PRINCE SALUTES ‘SILENT WITNESSES OF WAR’
Charles echoes great grandfather George V with tribute to heroes of Passchendaele
PRINCE Charles paid tribute yesterday to the British and Allied soldiers who fought at Passchendaele on the centenary of the day the battle began.
More than 320,000 Allied forces had been killed, wounded or gone missing by the end of the three-month offensive, one of the First World War’s bloodiest battles.
German casualties at the battle at the village of Passchendaele, near Ypres in Belgium, are estimated at between 260,000 and 400,000.
Charles spoke at a poignant ceremony held in the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the world, where 4,000 descendants of soldiers gathered to pay their respects.
He turned to the words of his great-grandfather George V, who visited the same cemetery, Tyne Cot north of Ypres in 1922, to try to comprehend what happened.
During his visit George V stood before a German pillbox where the cemetery’s Cross of Sacrifice was later built.
Charles, speaking in front of that monument and wearing a beige suit, said: ‘Once taken by the Allies, the pillbox became a forward aid post to treat the wounded. Those who could not be saved were buried by their brothers in arms in makeshift graves; these became the headstones that are before us today.
‘After the end of the war almost 12,000 graves of British and Commonwealth soldiers were brought here from surrounding battlefields. Today a further 34,000 men who could not be identified or whose bodies were never found have their names inscribed on the memorial.
‘ Thinking of these men, my great- grandfather remarked: “I have many times asked myself whether there can 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”.’
By the end of the battle – officially the Third Battle of Ypres – in November 1917, the Allies had advanced just five miles.
Outlining the tortuous course of the battle, Charles said: ‘One hundred years ago today the Third Battle of Ypres began. At ten to four in the morning, less than five miles from here, thousands of men drawn from across Britain, France and the Commonwealth attacked German lines.
‘The battle we know today as Passchendaele would last for over 100 days. We remember it not only for the rain that fell, the mud that weighed down the living and swallowed the dead, but also for the courage and bravery of the men who fought here.
‘The advance was slow and every inch was hard fought. The land we stand upon was taken two months into the battle by the 3rd Australian Division. It would change hands twice again before the end of the war.’
Tyne Cot was the name given by the Northumberland Fusiliers to a barn which had become the centre of a German stronghold of pillboxes. It was finally captured on October 4, 1917.
Some 11,961 men lie in the cem- etery, of whom more than 8,300 remain unidentified. The Allied casualties included high numbers of Australian, New Zealand and Canadian troops.
There are also four German burials. The Germans were remembered with flowers laid down by the Duchess of Cambridge and Queen Mathilde of Belgium.
Charles also quoted the acclaimed war correspondent Philip Gibbs, who had worked for the Daily Mail earlier in his career and witnessed Passchendaele, recalling how he wrote: ‘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.’
At the ceremony the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were joined by the King and Queen of Belgium as they walked through the rows of headstones.
Tears were shed among the descendants of the dead as soldiers’ letters and stories were read out.
They included an account by Private Bert Ferns of the Lancashire Fusiliers of a shell blowing ‘ a group of lads to bits’ and being able to ‘taste their blood in the air’.
Before yesterday’s ceremony, Prince William admitted it had been a ‘proper teary moment’ hearing the Last Post played at Menin Gate, Ypres, at a service on Sunday evening.
Lewis Moody, a member of England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup winning team, told how he wept when he discovered, while making a film about rugby players killed in battle, that his mother’s great uncle Ernest Lovejoy was among those lost at Passchendaele.
‘Every inch was hard fought’