Soldiers’ view of horrific battle
Post-war success
With its centenary this year, there has been a lot of focus recently on the Battle of Passchendaele during the First World War.
The battle raged for over three months from July to November 1917. The casualty figures are disputed, but the minimum estimates place the number of dead, wounded or missing at more than 400,000. But for those interested in looking beyond the statistics and gaining a real insight into what the battle felt like to those who fought it, there is a new book called Road To Passchendaele that comprises personal accounts from the soldiers, illustrated with many photographs taken by the men (illegally, as personal photography was banned).
Maidstone’s own regiment, The Queen’s Own Royal West Kents, was among those who fought there, and the book by Richard van Emden includes an account by one of them, Lieutenant Alan Thomas.
It quickly reveals that what the commanders and generals had planned for each engagement was seldom what the men on the front line actually experienced, which explains why some grew very bitter towards the men who were in charge.
The first entry by Lieutenant Alan Thomas describes what the men were told about the next “big push”.
He said: “We had been preparing for it for two months and it was (we had been told) going to be ‘a really first-class show’.
“To begin with, a stupendous bombardment lasting ten whole days! Ten days of the heaviest bombardment ever known in the history of this or any other war! Real heavy stuff too. Meanwhile our boys would be lying doggo-safe and away from it all – so that whatever Lieutenant Alan Thomas was wounded four times but survived the war and went on to have a varied and successful career. Born in 1896, he read classics and law at Clare College , Cambridge. After the war, he became a barrister at Grays Inn and between 1921 and 1936 he worked on the staff of the League of Nations. Between 1939 and 1958, he was the editor of The Listener. He also wrote crime fiction novels; the first, The Death of Laurence Vining, published in 1928, and the last, The Calverton Story, published posthumously in 1970, a year after his death. Fritz put over in reply simply wouldn’t touch us.
“These cheering announcements we duly passed on to the men, most of whom were (like some of us) young and inexperienced enough to lap them up with glee. But how exactly were we to be ‘safe and away from it all’? What did that mean? We were soon to know.”
The reality turns out to be