ALL HELL LET LOOSE

For the first time ever, British soldiers’ secret diaries and photos are united to reveal the true horror of Passchendaele – the battle that one Tommy called...

PASSCHENDAELE – the name alone is synonymous with the misery of the First World War. The battle took place a century ago near Ypres in Belgium, and came in the second half of a year that had brought unparalleled misery for British troops.

The battlefields through France and into Belgium were featureless wastelands.

Villages were obliterated and woods stripped back to charred trunks. Soldiers fought on in mud so thick that tanks became stuck and men and horses drowned.

An end to the fighting was nowhere near in sight.

At home, popular enthusiasm for the struggle had long since waned. Yet the British Army did not lack humour or morale – as can be seen in this remarkable new account, a series of rarely seen and never before published words and pictures recorded by the soldier themselves, even though cameras had been forbidden by the Army since 1914.

Fresh and compellingly human in its detail, it is a gripping account of the long and bloody march through the months that finally gathered in the fury of the Third Battle of Ypres – and the hell of Passchendaele itself.

SCORCHED EARTH AND BOOBYTRAPS

THE Germans had been on the defensive since the end of the Somme in 1916 and had established a new position, the Hindenburg Line, but were unsparing in their attempts to wound the enemy.

Captain Graham Greenwell, of 1/4th The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, wrote of the territory gained: ‘The Huns put arsenic in the wells at Baisieux, and they have left all sorts of little boobytraps behind them.

‘The cunning dogs half sawed through some bridges across the Somme, and put bombs underneath, which promptly blew up. They have left stoves in the dugouts all ready for lighting, which also blew up.’

Second Lieutenant Harry Trounce, 181 Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers, concurred: ‘In the barbed wire on top of the trenches we would find the German hairbrush bombs [stick grenades] tied by their fuses to the wire.

‘In the trenches we found thousands of German egg bombs [small grenades] connected to and underneath the duckboards [wooden planking].

‘These would be fired by anyone stepping on the duckboard. We would find attractive souvenirs hung up with bombs attached. Some poor chap would see a goodlooking German helmet hung in a dugout, attempt to remove it and fire the bomb attached.’

Lieutenant Keith Henderson, Royal Flying Corps, said: ‘At one of the loveliest towns [Peronne] in France, the Huns have destroyed every single house, all the bridges, and the cathedral, too – a pale crushed ghost in the deserted marketplace. On a huge noticeboard in the Grande Place the Hun has written in German: “Don’t argue: only wonder! We have destroyed your city. We took your precious town from you. Here it is back again. With our love.”

‘Some merry soldier wrote that up, I suppose. It was a pity.’

UNDER ATTACK DURING THE BATTLE OF THE SKIES

BOTH sides fought for control of the skies. Captain Lawrence Gameson, Royal Army Medical Corps, 71st Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, wrote: ‘I saw a German plane dive from the clouds with no wings. It hit the earth with a hideous impact 200 yards from me. The pilot was a bag of broken bones: had not his uniform held him he would have been pretty well amorphous. And so it goes on.’

Driver Aubrey Smith, 1/5th (City of London) Battalion, London Rifle Brigade: ‘A long line of ammunition lorries stretched from one end of the village to the other. We were in our billet wrestling with bully beef tins and did not observe the appearance of German aeroplanes which flew over the village, noticed the congested state of the main street and promptly signalled to their guns. The first we knew of it was when a loud explosion occurred – the biggest we had ever heard – which violently shook the ground. Boom! Another sudden upheaval of bricks, masonry and lorries, lost in great clouds of smoke!’

STEADY AS ROCKS… THE BRAVE WHO WENT OVER THE TOP

NORTH of Arras lay Vimy Ridge, a German-held patch of high ground crucial to the success of the Arras offensive. Sergeant Rupert Whiteman, 10th Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), wrote: ‘With a roar the heavens and Earth seemed to be rent asunder; every gun along that 15 miles of front opened fire simultaneously from Vimy to Croisilles. One sheet of flame rippled along the German lines caused by the bursting of thousands of British shells. None of us had ever before been eyewitnesses to such awful artillery fire.’

The barrage meant the infantry battalions were about to go over the top. Major Bertram Brewin, 16th The Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment), wrote: ‘I shoved my men over. They went as steady as rocks, swearing at the mud and wire, but calling to one another to keep their dressing [advancing in line] just as they had at practice. It is a most desperate and naked feeling to step up over the parapet into no-man’s-land – you felt as if you hadn’t a stitch of clothing on.’

Sergeant Rupert Whiteman, 10th Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment): ‘We could not help pitying those poor chaps in the trenches yonder. Despite their nationality they were human after all – and this was a hell-let-loose.’

Private George Culpitt, 10th The Royal Welsh Fusiliers: ‘Nothing can live in such as this. A glance to the left towards Vimy and the scene is the same. The whole of the ridge one mass of flame and rising earth. Around us, Fritz’s shells are exploding as he vainly endeavours to stay our advance. Now and then a man falls dead or wounded but we take no notice. Our casualties are slight for the terrible bombardment is too much for the enemy machinegunners who are either killed or cowering down a deep dugout.’

Lieutenant Alan Thomas, 6th Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment): ‘Crossing a trench, I glanced down and saw one of our men in a pool of blood. His body had been split from the shoulder, downwards, and some of his entrails were hanging out. I had seen a dead body before, but never one so mutilated.

‘I felt frightened and shaky. My knees nearly gave way under me. I pulled myself together and hurried on. The image remained with me for hours afterwards. So long as I live I shall never be able to obliterate it altogether.’

Lieutenant Arthur Worman, 6th Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment): ‘A Hun was lying on the ground ahead of us, apparently dead but with such life that he had left in him, he twisted himself over and fired an automatic pistol at my batman [personal servant]. What stamina and what hatred.’

Captain Douglas Cuddeford, 12th The Highland Light Infantry: ‘The horses seemed to suffer most. For a while we put bullets into poor brutes that were aimlessly limping about on three legs, or else careering about in agony, like one I saw that had its muzzle blown away. Why it had been thought fit to send in cavalry, we never knew.’

2,000 LIVES EXTINGUISHED – FOR A 400-YARD ADVANCE

SOUTH of Ypres lay the strategically crucial Messines Ridge, in

German hands since the autumn of 1914. The men of 419 Field Company, Royal Engineers were surprised to receive an instruction from the War Office. It dealt with discipline in the Army, emphasising in particular the necessity for the men to properly salute their officers. This untimely message arrived hot on the heels of a note stating that owing to the shortage of fat, ‘men were allowed to dip their bread on the bacon fat on one side only’. They had been warned.

On July 31, 1917, as the Third Battle of Ypres was about to commence, everyone waited for the final furious bombardment before going over the top.

The initial assaults were not promising. On August 10, more than 2,000 casualties were sustained for a gain of 400 yards.

Private Thomas Hope, a 16-yearold signaller with the 1/5th King’s Liverpool Regiment, chanced upon one injured man in a shellhole: ‘Poor fellow, he has lost both legs above the knee and has a nasty wound in the stomach. At first we think he is dead, but a movement of the eyes assures us he still lives. His glassy, staring eyes follow our every movement, not a groan escapes his lips. I think I understand the look in his eyes. I wouldn’t want to live without my legs; to have to crawl on my stomach like a worm; that isn’t life but a living hell.’

By August 16, the village of Langemarck had fallen, the one highlight in a dismal day. Four Victoria Crosses were awarded, but the battle was disintegrating into grinding attrition.

Lieutenant George Brown, 9th the Suffolk Regiment: ‘I had two pathetic letters today, one from the fiancee of a man to whom I had to break the news of his death, thanking me – oh, so piteously! – for my kindness, and asking for a souvenir to take with her down the empty years that lie ahead.

‘The second was even more touching. The writer had lost both husband and brother. She wrote: “Please don’t laugh at me, but I am a lonely woman now. If there is in your company a lonely soldier who would be glad of letters and cigarettes, do me a kindness and let me have his name.”

‘Somehow I found tears in my eyes as I read it, it was so infinitely sad and yet so beautiful.’

In September and October there were further advances, including the strategically important ridges and spurs around Ypres that allowed battlefield supremacy and observation over Germanheld territory.

Private Hugh Quigley, of the 9th (Scottish) Division, was in the centre of the attack surrounding the Belgian village of Passchendaele, now known to posterity as the First Battle of Passchendaele, which commenced on October 12: ‘None of us knew where to go when the barrage began.

‘I was knocked out before I left the first objective, which was littered with German corpses. One sight almost sickened me. I thought the position of a dead officer’s helmet curious.

‘My platoon sergeant lifted it off, only to discover no upper half to the head. All above the nose had been blown to atoms.

‘Apart from that, the whole affair appeared rather good fun. You know how excited one becomes in the midst of great danger.

As the battle dragged on into November, General Sir Douglas Haig brought down the Canadian Corps to help push the line on to the Passchendaele Ridge. No troops had been more tested in battle.

Major George Wade, Officer Commanding, 172nd Machine Gun Company, Machine Gun Corps: ‘It was a terrible thought as one passed each of those stiff, chilled soldiers, that he had once been dear to some mother, wife, sweetheart or child.

‘The most poignant memory was just a tiny piece of army biscuit. In a large shellhole there was a machine-gun team. The sergeant asked in a hopeless way: “Can anything be done about this man?”

‘His face was waxen and his eyes were closed. He had been hit four days before, was breathing very faintly and there was no possibility of evacuating him.

‘On his half-opened lips were little bits of army biscuit. That was all his fellow machine-gunners had to offer a mortally stricken man.

‘For six days one of our men, shot through both legs, lay out in no-man’s-land.

‘Each night Germans from a nearby shellhole crept out to give him a warm drink, every drop of which they must have longed for themselves as their plight was as bad as that of the British.’

At 6.20am on November 20, in mist and drizzle, a 1,000-gun bombardment opened up, smashing enemy batteries and defences before the tanks rolled over the enemy’s barbed wire, engaging trenches and machine-gun positions while the infantry followed, using the tanks as cover.

This was the Battle of Cambrai, the last offensive of the year. The results were unexpected and spectacular. The mighty defence of German’s Hindenburg Line had been breached.

The year had cost Britain and her Empire around 450,000 casualties, about 2,700 each fighting day.

But for terrible weather, the year might have ended with victory – we shall never know.

The revolution in Russia changed the tide of war by permitting Germany to switch a million troops from the Eastern to the Western Front and to launch its own bid to win the war the following spring. Despite the bloodshed of 1917, the horror would continue.

The Road To Passchendaele, by Richard van Emden, is published by Pen & Sword at £25. Offer price £20 until June 25. Order at mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over £15.