by Paul Ham
A light rain fell on the night of 3 October, and turned the roads and tracks a bit muddy. Heavier rain would make them impassable to the gun carriages, warned an artillery unit.10 The rain gathered strength and spat down around midnight, easing into a light drizzle in the early hours of the 4th. Just before dawn, low, dark clouds hid the full moon, portending something heavier. At 5.20 am, 40 minutes before zero, German flares illuminated the frontline Anzacs assembled in the mist below. The enemy shelled whatever they could see, killing or wounding about a seventh of I Anzac Corps before the battle began.11
The British and Anzac artillery produced a weaker, less dense barrage than previously: fewer Australian guns were in action that morning than the one for every five yards of front officially claimed.12 The quality of the barrage varied, however, according to the location and timing: Monash described II Anzac’s barrage as ‘excellent’.13
At zero hour, 6 am, the first wave of infantry swallowed their tot of rum, lit their cigarettes and moved off, aglow with confidence, anticipating another victory. When the barrage reached the German trenches, the first line of Anzacs burst through the wall of smoke mingling with the morning mist. They met little resistance. As at Polygon Wood, the German defenders who were not dead or wounded surrendered or fled. Many sat immobilised with fear. A German blockhouse yielded to a single Australian officer, who captured 31 prisoners; another gave up as soon as the attack began, abandoning three machine guns. The pattern was repeated.14
Then, as if from nowhere, the Eingreif counter-strike units – normally further back – crowded forward with bayonets fixed, following Ludendorff’s tactical reform. Ferocious hand-to-hand fighting ensued, in shell holes and around the pillboxes, several of which were set alight with phosphorus bombs. The leading Australian brigades swept on, silencing the enemy bunkers with Lewis guns and grenades. Monash’s Third Division overran stubborn German holdouts in the ruins of Zonnebeke, and soon reached the ‘valley’ beneath Gravenstafel Ridge, a mere dip in the plain before it rose to Passchendaele. A Tasmanian battalion captured the concrete blockhouses that still stand at Tyne Cot Cemetery, suffering 50 dead and 204 wounded; one soldier sprinted 100 metres over open ground and subdued a pillbox single-handedly.15 En route to their objectives, Australian patrols encountered an old trench the British had used in 1914–15, where the tattered remains of Tommy uniforms lay strewn.
The New Zealanders attacked the eastern slopes of Gravenstafel (‘Abraham Heights’) and the Gravenstafel spur itself, with similar, decisive results. With the help of a stronger barrage, they carried all before them up the wide, open slope. Dozens of enemy pillboxes were silenced and claimed.
At 8.10 am, having bitten hard, the Anzacs paused to hold their gains. Some were so confident they continued to give chase, pursuing the retreating Germans ‘over the hilltop’.16 Australian and New Zealand riflemen picked off the escaping enemy, who were ‘fleeing in all directions’. ‘It was always difficult to keep Australians from following an enemy who was on the run,’ Bean observed.17
The British were abreast of the action, on the Antipodean flanks. The Fifth and Second armies, aided by tanks that could advance in the drier conditions, similarly captured all their objectives and thousands of prisoners. This great patchwork of actions culminated in another emphatic Allied success. In places, the Germans put up stiff resistance: officers defended their bunkers with revolvers and grenades, often to the last man. Fierce fighting surged around a huge crater on the ridge. At one point, the British and Anzacs had advanced so far that the German heavy guns were compelled to fire over open sights.
During and prior to the attack, some soldiers relished shooting down the Germans as they ‘ran away from us’, according to one Australian soldier.18 So, too, did the British. ‘It was great fun shooting at Germans,’ Major Allhusen wrote to his mother. ‘We saw any number running about & it cheered the men up enormously.’19 By the end of it, he added, ‘I was more alive than most people – some absolutely collapsed. Young Trotter … was carried away this morning. Nothing seriously wrong with him. Simply collapsed. He was too young for this sort of show.’20
Hand-to-hand combat, killing at a range of a few yards, mortified the more sensitive men. Nineteen-year-old Private Walter James Bradby shot dead three Germans as they fled a pillbox, two of whom, he later found to his distress, were younger than him. The memory would haunt Bradby for the rest of his life.21
By twelve minutes past nine, after three hours of battle, the Anzacs had secured most of Broodseinde Ridge and Abraham Heights, and routed the enemy in the area. German soldiers were continually seen bolting to the rear. Three hundred and fifty were found dead, many with bayonet wounds, within the first 500 yards of one brigade’s front.22
For the first time in two years, the Allies enjoyed a view of the fields beyond the German lines. To the south-east, green pastures, copses and hedgerows spread out to the sky, and, when the shelling died and the smoke cleared, images of bucolic normality met their eyes: cows grazing, carts moving, smoke issuing from farmhouses. A few miles due east rose the ultimate objective of the battle: the ruins of the church in what remained of the village of Passchendaele, atop the highest ridge in the Salient. For now, they reversed the captured German trenches and awaited the final push, settling down to a breakfast of tea and black Bavarian bread.
Haig’s headquarters revelled in the third decisive victory in fifteen days. Wild hyperbole permeated all ranks. Broodseinde was the greatest Allied triumph since the Battle of the Marne (in 1914), declared Plumer. ‘[D]ivision again brilliantly victorious in greatest battle of war,’ Monash cabled Melbourne.23 The Anzacs at Broodseinde had ‘never fought better’, Charles Bean concurred: ‘An overwhelming blow had been struck and both sides knew it.’24 Bean shared Haig’s view that, ‘for the first time in years’, British and Dominion troops were poised to inflict a decisive victory on the Western Front.
‘We have been very busy recently killing Germans,’ Lieutenant Malcolm Kennedy wrote to this brother, the day after the battle. ‘Our Australians have done very well.’25 The personal messenger of General Sir Alexander John Godley, commander of II Anzac Corps, recorded the euphoria in the corps headquarters. The Anzacs had done ‘far more’ than expected of them: ‘If only it keeps fine for a few more days Fritz will get the scare of his life but I’m afraid it will rain before long …’26 Godley accepted without demur Haig’s view of the ‘demoralization not only of the [German] troops but of the enemy’s commanders and staff … The whole of the battlefield of our successive advances is covered with dead Huns.’27 Monash similarly believed that the Germans were now ‘staggering’ and that ‘unless the weather balks me I shall capture P-village on 12th’.28
The newspapers were reliably ecstatic, trumpeting Broodseinde as the most complete success achieved by the ‘British Army’ (with whom the Anzacs were habitually bundled) thus far on the Western Front. The Battle of Broodseinde was ‘The Turning Point of the War’, ‘Germany’s Biggest Defeat’ and New Zealand’s ‘Greatest and Most Glorious Day’.29
Nine Victoria Crosses were awarded that day, for ‘most conspicuous bravery’. Sergeant Lewis McGee, for example, of the 3rd Australian Pioneer Battalion, had rushed a German machine gun armed only with his revolver;30 Private Arthur Hutt, of the 1/7 Royal Warwickshire, having taken command of his platoon after all his officers were dead or wounded, led an attack on a pillbox, with the capture of 40–50 prisoners.31 Captain Clement Robertson, of the Queen’s attached Tank Corps, led his machines on foot across difficult terrain to their objectives.32 And Private Thomas Henry Sage, of the 37th Division, threw himself on a grenade dropped by a fallen, neighbouring soldier, saving the lives of many.33
Only Lloyd George soured the mood, grumbling about illusory gains won at great cost. In part, he was right: Broodseinde was another mile-and-a-half bite, hardly the Marne (which had saved Paris). The accolades failed to recognise that the Germans still held part of the ridge and, ominously, were far from a spen
t force. Reinforcements were pouring into the second line, Flandern-II Stelling, which lay between Broodseinde and Passchendaele, and great numbers were assembling on the unseen eastern plain between Passchendaele and Roulers.
And Haig had sustained the usual, terrific casualties: some 20,000 officers and men had been killed or wounded that morning. Allied commanders were reluctant to describe these losses as ‘excessive’ in view of ‘the magnitude of the results’.34 Yet the British and Dominion forces had suffered a casualty rate of around twenty to 25 per cent, with some units (such as 1 Auckland Battalion) losing almost half their men – for a gain of, at most, 1900 yards closer to Passchendaele Ridge. A body or body part could be found every twenty paces along the main front, ‘some frightfully mutilated, without legs, arms and heads and half covered in mud and slime’, wrote Australia’s official photographer, Captain Frank Hurley, who had followed the men into battle. The battlefield, he observed, ‘was littered with bits of men, our own and Boche, and literally drenched with blood’.35 And this was a battle that had gone well, in which every thing had proceeded according to the plan.
The Germans were more heavily battered. Many regiments had suffered their worst day of the year,36 with some 35,000 casualties and, for some units, a very real sense of defeat; 5000 prisoners were taken (of whom the New Zealanders took 1159).37 They presented a pitiful sight, many very young, in poor spirits, some crying, reinforcing Haig’s view that the enemy were on the brink of collapse. The official German history called 4 October the blackest day of the war (in a spate of black days).38 It was ‘extraordinarily severe’, Ludendorff later confirmed, ‘and we came through it only with enormous loss’.39 He conceded that his decision to move the Eingreif forward had failed.
Yet still the Germans were far from broken, if Ludendorff could be believed. Like Haig, he tended to cling to good news even as ghoulish evidence to the contrary congregated around him. Just two days later, on 6 October, he assured Rupprecht that the German Army would win the war by the end of the year so long as they held Flanders. Ludendorff even maintained that the U-boat offensive might save the day. This fantasy arose out of his refusal to accept that the Royal Navy–escorted convoys had already won the U-boat war.
Rupprecht drew a very different conclusion: after Broodseinde, he had nightmare visions of the rout of his entire army in Belgium. In early October, he even contemplated a general withdrawal from Flanders and the possible abandonment of the U-boat bases. He decided not to do so, for two reasons: the U-boats were still operational and many more were coming on-stream; and more importantly, it had started to rain again, a godsend to defenders on the higher ground. ‘Most gratifying,’ Rupprecht wrote, ‘rain: our most effective ally.’40
The heavens denied Haig the miracle for which he prayed. The skies opened just after noon on 4 October, as Gold had forecast. On the 5th and 6th, the rain bucketed down; on the 7th, it fell in ‘drenching squalls’;41 on the 8th, a drying wind yielded to more torrential rain. Gold surrendered to his instruments: great storm clouds 1000 miles west of Ireland were bearing down on Europe at 40 miles an hour and the rest of the month looked hopeless. (The rain would not ease for weeks: 107 millimetres would fall that month, compared with 31 millimetres in the same period in 1914, 32 millimetres in 1915 and 69 millimetres in 1916. That October, there would be only five rainless days in Flanders.)
By the 8th, the swamp-like conditions of August had returned. Yet the fighting would continue, Haig decided, into the valley of Gravenstafel, just below Passchendaele Ridge, a low-lying area prone to heavy flooding. Haig persisted with his belief that a few sharp blows would deliver Passchendaele; the recent victories even revived his hopes of clearing the coast before winter.
Wishful thinking clouded reality like a cataract. In such appalling conditions, the exacting preparations that Plumer had hitherto insisted on – a ready supply of fresh troops and the availability of enough guns to create a dense barrage – were not adhered to. In the rain-swept days that followed the battle, Haig decided to press on, in what many now regard as the most disastrous decision of his career (see Chapter 17). Most of his corps and divisional generals ‘would have liked to stop the offensive’, Bean observed.42 Birdwood, commander of the Anzacs, advised Plumer ‘against any further advance’. ‘My men were weak and tired …’43 Monash concurred, anticipating carnage. When Godley and even Plumer rejected Monash’s protests, the Australian commander bowed to the inevitable and organised an ambulance system ‘akin to a cab rank’ and 200 additional stretcher-bearers.44
Few shared Haig’s assessment of the Germans as a near-spent force. Junior officers and ordinary soldiers, watching the battle-field revert to an ‘ocean of thick brown porridge’ in which ‘the wire entanglements had sunk into the mud’, grabbing at their submerged legs,45 were astounded at the decision to fight on: surely this would lead to wanton slaughter, with little chance of success? ‘Now I fear that it must be a wash-out for the year – tough luck,’ noted one private.46
Nor was there enough time to prepare – just two days – or to bring forward the available guns, as Haig’s commanders knew. And yet, if they doubted their chief’s wisdom, Plumer and Gough showed little inclination to challenge his orders. Their recent successes made Plumer uncharacteristically confident, and he and Harington ‘allowed themselves … to be seduced into rushing preparations’.47 Gough – chastened by the memory of August – made plain his reluctance to attack in the wet, but put up little resistance once he knew Haig’s mind was decided. If both expressed reservations, even objections, at a meeting on 7 September (the occurrence of which is disputed48) neither took a strong stand against their commander’s decision.
Exactly why Haig persisted has baffled military experts, historians and politicians for a century. Flush with confidence after the capture of Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde, Haig could be forgiven, says Bean, for wondering, ‘What will be the result of three more in the next fortnight?’49 If fine weather returned, Bean concludes, ‘was Haig’s strategic design beyond the chance of attainment’?50 Nor were the alternatives appealing. Staying put and wallowing in the mud beneath Passchendaele for the winter was militarily untenable, and withdrawing to Pilckem Ridge, after so many losses, politically unacceptable. The latter would have brought the wrath of the politicians and the press onto Haig’s head. Balancing these arguments, Haig concluded that the only viable option was to attack and hold Passchendaele for the winter.
Countering his resolve was the great destroyer, the rain. An intelligence summary on 7 October described part of the valley the men would have to cross as ‘saturated ground. Quite impassable. Should be avoided by all troops at all times.’51 On the morning of the 9th, when the next battle, at Poelcappelle, was scheduled to begin, the field had been reduced to something worse than the porridge of August. Spread out before their eyes, for all to see, was a landscape pocked with depressions of unknown depth, each filled with a stinking brown liquid, set in a mash of mud, bodies and debris thrown up by thousands upon thousands of explosions that had busted the ancient drainage system and scalped the crust of the earth. Over this, the Anzacs and British were now ordered to attack.
What followed produced such scenes of human and animal misery as to render superlatives meaningless and the descriptive powers of historians inert. ‘[N]othing that has been written is more than the pale image of the abomination of those battle-fields,’ wrote the war correspondent Philip Gibbs, ‘no pen or brush has yet achieved the picture of that Armageddon in which so many of our men perished.’52 Yet, to have any understanding of what these men went through, we must at least try to imagine the ineffable, and their eyewitness accounts together provide the best indication.
Tim Harington, Plumer’s chief of staff, told war correspondents on the eve of the Battle of Poelcappelle – the second step in the assault on Passchendaele Ridge – that the high ground was dry as a bone. If true, which it wasn’t, surely Harington spoke to German, not British, advantage? Bean, then in
his role as Australia’s official war correspondent, listened with dread to this recipe for a ‘classical tragedy’ in which the British commanders, in their eagerness to dismiss the Germans as a spent force, had overlooked the state of their own men.
‘I believe,’ Bean wrote, ‘the official attitude is that Passchendaele Ridge is so important that tomorrow’s attack is worth making whether it succeeds or fails. I suspect they are making a great bloody experiment …’ This ‘huge gamble’, he added, would rely wholly for its success on ‘German demoralisation’. Bean accused the generals of ‘playing with the morale of their troops’: ‘They don’t realise how … desperately hard it will be to fight down such opposition in the mud, rifles choked, [Lewis guns] out of action, men tired and slow …’ He plaintively concluded, ‘I thought the principle was to … “hit, hit, hit, whenever the weather is suitable”. If so, it is thrown over at the first temptation.’ With his usual prescience, Bean believed the commanders failed to see ‘how very strong our morale had to be to get through the last three fights’.53 The coming battles would fail, he feared.
Such warnings had no truck with Haig, for whom the capture of Passchendaele was becoming something of an obsession, the fulfilment of which trampled over any obstacle: exhaustion, the lack of guns and even pouring rain …
