The taking of Passchendaele good for absolutely nothing
“Passchendaele: the Lost Victory of WWI” by Nick Lloyd (Basic Books, 410 pages, $32).
A century ago, Europe was engulfed in the First World War. In April 1917 the United States entered that conflict. Our declaration of war did not signify the immediate embarkation of American soldiers, the “doughboys” of that era. The organization and transportation of our troops to the battle areas would take some time.
Things remained at a stalemate. Ypres in the Flanders region of Belgium was an epicenter of hostilities. Two battles had taken place there and the third one began on July 31, 1917. The British called it the Third Battle of Ypres. The Germans called it “Flandernschlacht” (the Battle of Flanders).
The common name today for this horrific battle is “Passchendaele,” the site of the village where British attacks got repeatedly blunted and halted by the German defenders. The fighting finally ceased on Nov. 10.
Passchendaele has become a synonym for senseless industrialized carnage.
Half a million men were killed or wounded there. The historian A.J.P. Taylor called it “the blindest slaughter of a blind war.” For “Passchendaele: the Lost Victory of WWI” the British historian Nick Lloyd delved into the archives and reveals some fresh perspectives on what happened there.
We find first-person accounts and observations by soldiers from both sides in the conflict. The battlefield was a nightmarish landscape. The British advanced across a sea of mud. The forest had been blasted away. The Germans occupied high ground on Passchendaele Ridge. Many of the dead were never recovered, lost for all eternity among the shell craters.
Lloyd makes the case that crucial blunders by British commanders might have squandered a victory there. They could have altered the course of the war and possibly forced the Germans into a major retreat. The author takes us through the battle as it played out.
The field report filed by a German regiment provides chilling images of the annihilatory resistance the attackers encountered: “As the field of fire was often very wide, and as the English presented the most worthwhile mass targets all day long, the effect of the machine-guns was truly devastating for the enemy.”
Shellfire was surely the most terrifying aspect of the long ordeal. An English corporal described sounds incoming shells made: “some big shells make a noise like a train going through a tunnel, others passing overhead made a gentle whistle or a sort of swish.”
Men who had survived many stupefying bombardments could find the most nerve wracking seconds ticked away when they were preparing to vacate the front.
An officer noted that “men who stood up to all sorts of horrors in the line, behaved like frightened rabbits when they were going on leave.”
The British ultimately took Passchendaele Ridge, but it soon felt like an empty gain. They quietly withdrew one night soon after from their positions there. Lloyd writes that “the loss of Passchendaele without a shot being fired seems, in many respects, to sum up the futility and utter pointlessness of the whole campaign at Ypres in the summer of 1917.”