Only on the left was the full objective reached with the capture of Bixschoote (Bikschote), Pilckem Ridge, and Saint-Julien; on the crucial right wing the attack was a failure. Some 300,000 were killed. The result, together with the better organization of the attack, helped to revive the spirits of the attacking troops. Yet Haig, in his report to the War Office on the first day’s fighting, stated that the results were “most satisfactory.” The explosion of millions of shells, accompanied by torrential rain, had turned the battlefield into an apocalyptic expanse—a swampy pulverized mire dotted with water-filled craters deep enough to drown a man, all made worse by the churned-up graves of soldiers killed in earlier fighting. find out more story Attack of the tanks. The misery only increased as the landscape filled with water. Lloyd George was now convinced of the incompetence of the British high command.…, In the resulting Third Battle of Ypres (July–November 1917), also called the Passchendaele Campaign, the number of casualties shocked the British public, as the Somme death toll had done. Some 61 Victoria Crosses, the British Empire’s highest decoration for military valour, were awarded after the fighting. Passchendaele: The German Experience Posted on Tuesday 31st July 2012 Extracted from The German Army at Passchendaele by Jack Sheldon and reproduced by permission of Pen and Sword Books. Currie objected to what he considered a reckless attack, arguing that it would cost about 16,000 Canadian casualties for no great strategic gain. They did not suffice to silence the hostile machine guns, many of which were ensconced in concrete pillboxes. Note the difference in destruction between the first aerial photo (July) and the next two (September) when virtually every inch of the ground had been destroyed and badly cratered. An effective creeping artillery barrage won the ground; the infantry merely occupied it. The Australian War Memorial was voted the number one landmark in Australia by travellers in the 2016 Trip Advisor awards. The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the biggest battles of the First World War. Passchendaele was the third and longest battle to take place at Ypres, Belgium. He began by dwelling on the “exhaustion” of the German army and its declining morale. Because some French armies were temporarily unwilling or unable to fight, the commander of the British armies in Europe, Gen. Douglas Haig, decided that Britain must begin a new offensive of its own. He told his army commanders that “opportunities for the employment of cavalry in masses are likely to offer.”. British General Headquarters (GHQ) had information which indicated that the Ypres area, being reclaimed marshland, was bound to revert to swamp if the drainage system were to be destroyed by prolonged bombardment. 2021 Finally, on 12 October, another attack, involving the 3rd Division assisted by the 4th, was made against the village of Passchendaele atop the main ridge. Passchendaele, or officially, the Third Battle of Ypres, has been reassessed by Nick Lloyd, Nick Lloyd, Reader in Military and Imperial History at King’s College, who is also based at the Siegfried Sassoon recorded Passchendaele in his poem Memorial Tablet, when he … Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The film had its premiere at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival on … It owed much to the surprise effect of 19 huge mines that were simultaneously fired. If it were not that all the records of previous years had given us fair warning, it would seem as if Providence had declared against us.”. Fortunately a change in the weather brought for them better fighting conditions. Battle of Passchendaele (July 31–November 6, 1917), World War I battle that embodied the senseless slaughter of the Western Front. For Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief, this provided an opportunity to launch an offensive that he had long wanted. He was, in a practical sense, no nearer reaching the ports that formed his goal than when the Third Battle of Ypres started. Sir William Robert Robertson, chief of the British Imperial General Staff, now began to feel increasing doubts, but he did not disclose them to the war cabinet, despite his role as the official military adviser to the government. The success of the Battle of Messines had the unfortunate effect of inspiring the British high command with too much confidence in the greater effort that was to follow, wherein the methods would be essentially different. Sadly, a total of more than 66,000 Canadians lost their lives in the conflict. We pay our respects to elders past and present. More Victoria Crosses—14 in total—were awarded for actions on the opening day of the Battle of Passchendaele than for actions on any other single day of combat in World War I. The salient had been an active battlefield since 1914. There was cause to doubt this, as well as the possibility of a rapid advance even by the infantry. The Australian War Memorial acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. It swallowed up soldiers as they slept. Conditions for the soldiers were horrifying. a battle or campaign so brutal, so costly, so protracted and (almost always) so barren of any war-winning strategic consequences even for the ?victor?, that it came to epitomize all the waste, slaughter, … Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Few battles encapsulate World War One better than the Battle of Passchendaele. The sacrifices and achievements of those who gave so much will never be forgotten. Map of the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) from, Naval Operations in the Dardanelles Campaign. In addition, according to the head of Haig’s intelligence staff, “Careful investigation of the records of more than eighty years showed that in Flanders the weather broke early each August with the regularity of the Indian monsoon: once the autumn rains set in the difficulties would be greatly enhanced.” None of these facts was disclosed by Haig to the war cabinet when he went to London late in June to secure its approval of his plans. In both cases the fighting was bloody. The armies under British command suffered some 275,000 casualties at Passchendaele, a figure that makes a mockery of Haig’s pledge that he would not commit the country to "heavy losses.” Among these were 38,000 Australians, 5,300 New Zealanders, and more than 15,600 Canadians; this final figure was almost exactly the total that had been predicted by Currie ahead of the battle. Jack attended the 75th anniversary of Third Ypres, Passchendaele in 1992 – … The offensive from the Ypres salient was launched on July 31, 1917, after more than 3,000 guns had poured 4.5 million shells on the German defenses. The some 100,000 members of the Canadian Corps who took part in the battle were among the over 650,000 men and women from our country who served in uniform during the First World War. Siege of Orléans. 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