Passchendaele will never be forgotten

THE soldiers who fought in Passchendaele’s thick clay mud a century ago may have thought their generals and the political establishment had no conception of the horror that surrounded them. This battle was not just one of the most harrowing episodes in World War One, it is among the darkest moments in the story of humanity.

Historians still debate the precise causes of this conflict but over the course of three months, one week and four days approximately 275,000 Allied troops and 220,000 Germans were killed.

Europe was the birthplace of the Enlightenment and breakthroughs in science and mechanisation had fuelled excitement about the possibility for human progress. Utopian idealism was trampled into the mire in this desperate battle for a Belgian village, as men of different countries fought for their survival in the months of trench combat.

The scale of the slaughter almost defies comprehension but the individual story of Hedd Wyn, the poet otherwise known as Ellis Evans, is rooted in Welsh memory.

This Christian pacifist from Trawsfynydd perished on the first day of the battle. His farming family lost a son and the nation lost a poet of rare talent.

Weeks later, at the September National Eisteddfod, he was posthumously awarded the Bardic chair. The chair was draped in a black sheet and this image is burned onto the Welsh consciousness as an icon for all that the nation lost during these years of carnage.

Families across Wales had empty chairs at dinner tables. Parents lost sons who would have cared and provided for them in old age; children grew up without the love of a father and young wives suffered the grief of bereavement.

Wartime PM David Lloyd George described Passchendaele in his memoirs as “one of the greatest disasters of the war”. Britain had wanted to destroy German submarine bases in a bid to end the blockade of the country but this battle would continue for 103 days.

Troops from Australia, New Zealand and Canada would fight alongside British soldiers under the pitiless rain. It is estimated that more than 4.25 million shells were fired during this season of destruction, which challenged the notion that modern humanity had left behind the barbarism of the dark ages.

We cannot claim that revulsion at the atrocities of World War One forced the world to abandon the militarism and toxic nationalism that made the conflict possible. Just decades later, Europe would be ravaged by Nazism and a new order of evil would be revealed in the Holocaust.

But we can say that we have not forgotten those who fell at Passchendaele. The last post will sound this evening at the Menin Gate, as it has there every evening except during the period of Nazi occupation.

We are humbled at the courage of those who endured such hardship and were willing to sacrifice their very lives in the defence of their country. We can honour their heroism by ensuring such wars do not again rob a nation of so many of its youth. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2014 was 78.5%