It was no longer trench warfare, but mud-hole warfare.
A. H. Atteridge1
13–25 October 1917
Day in, day out, the endless, dangerous monotony of life in the Ypres Salient went on. In mid-October, Lieutenant Godefroy Skelton was posted to a section of Royal Engineers deployed out at the northern edge of the Salient near Houthulst Forest. He had spent the summer at Second Army headquarters at Cassel, but now he found himself among the wilderness of the front. ‘We had to live in bell tents in the open and the horse lines were a sea of mud’, he noted. ‘All was mud and shell holes… and the German pillboxes made of concrete in our lines were sinking in the mud and canting at all angles.’ They were tasked with myriad jobs: building thick sandbag walls around captured pillboxes (to shelter their entrances from shellfire); keeping duckboard tracks in a good state of repair; marking tapes out in no-man’s-land; and training their mules to carry packs of engineering supplies up to the front. When not in the line, Godefroy occasionally had to complete the ‘painful task’ of writing letters to the families of the men who had been killed under his command. It was a far cry from his time at Cassel, where he had lived ‘in style at the largest hotel in town’.2
Working constantly in poor conditions, often over sodden, gas-poisoned ground, which meant long hours spent in his gas mask, it was little wonder that Godefroy soon began to feel on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ‘I think at this time I was becoming “nervy”,’ he admitted, ‘due to the strains and constant fear of death or wounding and the responsibilities of the work of the sappers and the large working parties of infantry.’ When he reported to company or battalion headquarters, he found himself not wanting to leave, so he put off the moment when he would have to run the gauntlet between machine-gun and sniper fire, taking solace in whisky to help numb the senses. Indeed, Godefroy was not alone. Everyone who served in the Salient felt that they left something of themselves there; found themselves unable to stand the ravaged battlefield or the claustrophobic pillboxes they sheltered in, which may have been sprinkled with quicklime, but always smelt of the dead. Stanley Roberts, a driver with 49th Division–one of the divisions that had been shattered at Poelcappelle–believed that it was ‘no longer a Darwinian survival of the fittest, but the survival of those who stay safely away from this terrible holocaust, whether in civilian occupation or comfortable billets, either at the Base or in England. The strongest, healthiest man cannot refuse death when a shell hits him and smashes his body to blood clots. My faith in war is wavering…’3
There was no doubt that the Ypres battlefield, with its toxic, gas-scarred moonscape, littered with mutually supporting pillboxes, proved immensely trying to men’s morale. Shellfire was probably the worst thing that soldiers faced and it could take an enormous toll on their spirits. ‘My wife sometimes asks me what shell-fire was like’, recalled Lance Corporal H. S. Taylor (1/10th King’s Liverpool Regiment):
It varied of course, differing between a barrage and individual shelling to a specific target. In the latter case you had a chance to run before the next shell arrived. The most hateful were the German Whizz-bangs, which as the name implies arrived without warning fired with a flat trajectory these small shells about 12 lbs., I think, sometimes came through the parapet, indeed I once saw a soldier wounded in this way and by some miracle not only had the shell failed to explode, but had lodged partly in his chest and he survived. 5.9’s were unpleasant and accurate, to our disadvantage. One heavy howitzer shell was nicknamed a ‘Jack Johnson’, and another of that calibre a ‘Coal-Box’ because it left a very large pall of black smoke hanging about. Some big shells made a noise like a train going through a tunnel, others passing high overhead made a gentle whistle or a sort of swish. Shells coming in your direction made a different noise altogether, and even gave you a moment to take whatever shelter you might think would assist your further survival in a seemingly mad world.4
It never entirely stopped ‘raining iron’ in the Salient, but in those brief moments when the storm abated, men’s thoughts centred on more prosaic matters: trying to ward off the crushing tiredness and stay awake; the constant itching from lice that roamed over their bodies; and when they would get hot food and water or when they would be relieved.
Given the lack of suitable trenches on the battlefield, it was inevitable that some men took shelter in hastily converted German pillboxes. But these were not enjoyable places to stay in, and could turn even the toughest of men into nervous wrecks. Victor Fagence, a Lewis gunner with 11/Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment, had been wounded in the hand on the morning of 31 July and took refuge in a recently evacuated pillbox. Ominously, a 12-inch armour-piercing shell had come through the roof, but not exploded, which made Fagence understandably nervous about remaining. Yet he stayed where he was, reasoning that the shell had been fitted with a percussion fuse (not a timed one), so that it would not explode as long as it lay undisturbed. Yet this caused some panic when others joined him later that evening:
All through the night there was a continuous stream of people coming to the ‘pillbox’ for shelter and it was necessary for us inside to shout out ‘mind the dud shell on the floor, don’t kick it for Christ’s sake!’ Fortunately no one did kick it or we would probably all have ‘kicked the bucket’ by being blown sky high.5
Unexploded ordnance was not the only thing that could be found in pillboxes. Major F. J. Rice, a battery commander with 18th Division, remembered taking cover in a bunker known as ‘the Kennels’ (near Saint-Julien), which was notorious for attracting shellfire. ‘The floor of the pillbox was composed of duckboards on boxes in order to keep us clear of the filthy black water underneath, which was too deep and too foul to be baled’, he remembered. ‘If anyone trod on a loose board and disturbed the water the stench was indescribable, but it was the only concrete covering in the neighbourhood, so we stuck to it. Perhaps there were some Germans at the bottom of the water…’6
British and Dominion morale may have remained remarkably stable, even under the most inhospitable conditions, but it was particularly noticeable how nervous men became as their moment for relief drew nearer. According to Lieutenant Sinclair Hunt (55/Battalion AIF), the first few hours’ walk after being relieved, when you would make your way back down the line, were particularly trying. ‘It is then that the ugly feeling of fear grips hardest’, he wrote.
A hot walk becomes a steady jog, a steady jog becomes a run until some puffing hero declares he won’t run another step for every Fritz in creation and the pace slackens. No barrage descends, some optimist declares he thinks we are pretty right now and wonders what the cooks will have for tea and whether the blankets and packs will be ready when we arrive. The pace becomes a swinging walk and long, long into that night and the next morning parties of weary fagged men limp along the roads resting here and there to get a cup of the finest coffee they ever tasted at some YMCA and often just before dawn throw themselves down upon some tent or hut floor to sleep the sleep of the just.7
As Lieutenant John Nettleton (2/Rifle Brigade) later recalled:
one was always more windy coming down the line than going in. The nearer you were to safety, the worse luck it seemed to be hit. And when you were going on leave, it was worse still. Men who stood up to all sorts of horrors in the line, behaved like frightened rabbits when they were going on leave. It was a well-understood phenomenon and nobody thought the worse of you for it.8
Inevitably some men decided that their only salvation lay in leaving their units, going absent without leave or deserting entirely. The total number of British soldiers reported absent without leave rose steadily throughout 1917, peaking in December with 2,000 recorded cases. Australian soldiers seemed to be particularly affected by the intensity of fighting in Flanders. Despite only consisting of about 3.6 per cent of the nominal strength of the BEF, just short of 200 Australians were recorded as being absent in December 1917 (or about 10 per cent of the total number of deserters). Australian figures for both absence and desertion also hit a high in October–when fighting was at its fiercest.9 Although there is no doubt that Australian and New Zealand combat performance remained high, it was a worrying indication of how draining Passchendaele was becoming. Even senior commanders did not escape lightly. Although they were spared the worst of the conditions of the battlefield, most did not live a life of chateau-bound luxury. The headquarters of II ANZAC Corps was at Ten Elms Camp near Poperinge. Admittedly, this was about five miles from the front line, but most staff officers lived in tents (as did the GOC, Sir Alexander Godley), which were draughty and highly vulnerable to enemy air raids.10 As for I ANZAC Corps, its commander, Sir William Birdwood, made regular trips to the front line and suffered from painful swelling in his feet. ‘Even though I wore good, thick boots, laced lightly to encourage circulation, I found that the many hours I had to spend tramping through icy mud turned my feet into blocks of ice, and gradually a couple of toes gave out and troubled me for years afterwards.’11
Despite the murderous shambles in front of Passchendaele, Haig was not yet willing to give up (or at least not entirely). At a major conference at Cassel on 13 October, which everyone seemed to attend–Kiggell, Charteris, Davidson, Plumer, Gough and assorted staff officers–the question of whether the offensive should continue was discussed. According to Haig, ‘We all agreed that our attack should only be launched when there is a fair prospect of fine weather. When ground is dry no opposition which the Enemy has put up has been able to stop them.’12 This might have been so, but the ‘prospect of fine weather’ seemed increasingly unlikely as the offensive dragged on deeper into the autumn. It was now getting inexorably colder and wetter with little hope for improvement. While the British had benefited from a better than usual September, October was worse than expected and the month was notable for heavy downpours on 7–8, 13, 17 and 24–26 October.13 Yet this did not cause Haig to question whether he should give up; if anything it hardened his determination to see it through, whatever the cost.
In correspondence with John Charteris after the war, Haig would reaffirm that one of the reasons he maintained the offensive was to keep pressure off the French Army, which he then believed to be in an extremely fragile state. When he found out that Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, had criticized him in the third volume of The World Crisis, Haig was unimpressed. ‘It is impossible for Winston to know how the possibility of the French Army breaking up in 1917 compelled me to go on attacking.’14 Therefore, according to Haig, his operation could only be judged after taking into account the weakness of his allies and the burden this placed on the BEF. Haig’s claim would eventually become enshrined in the British Official History, with Sir James Edmonds writing of the ‘persistent and urgent pleas of General Pétain to continue the Flanders operations in order to ensure that the flow of German reserves should be diverted from the French front’.15
The question of what influence French weakness (or perceived weakness) had on the continuation of the battle is an important one. Most historians have been sceptical of Haig’s claims–seeing them as either a fabricated ex post facto justification or evidence of impaired memory. There is, indeed, little evidence that Pétain begged Haig to keep attacking.16 Recently the historian Elizabeth Greenhalgh has described Haig’s justifications as being ‘completely false’, citing French documents which reveal that in the build-up to the French Army’s attack at Malmaison (which would take place on 23 October) Haig repeatedly asked for it to be brought forward–to as early as 5 October–to draw German units away from Flanders. Much to Haig’s chagrin, Pétain, as cautious as ever, refused to be rushed.17 Haig’s own diary entries are clear on this point. On 26 September he told Robertson that he wanted to see the French commander about ‘the importance of attacking without delay’. He summoned General Anthoine and asked him to get Pétain to do something ‘to hold the German divisions in their front’. Yet it was to no avail. After Haig was told that it would probably be mid-October before Pétain could attack, he was distraught, muttering that this would ‘not help me’ and that the French were ‘not playing the game!’18
The reality was that Pétain had never been particularly keen on Haig’s plans for Flanders, and had warned him about his over-confidence back in May. The thing that Pétain wanted, more than anything else, was for the British to take over more of the Western Front, which would have allowed him to relieve units and concentrate his forces for a number of carefully prepared limited attacks (at either Verdun or the Chemin des Dames). By the autumn of 1917, with Russia likely to exit the war imminently, Pétain’s mind was already turning towards the possibility of having to conduct major defensive operations in 1918, hence his wish to conserve what forces they had. On 18 October, when the Allied general staffs met in Amiens, he asked the British to relieve his Sixth Army and told Haig that he ‘was anxious that I should agree to the principle of taking over more line’–thus raising that perennial bugbear: how much frontage should be allocated to each army on the Western Front.19 When Haig commented that this would probably force him to abandon his operation in Flanders, Pétain was nonplussed. Thus the two Commanders-in-Chief held diametrically opposing views on how to fight the war. Haig–always the compulsive gambler, throwing good money after bad–believed that changed circumstances merely reinforced his belief in offensive action. Pétain, on the contrary, showed a much more perceptive grasp of how the tide of war was changing and turning, ominously, against them.20
For the time being, then, Haig remained convinced that he was on the cusp of a decisive victory and that the enemy was close to breaking. When Major-General Macdonogh at the War Office disagreed with some of his most recent pronouncements on the state of the enemy (which had been drawn from prisoner interrogations), Haig was deeply affronted and complained loudly to Robertson.21 The problem was that the Field Marshal had ‘cried wolf’ too many times before. Certainly, morale was low in a number of German divisions–Haig cited the 10th Bavarian and 79th Reserve Divisions as being particularly poor–but how much reliance could be placed upon the testimonies of individual prisoners or rumours about mutinous units? In any case, so what? This hardly meant that the whole German Army was on the brink of collapse. Robertson, as coolly as ever, wrote back to Haig on 18 October. For three years ‘numerous optimistic prophecies and calculations… have been made by different people, and it is not too much to say that most of them have proved to be false’. Therefore, it was ‘premature to assume that any great diminution of morale in the German armies has yet taken place’.22
The arguments over the state of morale in the German Army, and whether GHQ’s assessments were accurate, rumbled on for the rest of the year. But they would become increasingly irrelevant to the last series of attacks that would be made on the Passchendaele Ridge. On 3 October, Haig had signalled that the next phase of operations would be conducted by the Canadian Corps, which had been holding the line around Lens. Having recently been involved in a sapping attritional battle at Hill 70, its commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, was loath to put his corps through more combat, let alone in dreaded Flanders. It had been rumoured that they were being placed in Fifth Army, but Currie made it clear that he would, under no circumstances, serve under Gough, and Haig, reluctantly, went along with him. When Currie met Plumer on 13 October, a day after the attacks towards Passchendaele had met with such fierce resistance, he made it clear how unhappy he was. One look at the ground convinced him that the whole endeavour was futile. He is reported to have said that taking the Passchendaele Ridge would cost 16,000 casualties (and subsequent events would prove his forecast to be remarkably accurate). The blasted place was ‘not worth a drop of blood’, he swore. Plumer, always a sympathetic listener, had to agree, but shook his head slowly.
‘My orders are clear.’23
News of Currie’s unease did not take long to reach GHQ. ‘It was not common for Haig to dicker with his generals’, wrote the historian Tim Cook, but in this case he made an exception.24 In stark contrast to how he treated his other–British–corps commanders, Haig felt it necessary to ask personally for Currie’s help. Partly this was due to Haig’s growing respect for the Canadian, but it also reflected Currie’s position as head of what was, effectively, a small ‘national army’ with a ‘de facto veto over what Haig and British Army commanders could or could not ask the Canadian Corps to do’.25 According to Major-General Archie Macdonell (GOC 1st Canadian Division), when Haig’s car rolled up during a divisional meeting, Currie went outside to greet the Field Marshal, who was eager to put some kind of proposition to him. ‘Haig was very earnest and very animated and after a halt during which he had failed to convince Currie, would take him by the arm and walk up and down with him in a very animated way and evidently full of argument.’ Shortly afterwards, Haig addressed Currie’s staff directly. He told them that Passchendaele had to be taken and that the Canadians were being asked to do it. He admitted that their commander was ‘strongly opposed’ to doing so.
‘But I have succeeded in overcoming his scruples. Some day I hope to be able to tell you why this must be done, but in the mean time I ask you to take my word for it.’
Haig reassured the men that ‘an unprecedented amount of artillery’ would support their attack.26
Sir Arthur Currie could not have been more unlike Haig. Hailing from a modest background in Strathroy, Ontario, Currie had been, successively, a teacher, insurance salesman, commander of militia and real-estate broker. Currie had joined the militia in 1897, and although he was prevented from serving in the South African War owing to an on-going stomach ailment–that would periodically resurface in France–he was a natural fit. Known as a disciplinarian, Currie approached war with an emphasis on professionalism and training, smart dress and attention to detail. Crucially, Currie ‘never claimed to have all the answers’, but read what he could, learnt off others, and understood that only hard-won experience would allow him to master his craft.27 These traits would stand him in good stead as he embarked on a dizzying rise: brigadier-general in 1914; major-general in 1915; and lieutenant-general twenty-one months later. By the summer of 1917, Currie had become the foremost Canadian soldier in the empire–and the man whom Haig went to when he needed a favour.
Haig’s reticence in telling Currie why the Passchendaele Ridge had to be taken was, in some respects, quite remarkable. For such an important operation to go ahead, employing some of the best troops in the empire, without a clear understanding of why objectives had to be secured and at such a late stage, was highly unusual. But Haig, as can be understood, was not keen to dwell on the matter or discuss it in more detail. When Currie asked him, again and again, why the ridge had to be taken, Haig would reply with the same infuriating phrase–that some day he would tell Currie, but not now.28 The truth was that without it he had little to show for an offensive that had been conceived in over-optimism and which had failed to achieve its grandiose objectives. The Field Marshal had envisaged his forces sweeping towards the Flanders coast, but the grim truth was that Roulers and the Channel were as distant as ever. Without the ridge in his hands, Haig would have to go bareheaded back to the War Cabinet and beg for their forgiveness. Therefore, the capture of Passchendaele was not about breaking the line or fixing the enemy in place, or even gaining a better line for the winter–it was about saving Haig’s own skin.
Haig may not have been open about his reasons for wanting Passchendaele taken, but his attitude towards Currie illustrated how important the Canadian Corps had become by 1917. The biggest overseas contingent of the BEF, it comprised four divisions with supporting artillery, engineering and medical units, and totalled over 8,000 officers and 106,000 other ranks (significantly bigger than the Australian and New Zealand contingents, which could field around 75,000 men combined).29 Whereas British divisions would be shuffled around the front as was necessary, moving in and out of corps headquarters on a relatively regular basis, it was made clear to the British Government by Ottawa that Canadian public opinion would not stand for their divisions being treated in the same way. Canadian divisions would stay together, and they would fight together. Some British officers would grumble that this meant that the Canadians were more troublesome to deploy and less flexible than British units–and there was certainly some truth in this–but the benefits more than outweighed any drawbacks. Because Canadian troops operated together, not only did this help to generate a remarkable esprit de corps and cohesion, but it also made it easier to develop and promulgate new tactics and doctrine.
By 1917 the Canadian Corps had won a growing reputation for innovation and professionalism on the battlefield. By the time it attacked Vimy Ridge on 9 April, it had already pioneered the use of new platoon tactics, more effective counter-battery fire, machine-gun barrages and armoured cars.30 Canadian units were also employing greater numbers of analysts and intelligence staff, and to a lower level, than their British counterparts and were making impressive efforts to integrate this with air power and artillery.31 Utilizing a new centralized structure, the Counter-Battery Staff Office, the Canadian Corps was able to pool information on the location and movements of enemy guns and devise comprehensive measures for dealing with them. At Vimy, Canadian officers reckoned that they had pinpointed 176 out of 212 German guns on their front; a success rate of over 80 per cent.32 Indeed, this excellence–more than anything else–showed why Haig had entrusted the capture of the Passchendaele Ridge to the Canadians. Their struggle to seize the high ground would be the last great act of the Third Battle of Ypres. If they could not take it, then no one could.
The German infantry of ‘F’ Company, 9/Grenadier Regiment (3rd Guard Division), went up to the front on 13 October, deploying from Keiberg north to the Ypres–Roulers railway line, just south of the village of Passchendaele. ‘The weather is dreary’, recorded the regimental history. ‘Rain day and night. All paths have been destroyed.’
As far as the eye can see, everything is a vast field of craters. Fusiliers will sink into the muddy ground up to their knees. The craters themselves are filled with muddy water, and only a few concrete blocks [pillboxes] that have escaped enemy bombardment so far offer miserable protection against the inclemency of the weather to small numbers. Most men lie wet and freezing in the craters, partly in water, and the tarpaulins they have pulled over their heads barely protect them against moisture from above. At the same time, any conspicuous movement must be avoided. For all day a swarm of enemy aircraft continuously circles in the sky above, reporting any movement to their artillery. The heaviest harassing fire is continuously trained on the sea of craters…33
By October 1917 conditions on the Passchendaele Ridge were appalling. The village itself had been almost wiped from the map, and aerial photographs showed all too clearly the progressive destruction of buildings and roads. When he first saw it, ‘lit by the glare of the morning sun’, a soldier with 13 Reserve Infantry Regiment (13th Reserve Infantry Division) was amazed. ‘The smashed walls reached up towards the sky, as did the wrecked and torn remains of the church… In all directions there was yawning emptiness, ruins, ruin and destruction.’ There was little cover for the men, just endless shell holes–what they called the Trichterfeld, the ‘crater field’–while battalion headquarters was housed in a ruined farmhouse that was terribly vulnerable to shellfire. It was from here that the next phase of the battle would be led: the desperate juggling act of trying to support the forward battalions as they fought off the attackers; working out where reserves should be sent; and then pressing forward from shell hole to shell hole through murderous drumfire.34
It was often said that the terrible ground conditions and appalling weather hampered the attackers far more than the defenders. General von Kuhl thought differently. For him the opposite was true. Because the ground water was just below the surface, German troops were left exposed on the battlefield; unable to build the trenches or dugouts that would have protected them from the unending ‘iron rain’. While the landscape was dotted with concrete pillboxes and bunkers, these were magnets for enemy guns and soon became surrounded by shell holes and scattered with bodies–like battered ships amid a turbulent sea of mud. Kuhl described the situation German troops faced in stark terms:
The defenders cowered in their water-filled craters without protection from the weather, hungry and freezing, continually exposed to the overwhelming enemy artillery fire. Even the staffs of the forward units had no cover, except perhaps a thin corrugated-iron roof over their shell hole. Movement in the muddy soil was very difficult: men and horses sank into the slime; rifles and machine-guns, coated with mud, refused to function. Only rarely was it possible to supply the defenders with a hot meal. Distribution of orders in the forward area was difficult in the extreme as telephone and line communication had been shot to pieces. It was painful work for runners struggling through the mud.
For Kuhl the ‘suffering, privation and exertions’ his men endured were ‘inexpressible’. ‘No division’, he lamented, ‘could last more than a fortnight in this Hell.’35
It was not just men who struggled through the mud; horses were particularly vulnerable in such boggy conditions. On 18 October men of 8th Battery, Field Artillery Regiment (10th Bavarian Division), tried to reinforce the lines around Becelaere. According to Reserve Second Lieutenant Peistrup, they endured ‘unspeakable difficulties’ bringing up their guns. At the appointed time, their battery was to fire a thousand rounds of gas shell and then, as soon as was safe, move them back. But the ground was so awful that the exercise rapidly descended into a terrifying struggle for survival:
As we prepared to move our guns, one of the limbers slid down into a huge shell crater. Officers and men attempted, in some cases up to their necks in icy water, to free the horses. Despite the greatest efforts this proved to be impossible, because the horses were trapped by the mud. There was nothing else for it but to put them out of their terrified misery with a revolver shot. Hardly one hundred metres further on, another team fell into a crater where, before it could be rescued, all the horses were drowned.36
The gunnery officer Reinhard Lewald went through a similar ordeal. ‘We had another gun shot to hell’, he wrote on 19 October. After two ‘nice autumn days’, when the battle seemed to have ended, renewed artillery fire picked up again as the Canadians began gearing up for their assault. ‘Our battery is under almost continuous fire, and we are being fired upon with calibres up to 34cm. The terrain at our firing position is a single crater field. We can barely bring up our ammunition any more in the churned-up ground. Our horses–yet again, almost a quarter of which have been shot dead or wounded–are in danger of collapsing.’37 This constant exposure to death, or near-death, presented soldiers with enormous psychological challenges, and it was not unusual to see men collapse under heavy fire, go screaming from shell hole to shell hole, until stilled by their comrades or wounded or killed. Others internalized their fear and kept going: reciting prayers or spells; holding good-luck tokens; or following well-worn routines that, they were convinced, helped them to navigate ‘death’s gray land’ in the trenches.38
The Flandernschlacht did not just take a psychological toll on the men in the trenches. Their commanders could be equally depressed at having to send units into the maelstrom knowing that they were, in all probability, condemning them to death. Indeed, the fate of the Eingreif divisions, if, where and when to deploy them, caused many anxious moments in battlefield headquarters up and down the front. Albrecht von Thaer, who sent in many counter-attacks at Group Wytschaete, described the enormous responsibility he faced, as he worried constantly that he would make a mistake, with inevitably lethal consequences. ‘It is simply terrible when one has to decide within a matter of a few minutes whether to send reserves to rescue the people at the front, which effectively means that, once again, some hundreds or thousands of men will march forward, mostly to their doom. I always tell myself that, in making decisions of this kind, I must exercise the same caution as I would if my brother or my son were in these columns. But what is the point of all that?’ he asked. ‘After all, can we not “turn back?”’39
Contrary to Haig’s faith in an imminent collapse in enemy morale, the mood of German soldiers remained largely stable, if sorely tried, during this period.40 Although there is no doubt that Flanders had become a byword for mud and death–‘the great Flemish human mill’, as one soldier put it–German units continued to perform well throughout the summer and autumn.41 According to Staff Sergeant Alfred Kleysteuber of 233 Reserve Infantry Regiment (195th Division), when notice came to embark for Flanders, ‘the word flashed round the regiment like news of a death. Everywhere there were serious faces, because everybody knew that the fateful hour was upon them.’ Yet the men detrained on time, arriving at Thielt–with the sky lit up, as usual, with artillery fire–one day before reaching Passchendaele to take their place in the line.42 Not all units went into the ‘mill’ so easily, however. A company commander in 16 Bavarian Infantry Regiment (of the notoriously poor 10th Bavarian Division), who was captured by the British on 12 October, told his captors that his officers had ‘great difficulty’ in averting a mutiny when the men heard they were going back to Flanders. ‘On the march, an Oberleutnant rode along the ranks and told the men to “close up” and not straggle; he was met with shouts of “Sauhund” [Bastard]’, and warned that if he did it again he would be shot.43
The balance, as with all armies, was crucial. Units had to feel that their sacrifice was both proportional and fair; that they were being asked to do no more than others. Although some evidence filtered back to British intelligence of ill-feeling between the Bavarians and the Prussians, with those from South Germany being ‘sacrificed’, which increased levels of desertion, the Army held together reasonably well, bound by common discipline and patriotism, and the realization of how important it was to hold on.44 Yet the commanders knew full well how exhausting the battle was becoming. According to a Fourth Army report, dated 21 October, the circumstances in Flanders ‘exceeded the horror of anything previously experienced’ by its troops. ‘In the judgement of front-line soldiers who also served at Verdun and the Somme, the strength of the firestorm that preceded and accompanied the charges of the attackers in Flanders in 1917 was far greater than ever before.’ As might have been expected, the demands this placed on the men–what the Official History called ‘psychological tenacity’–were enormous. Cowering ‘here and there in muddy craters behind obstacles that had been completely shot to pieces, exposed to fire and the elements and at all times aware of impending enemy attacks, as well as being exhausted owing to a lack of sleep and provisions, as they were only rarely delivered in adequate quantity and quality’, the German soldier had to find the courage to keep going. ‘The vast majority of German troops deployed in this battle’, it concluded proudly, ‘passed this nearly superhuman test of their resilience.’45
The intensity of the shellfire could drive men insane. According to the regimental history of 86 Fusilier Regiment, which fought throughout September and October, the bombardments it experienced at Ypres were different to those on the Somme, causing ‘paralysing terror’ among those subjected to it. ‘The soldiers bury their faces in the mud and cling on to tree roots to stop themselves from involuntarily jumping up and running away like madmen. Others squat in the concrete blocks in passive desperation.’ Being in a pillbox when shelling was going on was, as could be imagined, simply hellish. ‘When the mud of Flanders splatters into the sky all around and the earth is grasped by spasms, then the block will sway up and down like a ship on the waves.’ Although the walls and ceiling could withstand calibres up to 15cm, the detonations travelled through the concrete with ‘harrowing effects’. Pillboxes could also be badly undermined by artillery fire, with shells slipping deep into the surrounding mud and then exploding beneath the ground, ripping open the floor and blowing to pieces anyone unfortunate enough to be inside. That was bad enough, but what men feared more than anything else was the whole pillbox being knocked on to its side, doorways facing the mud, trapping the occupants inside. It was little wonder that many men thought long and hard about whether to take shelter in those dark, claustrophobic, haunted caverns. There were many ways to die in the Ypres Salient in that awful summer of 1917.46
Someone who saw for himself how horribly unpredictable death could be was Walter Rappolt, an NCO with 1 Guard Foot Artillery Regiment. His battery spent most of the battle deployed around Becelaere (a mile and a half from the eastern edge of Polygon Wood), which was one of the most heavily shelled areas of the front. One of his worst experiences took place on 26 August when a telephonist called Meyer had the ‘top of his skull blown off’ by a shell splinter. Although the man sitting next to him was unharmed, he was ‘deeply disturbed’ by what had happened. Rappolt recorded how his commanding officer, Lieutenant Konig, tried to deal with the situation as quickly as possible. He ‘took a piece of wood and removed part of the brain which was lying on the telephone’ and cleaned up the mess. Rappolt admitted that he now faced ‘a difficult task, to prevent my breakdown… It was only a moment before, that I had talked to that man.’ The following day another horrific incident occurred when a shell cartridge got stuck in the breech of one of their 10cm guns. Their mechanic ‘got tired of it’ and in ‘a touch of madness he took a mallet smacking it on the priming handle with the breech half open’. The result was a vicious flash, like a lightning strike. ‘The shell burst from the gun, but at the back a tremendous explosion which caused terrible burns to the poor chap. His eyes were gone and he cried very much on his way to the first aid station. I do not know what happened to him.’47
How close did the German Army come to breaking during the Battle of Flanders? In truth, it came close, but not close enough. According to the German Medical History, eleven corps were deployed in total, sometimes for significant periods of time, and all would be affected by the horror of Third Ypres. Nineteen divisions arrived to replace 21 divisions in August; 12 arrived and 14 left the following month; 31 arrived and 18 left during October; and 11 arrived and 25 left in November. In all 100 infantry divisions were brought into Flanders, with 98 being relieved, between May and December 1917–what was recognized as ‘an extraordinary turnover of divisions’. Of these, 23 were deployed twice and one was even deployed three times.48 According to official records, the 63 divisions that went into action between 10 July and 10 October sustained a total of 159,000 casualties, many of them caused by heavy artillery fire, including long-range howitzers, which searched the rear areas for ammunition dumps, billets and headquarters of any kind. There is little doubt that Third Ypres demanded a heavy and continuous commitment of troops, guns and supplies.49
It seems clear that the German Army had come through the fighting of July and August relatively intact. Although Fourth Army’s casualties were not inconsiderable, there was a sense that the battle was proceeding in a largely manageable and stable way. At the beginning of August, Crown Prince Rupprecht favourably compared the battle with the Somme fighting of 1916. In Flanders, his divisions had lost, on average, between 1,500 and 2,000 men each, which contrasted with the figure of 4,000 for an average two-week tour on the Somme. ‘While at that time the troops required a long recovery period for the exhaustion caused primarily by a lack of sleep because of their long deployment, the troops now recover significantly faster.’50 This (relatively) comfortable situation did not last, however, and the Battle of Menin Road on 20 September ushered in the most harrowing phase of the fighting for the Germans. It was telling that the three worst periods of losses for the German Army in the summer of 1917 were the Battle of Messines (1–10 June), with 10,374 killed or missing and 12,614 wounded; Menin Road and Polygon Wood (21–30 September), with 7,821 dead and missing and 16,986 wounded; and Broodseinde and Poelcappelle (1–10 October) with 9,034 killed and missing and 14,217 wounded.51
By early October the German position in Flanders was becoming increasingly precarious, with congestion on the cramped railway network and a lack of reinforcements badly affecting both morale and combat effectiveness. The impact of Plumer’s first three hammer blows produced a feeling of desperation, verging, in places, on panic, within the German High Command. ‘Since the day before yesterday, Ludendorff rang me three times concerning orders,’ complained Albrecht von Thaer on 11 October; ‘Kuhl, Lossberg and other minor deities race to headquarters and to the troops in the staff car and also rage over there in the offices, and make everyone frantic and nervous. The nervousness from above surely does not make a good impression and does little to help…’52 The same day, Rupprecht’s diary entry also betrayed a growing sense of unease. ‘Our troops along the main battle front in Flanders are still thoroughly mixed up and confusion reigns in the various formations.’ He believed that the ‘fighting ability’ of the men was ‘reducing all the time’, primarily because of the ‘oppressive superiority’ of enemy guns. ‘Because we are involved in a battle for time, there remains nothing for it, but repeatedly to give ground in order to force our opponents to waste time as they move their artillery forward.’53
Yet the moment of greatest danger had already passed. It was impossible for the British to maintain the impressive operational tempo that had been achieved between 20 September and 4 October, and rushed preparations, heavy rain and the sapping effects of operating across such a waterlogged, open battlefield eventually proved fatal to Haig’s hopes. With renewed attacks on 9 and 12 October gaining little ground, the battle returned once more to the slower, more predictable affair that it had been throughout August. The conditions at the front were certainly awful and extremely exhausting, but Fourth Army could cope for the short period of time that remained for any offensive action to take place. On 21 October Ludendorff telephoned Rupprecht and told him that ‘the main objective was to hold out for the next 14 days, and for that reason as much field artillery as possible had to be deployed at the main battle front’, with frequent gas shoots at night to interfere with the enemy.54 Although the Army Group commander felt that if the weather was better, attacks could continue into December, a major advance seemed more and more unlikely. By 24 October, two days before Currie’s first step towards the heights of Passchendaele, OHL issued guidelines for the maintenance of their positions through the winter.55
Given the pressures on the Army, changes, both tactical and organizational, were imminent. The day after the victory at First Passchendaele, General Freiherr von Marschall travelled to Flanders, where he was to assume command of the newly formed Group Staden. Based on the Guard Reserve Corps, Group Staden was deployed between the Houthulst Forest and just south of Passchendaele, where it would play a major role in the final defensive actions in the Salient.56 One look at the ground made it clear where the British would come from. ‘The Passchendaele–Roulers railway line gave the English a favourable route for the attack, as south of it our front bent backwards… whereas north of the railway our line turned to the west and around Passchendaele’, wrote Lieutenant E. Schaarschmidt of 126 Infantry Regiment (39th Division), who entered the line on 20 October. His men dug into the wet ground as best they could, scraping out foxholes that were covered over with wooden boards, tarpaulins or corrugated iron. It was hardly ideal, but it would have to do.57
As well as bringing in reinforcements, German defensive doctrine was rapidly being updated after the experiences of Flanders. On 23 October it was agreed to deploy an Eingreif division behind each front-line division, forming a ‘legion’ of two divisions to a depth of 8,000 yards. The front-line commander was given authority over both units to ensure they operated in tandem.58 It was, in a sense, the logical next step in the continual evolution of German tactics that had been seen throughout 1917. Although this was, admittedly, a greater commitment of manpower than OHL would have liked (being the ‘unheard-of expenditure of force’ that Ludendorff had warned about a month earlier), it seemed the only reliable way of making sure that the British were kept at bay in the last weeks of the battle.
It may not have felt like a victory, but by the time Canadian Corps headquarters opened at Poperinge on 18 October, the German Army had, effectively, already won the battle. It had held on for long enough and, crucially, was still camped upon a significant area of high ground, to make it to winter and the inevitable cessation of major combat operations. Moreover, it had done what the Westheer had been doing successfully since the failure of the Schlieffen Plan in September 1914: holding the line in the west and thus allowing the Central Powers to maintain freedom of manoeuvre; reinforcing threatened fronts, and taking on the Russian Army in the east. Now it was Italy’s turn. On 24 October, Ludendorff’s counter-attack on the Isonzo River was launched and, like a thunderbolt, cracked open the Italian Front. Such was the violence and rapidity of the Austro-German assault–known as the Battle of Caporetto–that the Italian forces disintegrated. Within four days, the Italian Second Army was in full retreat after losing 60,000 prisoners and 500 guns.59 It would be one of the swiftest and most decisive operations of the war, leaving further Italian participation in the conflict on a knife-edge. For the Allies, 1917 had begun with unease, confusion and disaster, and it looked like it was going to end that way as well.