I wondered how the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele would be remembered; such occasions can so easily become sugar-coated exercises in nostalgia. However, as Michael Morpurgo, who played a key role in the commemoration events on Sunday evening, said: "You can't draw a comforting blanket over the First World War." That is very well said and can surely not be contradicted. As the Evening Standard says:
"Although it is difficult to calculate exact numbers, around 325,000 Allied and 260,000 German soldiers died in the Battle of Passchendaele.
Among the Allied deaths were 36,000 Australians, 2,500 New Zealanders, 16,000 Canadians. Some 42,000 bodies have never been recovered."
The Evening Standard is wrong here; the figures it quotes are for all battle casualties, dead, wounded and missing. Nevertheless,such statistics, and the terrible conditions in which the Allies and their German opponents lived, fought and died, are no cause for sentimental indulgence. The remembrance services, and the secular commemorations by singers and actors, have been conducted with good taste and respect for the fallen. No attempt has been made to gloss over the conditions and horrors of this appalling battle, even though some awkward facts about it have not been stressed enough.
The battle is sometimes known as the Third Battle of Ypres. Two previous battles, in 1914 and 1915, had led to the creation of an ongoing slaughterhouse for the Allied armies, known to history as the Ypres Salient. Salients, in simple terms, are little more than bulges in a defending army's front line which can be fired upon from three sides. This happened in the Ypres Salient and much worse - the Germans held the high ground around the fringes of the salient which gave them an unrestricted view of all Allied activity. Even during "quiet" periods, their artillery and snipers had a ready supply of targets; in the build-up to the Passchendaele slaughter, their observers were able to detect signs of a coming attack. The Allies are said to have clung on to Ypres for symbolic reasons - it signified a last vestige of unoccupied Belgium and (I can't believe this!) prevented the Germans from reaching the Channel ports. The fact that this created a perfect killing ground for the Germans was overlooked for reasons of prestige.
Lyn Macdonald, in her marvellous book, "They Called it Passchendaele", comments:
"The sensible thing would have been to withdraw from the salient, abandoning Ypres, and to establish a stronger line in the rear beyond the (Ypres-Comines) canal bank".
General Horace Smith-Dorrien, regarded by historians as one of the few able senior British officers of WW1, advocated just such a move in 1915 and was sacked for it by the Commander of the British Forces, Sir John French.
A number of factors are said to account for the costly slowness of the British advance. Chief among them is the mud. It is undeniable that the August rain contributed to this, but the heavy artillery bombardment before the initial assault played its part by destroying the underground dikes that drained the local terrain. Another is the famed incompetence of British generals. As the Liverpool poet, the late Adrian Henri, said:
"DON'T BE VAGUE - BLAME GENERAL HAIG".
It seems that Haig was misled by his Intelligence chief, Brigadier General John Charteris, who kept providing Haig with optimistic reports about a German collapse, encouraging Haig to continue attacking. How that excuses Haig is beyond me - it was his responsibility to check the truth of those reports.When it came to intelligence reports in any case, Haig seems to have ignored information that he did not want to believe. Norman Dixon, in his book "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence" says:
"Haig's intelligence service knew that the Germans expected the offensive. Haig was evidently undismayed".
Lloyd George, the prime minister, was said to be critical of Haig - but did nothing to get him to call off the offensive, either before or during the slaughter.
There is one factor, however, that was not mentioned during the memorial events, and that is the effectiveness of German defensive tactics. Before they went over the top on the first day, British troops were astonished to find themselves under artillery fire. The German batteries had not been knocked out in the preliminary bombardment. As the "Time Team" stalwart, Peter Barton, says:
"We had been unable to cow their artillery...The British were amazed that the Germans were still able to fire back. The Germans had carefully sighted their guns and moved them at night sideways and backwards, and they had fake batteries as well. They would light a fuse in these fakes to draw the British fire."
The Germans had been preparing defences for two years, which gave the attacking troops some nasty surprises. Barton again:
"When the attack started ...whole battalions along here were reduced to husks. The British had no idea how many of these pillboxes the Germans had because they were covered by earth and so were almost invisible to aerial reconnaissance. But there were 15,000 of them and as soon as the British bombardment ended the Germans would rush out and place their machine guns on the top of them, cutting swathes through the British lines. The pillboxes were so well concealed the British would run over the top of them and then be shot in the back."
Anyway, the battle petered out in November, 1917. Passchendaele village, after which the battle is named, was captured by Canadian troops on November 6th. The high ground around Ypres had been captured. The many thousands who fought, suffered and died won a five mile advance of the Allied front line, making the name of the battle a symbol of the futility of war. The stated aims of the offensive - to break through the German line and capture the Channel ports - were not achieved. Strangely, no-one spoke of a partial Allied success or a German defensive victory. Perhaps they all knew it was a shattering blow to both sides.
A bitter postscript for the British survivors of the battle was the fact that when the Germans went on the attack in the spring of 1918, Passchendaele and the ridges around Ypres were abandoned. The British and Empire troops fell back over the bloodsoaked ground of the salient to a small defensive position around the town of Ypres and its outskirts. As Lyn Macdonald observes at the end of her book:
"It was precisely the size to which General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien had proposed to reduce it in 1915.He had been sacked for his pains. But no-one remembered that. By 1918 that was a lifetime and some 200, 000 lives ago".
I fully support the remembrance of the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice at Passchendaele and honour their memory. Their names and voices live on in memorials, memoirs and the memories of relatives. It does not dishonour them to point out that much of their suffering and sacrifice could have been avoided. The last word goes to Siegfried Sassoon from his poem, "Memorial Tablet":
Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight
(Under Lord Derby’s scheme). I died in hell—
(They called it Passchendaele); my wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back, and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
In sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
For though low down upon the list, I’m there:
“In proud and glorious memory”—that’s my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France for Squire;
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed;
Once I came home on leave; and then went west.
What greater glory could a man desire?
Among the Allied deaths were 36,000 Australians, 2,500 New Zealanders, 16,000 Canadians. Some 42,000 bodies have never been recovered."
The Evening Standard is wrong here; the figures it quotes are for all battle casualties, dead, wounded and missing. Nevertheless,such statistics, and the terrible conditions in which the Allies and their German opponents lived, fought and died, are no cause for sentimental indulgence. The remembrance services, and the secular commemorations by singers and actors, have been conducted with good taste and respect for the fallen. No attempt has been made to gloss over the conditions and horrors of this appalling battle, even though some awkward facts about it have not been stressed enough.
The battle is sometimes known as the Third Battle of Ypres. Two previous battles, in 1914 and 1915, had led to the creation of an ongoing slaughterhouse for the Allied armies, known to history as the Ypres Salient. Salients, in simple terms, are little more than bulges in a defending army's front line which can be fired upon from three sides. This happened in the Ypres Salient and much worse - the Germans held the high ground around the fringes of the salient which gave them an unrestricted view of all Allied activity. Even during "quiet" periods, their artillery and snipers had a ready supply of targets; in the build-up to the Passchendaele slaughter, their observers were able to detect signs of a coming attack. The Allies are said to have clung on to Ypres for symbolic reasons - it signified a last vestige of unoccupied Belgium and (I can't believe this!) prevented the Germans from reaching the Channel ports. The fact that this created a perfect killing ground for the Germans was overlooked for reasons of prestige.
Lyn Macdonald, in her marvellous book, "They Called it Passchendaele", comments:
"The sensible thing would have been to withdraw from the salient, abandoning Ypres, and to establish a stronger line in the rear beyond the (Ypres-Comines) canal bank".
General Horace Smith-Dorrien, regarded by historians as one of the few able senior British officers of WW1, advocated just such a move in 1915 and was sacked for it by the Commander of the British Forces, Sir John French.
"DON'T BE VAGUE - BLAME GENERAL HAIG".
It seems that Haig was misled by his Intelligence chief, Brigadier General John Charteris, who kept providing Haig with optimistic reports about a German collapse, encouraging Haig to continue attacking. How that excuses Haig is beyond me - it was his responsibility to check the truth of those reports.When it came to intelligence reports in any case, Haig seems to have ignored information that he did not want to believe. Norman Dixon, in his book "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence" says:
"Haig's intelligence service knew that the Germans expected the offensive. Haig was evidently undismayed".
Lloyd George, the prime minister, was said to be critical of Haig - but did nothing to get him to call off the offensive, either before or during the slaughter.
There is one factor, however, that was not mentioned during the memorial events, and that is the effectiveness of German defensive tactics. Before they went over the top on the first day, British troops were astonished to find themselves under artillery fire. The German batteries had not been knocked out in the preliminary bombardment. As the "Time Team" stalwart, Peter Barton, says:
"We had been unable to cow their artillery...The British were amazed that the Germans were still able to fire back. The Germans had carefully sighted their guns and moved them at night sideways and backwards, and they had fake batteries as well. They would light a fuse in these fakes to draw the British fire."
The Germans had been preparing defences for two years, which gave the attacking troops some nasty surprises. Barton again:
"When the attack started ...whole battalions along here were reduced to husks. The British had no idea how many of these pillboxes the Germans had because they were covered by earth and so were almost invisible to aerial reconnaissance. But there were 15,000 of them and as soon as the British bombardment ended the Germans would rush out and place their machine guns on the top of them, cutting swathes through the British lines. The pillboxes were so well concealed the British would run over the top of them and then be shot in the back."
Anyway, the battle petered out in November, 1917. Passchendaele village, after which the battle is named, was captured by Canadian troops on November 6th. The high ground around Ypres had been captured. The many thousands who fought, suffered and died won a five mile advance of the Allied front line, making the name of the battle a symbol of the futility of war. The stated aims of the offensive - to break through the German line and capture the Channel ports - were not achieved. Strangely, no-one spoke of a partial Allied success or a German defensive victory. Perhaps they all knew it was a shattering blow to both sides.
A bitter postscript for the British survivors of the battle was the fact that when the Germans went on the attack in the spring of 1918, Passchendaele and the ridges around Ypres were abandoned. The British and Empire troops fell back over the bloodsoaked ground of the salient to a small defensive position around the town of Ypres and its outskirts. As Lyn Macdonald observes at the end of her book:
"It was precisely the size to which General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien had proposed to reduce it in 1915.He had been sacked for his pains. But no-one remembered that. By 1918 that was a lifetime and some 200, 000 lives ago".
I fully support the remembrance of the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice at Passchendaele and honour their memory. Their names and voices live on in memorials, memoirs and the memories of relatives. It does not dishonour them to point out that much of their suffering and sacrifice could have been avoided. The last word goes to Siegfried Sassoon from his poem, "Memorial Tablet":
Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight
(Under Lord Derby’s scheme). I died in hell—
(They called it Passchendaele); my wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back, and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards; so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
In sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare;
For though low down upon the list, I’m there:
“In proud and glorious memory”—that’s my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France for Squire;
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed;
Once I came home on leave; and then went west.
What greater glory could a man desire?
The General by Siegfried Sassoon
ReplyDelete“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.