Canadian soldiers lay boards over the mud during the Battle of Passchendaele, November of 1917.
This series commemorates the 100-year anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele and Canada's role in the First World War and its enduring legacy.
The battlefield at Passchendaele was a sea of mud, shell craters and unburied animal and human corpses. The titanic campaign in Flanders was fought from July 31 to mid-November of 1917 and it drew hundreds of thousands of German, British, Dominion and other Allied soldiers into the cauldron of combat.
The Canadian Corps, under the command of Canadian-born Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, fought there 100 years ago this month, in a series of battles to capture what was left of the German-held Passchendaele ridge.
Sir Douglas Haig, the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, yearned to attack the Germans to the east of Ypres, Belgium. His strategic aim was to drive back the Germans and overrun U-boat pens along the coast that were sinking hundreds of merchant ships bringing war supplies to Britain.
Gen. Haig remained blindly optimistic in the face of the enemy's strength, partially because his intelligence officers assured him that the Germans were on their last legs. In turn, it was difficult for the field marshal's subordinate officers to know exactly what he thought, since he communicated largely through inarticulate grunts and half-sentences. But it was clear to all that he wanted an extended push and a long campaign.
Hundreds of Allied artillery pieces fired more than four million shells in the leadup to the battle, and the British Tommies – as the infantrymen called themselves – drove forward on July 31. The German lines were pulverized, but their defences were based around concrete pillboxes. These hardened positions, often fortified with a foot thick of reinforced steel concrete, were difficult to destroy with shellfire. Most housed machine-gun teams that could fire up to 500 bullets a minute.
The British made some advances on July 31, but then the rain started. It barely stopped for the next four months. The shellfire mulched the ground and the rain turned it into a bog. In horrendous conditions, the British forces suffered gut-wrenching losses, with every major operation costing thousands of lives. The Australians and New Zealanders were thrown into the battle in late September. They, too, were torn apart in hails of gunfire as they slithered forward, often through thigh-deep mud.
By mid-October, Gen. Haig was desperate for a victory, and Passchendaele Ridge, which was to have fallen on the first day of the offensive, was still in German hands.
He called upon the Canadian Corps, Canada's primary fighting formation with about 100,000 soldiers. Their commander, Lt.-Gen. Currie, had been a prewar militia officer and real-estate broker in Victoria. He did not look the part of a modern general, being large and overweight, but he demanded careful planning and the application of massive artillery bombardments to support the infantry at the sharp end. He instigated new tactical reforms, he empowered junior officers to lead the men, and he insisted on constant training.
Lt.-Gen. Currie also tried to talk Gen. Haig out of sending the Canadians into the morass. Taking his protest almost to the level of insubordination, he told Gen. Haig, "Let the Germans have it – keep it – rot in it." Gen. Haig could not do that, and without a victory after two-and-a-half months of fruitless fighting, he would likely have been removed from command. The Canadian Corps moved to the Ypres front, but Lt.-Gen. Currie grimly predicted it would cost 16,000 casualties.
The Canadians arrived at the bog of mud in mid-October. The stench of death pervaded the front for kilometres, making men gag and reach for their cigarettes to mask the stench. There were few solid roads and almost no firm ground upon which to situate artillery batteries.
A massive enterprise of road building was necessary, all of which was done under enemy fire. Hundreds of Canadians were killed or wounded under the onslaught of German shells and poison gas.
The Canadians steeled themselves for the clash. Infantryman William Breckenridge of the 42nd Battalion recounted after the war, "I don't believe a single man went into the battle with the expectations of returning with his limbs. Each and every man felt it was a sure death trap." Only a slow and methodical advance would have any chance of succeeding against the German positions on the ridge. Lt.-Gen. Currie ordered four phases to the battle, with limited attacks on Oct. 26 and 30, and then Nov. 6 and 10.
The Germans had all the advantages – the height of the ridge, drier ground and concrete pillboxes – but the Allied artillery would eventually fire 1.45 million shells during the course of the battle in support of the Canadians. The attacks on Oct. 26 and 30 involved thousands of infantrymen in a mad melee of shooting, stabbing and fighting for their lives. Soldiers on both sides died in appalling numbers. As one Canadian gunner recounted in a letter to his mother, "Words can't express war of this kind. The human mind can't grasp it."
The Canadians drove back the Germans in fierce fighting, where all Allied troops had failed over the previous months. Thousands were killed and wounded in the muck. Some men died instantly, others bled out in the mud as they could not be carried to the rear.
Wounded soldiers pulled themselves to the water-filled craters, instinctively trying to escape the fire-swept battlefield. They usually drowned in the quicksand-like mud, their water-logged equipment dragging them to their doom. All along the battlefront, cries of help could be heard amid the brief pauses of battle.
After a week of fierce battle and shelling, the exhausted survivors were rotated from the line and fresh troops renewed the attack. The Canadians captured the ruins of Passchendaele village on Nov. 6 and a final attack on Nov. 10 extended the lines. The long nightmare came to an end. "Only those that saw it will ever know just what it cost to take Passchendaele Ridge, in [terms of] sheer grit and bull-doggedness," wrote infantryman Garnet Dobbs.
Victory had been bought with courage and blood, acts of self-sacrifice and collective endurance. Canadians received nine Victoria Crosses, the Empire's highest award for bravery. It was the most for any single Canadian battle during the war.
One hundred years later, the popular memory of the campaign is that of a futile struggle in unimaginable conditions that achieved little at horrendous costs. Indeed, the long and brutal battle nearly broke the British and Dominion forces, with soldiers' morale plummeting in its aftermath. But the battle also delivered a severe blow to the Germans. The Kaiser's best and more aggressive soldiers were killed and maimed. The Germans lost some 220,000 soldiers, but the Allies were even worse off with about 275,000 casualties.
As Lt.-Gen. Currie had predicted, the Canadians suffered almost 16,000 killed and wounded, although they delivered a victory that was much needed throughout the British Empire. The final word should go to a Canadian who was there. Will Bird, a hardened combat soldier, wrote of the experience: "Every man who had endured Passchendaele would never be the same again."
Tim Cook is the author of 10 books of military history, including Vimy: The Battle and the Legend (2017).