The unspoken question raised by the title of Prior and Wilson’s Passchendaele: the Untold Story is “Why would you want to tell it?” This is yet another First World War account of lions lead by donkeys, although calling Douglas Haig and Hubert Gough donkeys is kind of insulting to donkeys. Australian historians Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson are apparently making a career out of deconstructing World War One battles, especially ones where Australian unit participated; I’ve read their The Somme and have Gallipoli in the waiting stack.

The battle was preceded by what Prior and Wilson call a “false dawn”: Messines Ridge. This was more or less a victory, mostly accomplished by detonating a million pounds of ammonal in 21 mines under the German lines. (Nineteen of the mines went off. Mine 20 detonated in 1955, reportedly by a lightning strike. Mine 21 is still waiting). Even Messines Ridge didn’t go all that well; the initial advance was a cakewalk with an estimated 10000 German defenders dying in the explosions but counterattacks quickly brought things to a standstill.


At any rate, Passchendaele (aka Third Ypres) was back to the same old tried and failed tactics: British artillery would destroy the German wire, British infantry would bravely advance and seize the German trenches, and then British cavalry would sweep through the gap to the green fields beyond, all the way to the coast, surround the German army, and win the war. Of course, what happened was more of the same too; the preparatory artillery fire let the Germans know what was coming, the wire may have been cut but in the process the landscape was turned into an impassable morass; the artillery spent so much time cutting wire that they failed to suppress enemy batteries and machine guns, because the Germans had mastered getting them out from under incoming shells; British infantry bravely advanced and just as bravely died, without getting within seizing distance of any trenches; and the cavalry sat in the rear. It could have been First Ypres or Second Ypres or the Somme all over again. The British generals sat even farther in the rear complaining about the poor behavior of their troops; Haig noted that the Irish 16th and 36th divisions “went forward but failed to keep what they had won… The men are Irish and apparently did not like the enemy’s shelling.” The 36th Division had been in the front line for 13 days before the attack; fatigue parties required 1000 men per day to bring forward supplies; and they had 50% (!) casualties during the attack, with the leading battalion of the 36th having two offices and three other ranks surviving out of 330. One of the truly amazing things about the British army (and I apologize for including Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx, Newfoundlanders, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders as “British”) is that with this kind of treatment they never mutinied like the French, Italians, Russians and eventually Germans did. I’m also a little surprised the Douglas Haig’s statue is still standing in Whitehall.


Worth reading for the heroic and tragic individual stories interspersed through the narrative, and for the narrative itself. The more I read about WWI history the more amazed I am. We’ll be in the centennial years fairly soon; I think every last veteran has now answered the Last Post. ( )

By 1917 and the third battle of Ypres, the philosophy of the general staffs had evolved to one of mutual slaughter. In early 1915, it was still assumed that rapid advance by large forces of cavalry to clear the way for infantry would overwhelm the opposition. Two years later, trench warfare had scuttled that view. It was replaced by one that maintained that the population of the Allies was higher than that of the foes, so the process of sending large forces at the Germans must inevitably end in victory. “The quicker the rate of mutual destruction, the military statisticians argued, the sooner the war would be over.”

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson dissect the battle for Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres in a very scholarly fashion, with charts and tables , not to mention salient (J) details. Passchendaele, itself, was a hill or ridge that became the target for a massive attack out of the British salient at Ypres. A salient is like an exposed pimple on the front line. They are difficult to hold because of their exposed flanks and awkward to use as jump offs for strategic advances. The “breakthrough” that British general Gough hoped for of 5,000 _ 7,000 yards colored his planning. Had he planned an advance of less, say 1,500 _ 2,000 yards, more artillery could have been brought to bear on the impressive German fortifications that had been recently strengthened. Logistics again became crucial as the British did not have enough shells to provide both an intense shelling at one point and continuous bombardment over the twenty miles of front that would be engaged in the assault. The use of tanks, while more extensive than previous was not sanguine, as the terrain, best described as marshy and wooded, the precisely the kind of ground they were least suited for.

And then it had the audacity to rain. All August. There were, in fact, only three days during the month when it did not rain. The lucky ones died quickly. “Bringing the wounded down from the front line today. [wrote Sergeant McKay:] Conditions terrible. The ground between Weltje and where the infantry are is simply a quagmire, and shell holes filled with water. Every place is in full view of the enemy who are on the ridge. There is neither the appearance of a road or path and it requires six moen to every stretcher, two of those being constantly employed helping the others out of the holes; the mud in some cases is up to our waists. A couple of journeys. . . and the strongest men are ready to collapse.” The mud also made it extremely difficult for the artillery to move with the men in order to support their movement with a rolling barrage that cut wire and destroyed enemy fortifications.

One would have suspected that conditions such as these might have caused the brass to call off the attack. No such luck. The euphemistic charge continued.

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Used - good condition