig, a pompous and mediocre general as best who was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal after the butchery at the battle of the Somme in 1916. Haig and the rest of the British high command should have been rounded up and shot for their criminal stupidity in the callous way they deliberately threw men's lives away. Haig's junior officers sent him maps showing where lakes had formed in the salient due to the shells and rain, the same lakes that Haig intended his soldiers to cross. The charts were sent back to the officers with the notation "Send us no more of these ridiculous maps". To say that Haig was detached from reality would be an understatement. One anecdote that has been passed down is that of one of Haig's senior staff officer, a man by the name of Launcelot Kiggell, who was all too unwilling to visit the front during the fighting and even more unwilling to believe the reports of the appalling conditions. Finally seeing the wretched, stinking morass of mud and corpses, he broke down in tears and exclaimed "Good God, did we really send men to fight in this?"
In a way, the British general staff has been looked at as a microcosm of the class society of 19th century England. The working class is sent off to fight the wars, while the upper class sits back with their brandy and talk of what a glorious cause it all is. The soldiers were simply chattel to be wasted and used up and they were indeed wasted by the tens of thousands. Ironically, for his butchery and stupidity, Haig was made an Earl after the war. Later in life he somewhat redeemed himself by becoming active in veterans affairs, even setting up funds for the care of ex-servicemen. He was also instrumental in the formation of the British Legion.
In the town of Ypres today there is an impressive memorial to the British soldiers who went missing during the battle for Passchendaele and who have no known grave. Known as the Menin Gate, the names of over 54,000 men are recorded forever in the stone walls that arch over the roadway, one of the main entrances into Ypres. Every evening, a brief but solemn ceremony is held in which members of the local fire brigade close off the street and play Last Post on highly polished bugles. This has been done every single night since 1928, with the exception of the German occupation of WW2.
