Passchendaele, or the Third Battle of Ypres, was an engagement no military wanted to undertake. The Somme was confirmed the worst show by the Corps. However, once the Corps moved into their new residence, at the outskirts of the Passchendaele area, paradoxically the longest standing veterans were at an utter loss to describe what they saw before them.
After Germany took control of Belgium at the beginning of the war, the Passchendaele area remained the final region not held by the foe. In the Ypres salient and in close proximity to the flattened Passchendaele village, a ridge was to be taken again. The territory proved immensely important for the Allies and was where many of the initial shows of the war occurred. Level countryside that constituted the battlefield was devastated by the previous year’s combats. Along with everything else in the land, the dykes, the irrigation, and the drainage networks had been annihilated. Months prior to the Corps’ arrival, rain fell in sheets and had yet to cease.
The landscape had been obliterated beyond comparison. The area proved to be an oceanic view of wallow. The muck was nearly indescribable: six miles of endless, massive shell-holes, predominantly water-burdened.
Currie ordered the reconstruction of Allied lines ahead of battle. Rainfall deluged the area for the length of the Corps’ time spent preparing to assault the ridge. From dawn to dusk, soldiers repaired trench walls that caved ceaselessly from the downpour. Cadavers had yet to be removed from pillboxes, one of the only solid articles left in the whole of the area. Legs were continually scratched by rusty barbed wire below the wretched water. The muck was revolting. The wallow devoured men while they slept. It was impossible to traverse through it by any means. The expansive quagmire that was the battlefield required the laying of what the soldiers referred to as duckwalks or bath-mats. The narrow wooden boards were placed to fashion a network of pathways for the Corps to fight their way forward on top of the muck. Duckboards were predominantly laid on the decaying cadavers of thousands of Allies, including Canadian Tommies. Limbs and faces of maggoty, rotting corpses were used for markers. Corpses were some of the only tools at the Corps’ hands. The sun’s rays caused the cadavers to become bloated and blackened, and they produced gas that would leave a man’s respiratory system in ruins. The stench could be smelled miles behind No Man’s Land.
Mustard gas would rest quiescent and find concealment in shell-holes and mounds of brick during nighttime. The gas would rise with the sun, causing entire parties of working troops to crumple, unconscious, to the ground. A lad grew disheartened, constantly biding time to examine if he proved gassed. Volumes of gas would stay lively for hours at a time but would stay in the quagmire and water for fortnights.
At the bottom of trenches and shell-holes, frogs abounded, while slugs and horned beetles took over the walls of trenches. Chiefly at nighttime, though at all times, one could hear boots wrested continuously from the wallow over the landscape, a sound that soldiers would recollect the remainder of their lives.
Of the few hard routes in the area, the cadavers of transport horses were shoved to the side to make way for ones who could move stock and supplies. The foe, with the intention of doing away with Allied work animals, drenched and inundated the terrain with gas and shrapnel. Consequently, the legs and hooves of the draught horses were permanently maimed from gas. Lives of horses were calculated by weeks. So frightened were they, horses would eat the reigns, harnesses, and blankets of the others from extreme collywobbles. Severely shaking and tottering, the horses suffered far past what could be put into words.
Sam Brownes were taken off by Officers. To the foe, their smart belts easily distinguished commander from regular. Given the environment, the fray would have no master; each soldier would fight solo. The battle was bitterly resisted by Currie, who guesstimated that of his men, there would be 16,000 casualties. At the beginning of October, Currie told Haig, “Let the Germans have it — keep it — rot in it! Rot in the mud! It isn’t worth a drop of blood!” If Currie had been an English General, the defiance he demonstrated most probably would have had him dismissed. Vehemently resisting to go into battle until the poor bloody infantry could be suitably safeguarded by more artillery, Currie appealed for greater time. The petition was rescinded by Haig.