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The Battles of Ypres 1917 also known as the Third Battle of Ypres or
"Passchendaele"
For obvious reasons to English speakers, "Passchendaele" - the name of a village, today spelled Passendale - invoked images of bloody sacrifice to many who were there. "Passion dale". This picture of blood red flowers was taken at the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing, which is located on the battlefield and which bears the names of some 35000 of those who died and who have no known grave.
We
had been behind St Julien in the gas attack in 1915. Now I wouldn't
have recognised the place. The whole area was utterly devastated,
just a few bits of foundations left. There was no trace of the farms
and barns that were there in 1915, nothing but this ocean of mud and
dumps and a few battered pillboxes. 41217 Gunner J. J. Brown, Canadian Field Artillery
Why did the British Army attack at Ypres in 1917?
Haig
plans to attack in Flanders - with three good reasons |
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The British Armies in France were commanded
by Sir Douglas Haig.
The operation in its first stages was a very difficult one, and in 1916 I had judged that the general situation was not yet ripe to attempt it. In the summer of 1917, however, as larger forces would be at my disposal, and as, in the Somme battle, our new Armies had proved their ability to overcome the enemy's strongest defences, and had lowered his power of resistance, I considered myself justified in undertaking it. Various preliminary steps had already been taken, including the necessary development of railways in the area, which had been proceeding quietly from early in 1916".
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Haig had been planning to attack in Flanders in order to improve the tactical situation round Ypres virtually since the day he took over as Commander-in-Chief in late 1915. As early as 7 January 1916 he instructed Fourth Army to work out a scheme. It was French commander-in-chief Joffre's preference for an attack on the Somme that year that caused Haig to shelve the Flanders plan. It was also French thinking - this time Joffre's replacement, Nivelle - that caused the British to attack at Arras in April 1917. You might speculate what might have happened had the British army avoided the tough nuts of the Somme and Arras, and advanced at Ypres in 1916, long before the German army ringed it with impregnable concrete pillboxes. But it could not have done so. Until mid 1917, Britain was the junior partner in the land war, in coalition with France. The British army had to date been squandered in battles ordered by the French. Now, other than the highly successful Messines attack, Haig was having his own way for the first time.
The
failure of Nivelle's offensive in spring 1917 had caused terrible
disappointment in France, which was becoming war weary. Many French
units refused to fight other than defensively and in many units there
was mutiny. Haig knew this and took responsibility
for ensuring German attentions were elsewhere. Heavy
German attack on the French in the summer of 1917 might have proved
disastrous.
At the same time, British shipping losses to U-Boat actions
were crippling and there was much pressure from the Royal Navy for
the army to recapture the Belgian coast where some of the U-Boat
bases were.
Haig was fully supported by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
Sir William Robertson.
PM
David Lloyd George unsupportive but fails to stop the enterprise |
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The British Prime Minister was David Lloyd George. Later (his memoirs being written after Haig was dead and unable to defend himself) he said that the battle "with the Somme and Verdun, will always rank as the most gigantic, tenacious, grim, futile and bloody fights ever waged in the history of war".
On 19 June 1917, shortly after Second Army
completed the capture of the vital Messines Ridge, Haig presented
the plan for the battle to DLG and other members of the government. Lloyd
George had misgivings but gave assent.
In May 1917, after the Nivelle offensive of which he had been such a loud proponent had failed, Lloyd George had said "We must go on hitting and hitting with all our might". Passchendaele was this attitude turned blood red and the PM shares with Haig and Robertson the blame for the cost of the battle.
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Haig's plan was, like that of the Somme a year before, a confusing mix of practical, short and achievable objectives with optimism that suggested breakthrough, exploitation and winning the war. In some ways, the plan was strategic - for example, as soon as the advance from Ypres was underway there would be an amphibious landing on the coast, "Operation Hush".
Which British units took part?
> Order of battle for the various phases of Passchendaele
What happened?
The Battle of Pilkem, 31 July to 2 August
1917
Subsequent sections will be added in due course
In the end, none of the strategic ambitions were achieved. There was no breakthrough. As on the Somme, the fight bogged down into a yard-by-yard, bitter struggle. Many said at the time that it should be halted and one of the most serious enduring criticisms of Haig remains that he pressed on too long, and at terrible human cost for both sides. By early November, Passchendaele - a matter of a few miles from the start - had been captured. A tactical position even worse than that before the battle was now bring held by the British and in April 1918 the whole area taken in 1917 was given up, virtually without a fight. For the first time, too, the morale of the British army fell.
“Reinforcements of the new armies shambled up past the
guns with dragging steps and the expressions of men who knew
they were going to certain death. No words of greeting
passed as they slouched along; in sullen silence they filed past
one by one to the sacrifice”.
Aubrey Wade, "The war of the guns" |
But the grinding of the German army would also have its eventual effect and there is little doubt that the losses and the tactical changes that Passchendaele wrought contributed directly to eventual victory.
Battle maps
The northern flank of the Western Front before Third Ypres
Successive
stages of the Third Ypres advance
Casualties
British
losses during the period 31 July to 10 November 1917 were reported
to the Supreme War Council on 25 February 1918. The figures used at
that time were 244,897 killed, wounded, missing and sick. This includes
casualties of German air raids behind the fighting zone.
German
casualties have never been reported in detail. The British Official History
speculates that enemy losses were about 400,000.
Viewpoint
“The British campaign in Flanders in 1917 was in no
sense a pinnacle of the military art. Rather, it flew in the
face of much that had already become evident about the correct
conduct of the war. Nevertheless the nature of the [German] regime
and the state-power against which that campaign was directed
rendered persistence in fighting, if not in this manner then
against this foe, not an option but a dire necessity".
Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, in "Passchendaele: the untold story" (London: Yale University Press, 2001) |
Next battle
As Third Ypres was closing down, plans for Cambrai took shape