They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  Eagle Trench lay 700 yards north of Langemarck. It had taken thirty-eight days to get there. The 11th Battalion was relieved on the night of 25 September. As the RBs slithered in single file along the three miles of duckboard track that would bring them to the canal bank (a journey made particularly unpleasant by heavy gas shelling which forced them to wear masks), far away to the south Sir Douglas Haig was entertaining the Prime Minister and his retinue to dinner at Advanced Headquarters. Colonel Hankey sat next to Haig during the meal, and later noted in his diary that ‘he was rather preoccupied about tomorrow’s attack, which has been somewhat dislocated by a big unsuccessful German counter-attack this afternoon.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s attack’ was the Battle of Polygon Wood. By the end of the day, Polygon had been taken, the wounded were pouring into the casualty clearing stations and the prisoners were pouring into the cage.

  It had been an interesting day for Lloyd George and his party, who had been able to keep a close eye on the progress of the battle from a safe distance of some thirty miles. Nevertheless, Colonel Hankey was probably not the only one to feel that they were right at the hub of activity.

  26 September. There was a big attack that morning. All the time at the conference, messages were coming in from the front. Haig had a great map showing the line we wanted to reach, and it was very interesting the way first one bit was filled in on the map, then another, until by the time we finished (11.30 am) the picture was complete except for a small section, where two brigades had been held up.*

  Haig must have been relieved to be able to demonstrate success. The small advance doubtless looked most impressive on such a large-scale map.

  The sad truth, however, was that by this time Lloyd George was virtually indifferent to the whole Flanders campaign. He had written it off precisely one month before on 26 August on receiving the news of Cadorna’s great victory in Italy. That night he took the final decision to transfer his interest, together with large numbers of men and materials, to the Italian front. Now, although he was about to leave GHQ to visit Fifth Army Headquarters in the north, he was merely going through the motions. Haig had arranged the visit, and he had a particular reason for doing so. Since the opportunity of a coastal attack had been irrevocably lost, he was more than ever anxious to convince the Prime Minister of the effectiveness of his policy of attrition, and there was a satisfactorily large number of German prisoners in the cages available to be shown off. It had been arranged for the Prime Minister and his party to visit them.

  Is it possible that he had also, perhaps unconsciously, planted the idea in the Prime Minister’s head that Gough was to blame for the slow progress of the campaign in Flanders? Whether or not he had done so, Lloyd George had formed precisely that opinion and he made it clear that he had done so by an act of omission, which Gough interpreted as a studied insult.

  I saw him through my window in La Louvie Chateau walking past the door with General Charteris, who was Head of the Intelligence Service at GHQ. I was considerably surprised to see him, as I had received no intimation that he was coming into my Army area, much less to my own Headquarters. I asked one of my ADCs to find out what he was doing, and discovered that he was visiting some camps of German prisoners to see the deterioration in their physique – which I must say was not particularly apparent to me. I was struck by the discourtesy of the Prime Minister in actually visiting the Headquarters of one of his Army Commanders and not coming to see him, and I therefore let him pass on. It was an amazing attitude for a man in his position and with his responsibilities. He had never met me, and it would have been an opportunity of at least seeing for himself what manner of man I was, and of exchanging some ideas on the general position in which we stood. It was in fact his duty to do so. I have since understood that he blamed me for this Ypres battle and for its long continuation. But it is difficult to believe that a man in his position could be so ignorant of the system of command in an Army. Neither the inception of this battle nor its continuation was any more my responsibility than that of one of my Corps or Divisional Commanders. I merely received my orders from the Field-Marshal.*

  The clue to the misunderstanding perhaps lay in the fact that the Prime Minister was accompanied by General Charteris, no friend of Gough’s, who was conducting the illustrious visitors on their sightseeing tour. They drove extensively through the back areas and through what Colonel Hankey described as

  … the usual paraphernalia of dumps of ammunition, aerodromes, herds of ‘tanks’ like great mastodons, roads made of planks, etc. At a crossroads just outside Poperinghe a big eleven-inch shell whistled over our heads and burst a hundred yards away – too close to be pleasant. Our destination was a cage for prisoners brought down from the day’s battle – containing a number of nerve-shattered, tired, unshaved and dirty men, who nevertheless sprang to attention as though under review by the Kaiser. [The Supreme Command, 1914–1918]

  In order to underline the point that the Germans were beaten and almost at the end of their tether, someone had that morning given the order that the most unprepossessing and unfit of the prisoners should be segregated into a separate cage and that to this cage, and no other, the Prime Minister should be conducted. It really made very little difference. Lloyd George had decided to wash his hands of the campaign in Flanders. If Haig was determined that he would win the war by reaching Passchen-daele, then let him do so. Lloyd George was no longer particularly interested.

  Two days later, at a conference of his commanders, Haig was in an optimistic mood. He stressed that the repeated blows were rapidly using up the enemy’s strength and reserves. He believed that the moment was near when the offensive might be pursued on a grand scale beyond the definite and limited objectives of the past few weeks. He believed that it would soon be possible to send in a force of tanks, and even cavalry. He had every reason to believe that a significant breakthrough was possible in the very near future.

  It was almost October. The battle had now been in progress for two long months. The casualties amounted to 88,790 killed, missing and wounded. The advance, at the deepest point of penetration, was three and a half miles. In two months of anguished effort, with seemingly every circumstance against them, the troops had managed to get almost exactly halfway to the Passchendaele Ridge. And the nightmare had hardly begun.

  Part 5

  ‘We Died in Hell – They Called it Passchendaele’

  Chapter 16

  The deep bowl of land that, just two months ago, had lain beyond the salient had been narrowed now to a crescent of ridges, curving from Poelcapelle at one tip to the Gheluvelt plateau at the other. In the centre of the topmost ridge, girdled by strongpoints, was the tumbled brick-heap of the ruined village of Passchendaele. From horizon to horizon a cratered wasteland of mud stretched as far as the eye could see. It was just possible from the eminence of a balloon or aeroplane to pick out the scattered heaps of rubble that were the tombstones of dead farms and hamlets.

  From the gates of Ypres to the heights of Passchendaele, from Boesin-ghe to Hill 60, the shell-craters now lay lip to lip, separated only by the slimy bridges of mud that snaked around their edges. The pitted surface of the salient was like a mammoth sponge, heavy with mud and water. Here and there, swollen by rain, dammed and diverted by the exploding earth, streams had pushed their way through the crumbling banks of the craters and linked a dozen or more into deep impassable lakes of liquid mud. On most of them and on the smaller shell-craters, as the exhaust of a car leaves an iridescent smear on a puddle, a film of red streaking the surface told all too clearly the fate of the men who had collapsed, wounded, into the morass. Often, as the troops passed by, a bubble would form and burst with a great sough as the air was expelled from some bloated long-dead body held in the mud below. For there were bodies everywhere, sunk in the marsh or lying on the surface among the remains of shattered limbers, of broken guns, of the dead hulks of half-buried tanks.

  It was impossible to remove the dead, for as the armies inch
ed and slithered and waded and fought their way up the slopes, they were still under observation from the German vantage-point on the ridge of Passchendaele. Exhausted and miserable, sharing much the same privations as their adversaries, almost worn out by the struggle to defend the tenancy of their portion of the shattered swamp, the Germans could still observe every sign of life in the marshes below. They could still pick out every inch, every yard of the ever-lengthening wooden tracks that straggled and meandered through the battlefield stretching closer and closer to their lines. They could still send down retribution from the guns behind them, secure in long-fixed positions. In daylight, the rats, as fat and bloated as the dead bodies they fed on, were the only living things that could move with impunity in the salient.

  Corporal S. T. H. Ross, jgth Division, Signal Co., Royal Engineers

  When you got beyond a certain line on your way up, that was the end of the world you came from and you just didn’t bother to think about what was laid before you. You just did your job, and with any luck you came back. It’s difficult to try to tell other people what it was like. It’s not an easy thing to do. The salient was unimaginable.

  2nd Lieutenant H. L. Birks, Tank Corps

  The salient was a dead loss. I cannot think how the one or two senior officers there who had brains let the thing go on. Of course, they were helping the French out which makes a big difference. One doesn’t know what the higher strategy was. But from the tactical side it was sheer murder. You had this Ypres-Yser Canal and you got the strangest feeling when you crossed it. You’d almost abandon hope. And as you got further out you got this awful smell of death. You could literally smell it. It was just a complete abomination of desolation. I wept when I came into the salient.

  Private C. Miles, No. 7322,10th Btn., Royal Fusiliers

  I never had a feeling of ease the whole of the time I was in the salient. I used to notice that when the fellows came out of the line, and if they were going on into France for a rest, then as they went over the dividing line – there was the remains of a customs post on the Bailleul Road – they’d always kick the mud off their feet. Into France, leave the Belgian mud behind. You could smell a battalion coming out of the line if they were en masse and passed you close. A horrible smell of mud and corruption and unwashed bodies. It soaked right into you, that Ypres smell. As a runner, finding your way around in that sea of mud was the worst part. You were on your own. On a moonlight night the shell-holes full of water show up as white as silver, and you think to yourself, ‘Well, I’ve got to go through mud, but I must be careful that I don’t fall into any of these shell-holes.’ It was easy to do, and even if they didn’t suck you right down they were all impregnated with gas – mustard gas – and it caused terrible burns and blisters if it touched you.

  The moment you set off you felt that dreadful suction. It was forever pulling you down, and you could hear the sound of your feet coming out in a kind of sucking ‘plop’ that seemed much louder at night when you were on your own. In a way, it was worse when the mud didn’t suck you down; when it yielded under your feet you knew that it was a body you were treading on. It was terrifying. You’d tread on one on the stomach, perhaps, and it would grunt all the air out of its body. It made your hair stand on end. The smell could make you vomit. And you could always tell whether it was a dead Jerry or a dead Tommy. The Germans smelt different in death.

  Major George Wade, South Staffordshire Regiment, Machine Gun Corps

  Going up to the line for the first time my first indication of the horrors to come appeared as a small lump on the side of the duck-board. I glanced at it, as I went past, and I saw to my horror, that it was a human hand gripping the side of the track – no trace of the owner, just a glimpse of a muddy wrist and a piece of sleeve sticking out of the mud. After that there were bodies every few yards. Some lying face downwards in the mud; others showing by the expressions fixed on their faces the sort of effort they had made to get back on to the track. Sometimes you could actually see blood seeping up from underneath. I saw the dead wherever I looked – a dead signaller still clinging to a basket cage with two dead pigeons in it, and further on, lying just off the track, two stretcher-bearers with a dead man on a stretcher. There were the remains of a ration party that had been blown off the track. I remember seeing an arm, still holding on to a water container. When the dead men were just muddy mounds by the trackside it was not so bad – they were somehow impersonal. But what was unendurable were the bodies with upturned faces. Sometimes the eyes were gone and the faces were like skulls with the lips drawn back, as if they were looking at you with terrible amusement. Mercifully, a lot of those dreadful eyes were closed.

  Private C. Davey, No. 424129,5th Canadian Btn., 2nd Brigade, 1st Canadian Division

  The duckboards were slithery with mud and many sections were slanted to one side or the other. Sometimes there were new sections where it had been destroyed and the working parties had repaired it. Sometimes there were just gaps. We came to one gap, where a shell had landed. The bodies of three Germans had been laid side by side as a bridge in this hole. In order to avoid stepping into a sea of mud, we had to use these bloated bodies as stepping-stones to get across.

  Lieutenant J. W. Naylor, Royal Artillery

  I came to hate that salient. Absolutely loathed it. I always used to think the names were so sinister – Zonnebeke – Hill 60 – Zillebeke – the names terrified you before you got there, they had such a sinister ring about them. Then to end up making for Passchendaele was the last straw. You could practically segregate the salient from the whole of the rest of the war-zone. It wore you down. The weather, the lack of rations, everything seemed to be against you. There didn’t seem to be anything left. You were wet through for days on end. We never thought we’d get out alive. You couldn’t see the cloud with the silver lining. There wasn’t one.

  We’d had an awful time getting the guns up the plank road on to Westhoek Radge – and that was before the worst of the mud. Three weeks later we couldn’t have done it at all. It was just sheets of water coming down. It’s difficult to get across that it’s a sea of mud. Literally a sea. You can drown in it. On the day I reached my lowest ebb I’d gone down from the gun position to meet the ammunition wagon coming up the supply road. It was my job to see that they got the wagons unloaded at the dump and to arrange carrying parties to take the shells and rations up to the battery. Oddly enough it was a quiet afternoon, but they must have seen some movement on the road because just as the wagon came up a heavy shell came over and burst very close. There were six horses pulling that wagon and they took fright at the explosion, veered right off the road and down they went into the mud. We had no possible way of getting them out. In any event they sank so fast that we had no chance even to cut them loose from the heavy wagon. We formed a chain and stretched out our arms and managed to get the drivers off, but the poor horses just sank faster and faster and drowned before our eyes. The wagon and horses disappeared in a matter of minutes. One of the drivers was absolutely incoherent with terror. It was the thought of being drowned in that awful stuff. It’s a horrible thought. Anyone would rather be shot and know nothing about it.

  That incident depressed me more than anything else in the war. I just felt, ‘What the hell’s the use of going on? I don’t care a damn who wins this war.’ Well, morale can’t get much lower than that. It was a nightmare. I have it still…

  On 30 September young Dick Findlater was one of the happiest men in the salient. Last night, worn out by four days’ heavy fighting in Polygon Wood, the dishevelled remnants of the 9th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, had struggled exhausted out of the line and back to billets in scattered farms and barns around Dranoutre. Next morning he was hailed by McNab, the Orderly Corporal. ‘Findlater! You’re for leave.’

  Corporal R. Findlater, D Co., gth Btn., HLI 33rd Division

  We could hardly believe it. There were eight of us to go, and we didn’t hang around trying to take it in. We got our passes, dr
ew our pay and we were off. It was eight miles to the railhead at Bailleul, but our luck was in because almost as soon as we got on to the main road we got a lift in a lorry. We were singing all the way. But when we got to Bailleul we sang another tune, for the RTO Corporal at the station told us that the leave train had left and we’d have to wait until tomorrow. We didn’t think a lot of the idea. There were some open wagons being loaded on a siding, so we hung around for the rest of the day, had a sandwich at one of the canteens and kept out of the way. After dark we skirted round the station and got into one of the open trucks and lay down on the floor. A while later they shunted an engine up, coupled it to the wagons and off we went.