Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
We remember not only the rain and mud that swallowed the dead but the courage of the men who fought here
EXACTLY 100 years ago, the little village of Passchendaele was a place few British soldiers had heard of. At 3.50am on July 31, 1917, when the whistles blew along the Flanders trenches and the men went over the top, most knew little about their objective.
It would be four months before the tiny Flemish settlement was captured from German forces, with the loss of a quarter of a million men on each side.
Yesterday both sides were remembered at Tyne Cot war graves cemetery in Belgium. The Duchess of Cambridge laid a bouquet of flowers at the grave of an unknown soldier, then joined Belgian Queen Mathilde and German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel in laying wreaths at the graves of four German soldiers.
And 4,000 descendants of some of those who died in the quagmire a century earlier fell silent to remember their sacrifice, brushing away tears as the Last Post sounded. Their grandfathers were young men who crossed the Channel to fight for their country and never returned home.
Many were swallowed up by the mud, lions led by donkeys who failed to prepare for weeks of heavy rain when they drew up plans to retake strategic ridges to the south and east of the city of Ypres.
As Prince Charles told the crowds at Tyne Cot yesterday: “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 Prince of Wales spoke in front of the tall white Cross of Sacrifice, which can be seen from miles away across the flat farmland where the battle was fought.
He told how his great-grandfather, King George V, visited the same spot in 1922, four years after the Armistice, to honour all those who died in the First World War.
It was decided then that the Cross would be built on a German pillbox, a