British fired 4,500,000 shells into the carefully-layered German defences opposite Ypres. It began the process which was to reduce the area to an abomination of desolation, doing serious damage to German positions but in the process destroying the land drainage system. The Tank Corps maintained a ‘swamp map’ to show those areas which were impassable to tanks, and whose extent was soon expanding alarmingly. Haig is sometimes accused of wanton disregard for weather conditions in Flanders, but it is clear from John Hussey’s painstaking work that the British were to be extraordinarily unlucky with the weather: both August and October were abnormally wet.89 Nor is it true that commanders were unaware of the conditions at the front. The story of a senior officer (generally identified as Kiggell, Haig’s chief of staff) asking: ‘Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?’ and then breaking down in tears has been comprehensively debunked, but still retains wide currency.90
On 1 August Haig noted in his diary ‘a terrible day of rain. The ground is like a bog.’ And in October John Charteris, well forward to watch an attack, acknowledged: ‘the saddest day of the year. It was not the enemy but the mud that prevented us from doing better … Yesterday afternoon was utterly damnable. I got back very late and could not work, could not rest.’91 Finally, this chilling description comes not from one of Haig’s critics, but from his own despatches.
The low-lying, clayey soil, torn by shells and sodden with rain, turned to a succession of vast muddy pools. The valleys of the choked and overflowing streams were speedily transformed into long stretches of bog, impassable except by a few well-defined tracks … To leave these tracks was to risk death by drowning, and in the course of the subsequent fighting on several occasions both men and pack animals were lost in this way …92
Gough’s infantry went forward early on the morning of 31 July. By the day’s end they had advanced an average of 3,000 yards at a cost of 30,000 casualties. With an ugly foretaste of what was to come, the weather was appalling, and by nightfall a gunner officer reported that some of the infantry were up to their waists in water. There were successive attacks through July and on into August, characterised by determined German resistance and the growing dominance of British artillery. A snapshot from a single action, officially part of the Battle of Langemarck, though we may doubt if this would have been clear to the men who fought in it, describes what the fighting was like for one particular unit, 12/King’s Royal Rifle Corps, a New Army battalion of 20th (Light) Division.
Aug 15th 12 noon – 8.00 pm
Battalion paraded in full Battle order, and marched independently to the assembly place, A/Capt A.D. Thornton-Smith DSO, had marked out with tape the alignment for each platoon and no difficulty was experienced in forming up. Battalion HQ were established in a small house 400 yards short of the STEENBEEK. The enemy was shelling fairly hard and B Coy sustained casualties at this point.
Aug 16th 4.45 am
ZERO HOUR – The barrage which was terrific at this moment, lifted at Zero – 5 and the Oxfords were busy mopping up AU BON GITE, with the 6th KSLI on our Right and the 12th King’s Liverpools on our Left we advanced to the BLUE LINE, about 3/400 yards short of LANGEMARCK. During this advance and a 20 minute halt in the BLUE LINE, we were subject to very heavy Machine gun fire and suffered many casualties to both Officers and men, including the CO Lt Col R. U. H. Prioleau MC (Wounded). Capt T. Lycett, our Adjutant, was then in command, and noticing a Concrete Blockhouse on our left which was holding up the advance of the 61st Brigade, and was also causing heavy casualties with MG fire to our own men, he ordered Sergt Cooper, who was in command of a platoon of A Coy (Lieut E. D. Brown having been killed) to go for it. Sergt Cooper with four men, got to within 100 yards of the Blockhouse, through a perfect hail of bullets and tried to silence the guns with Rifle fire. Finding this of no avail, he dashed at the Blockhouse, and captured it with 45 prisoners and seven machine guns, a most gallant deed for which he has been recommended for the VC …
The barrage ‘started to creep forward’ once more at 5.45, and the battalion advanced in ‘artillery formation’ company by company, with men well spaced, to the Green Line just east of Langemarck. There it shook out into line and assaulted the Red Line, and took its final objective at 7.50. Just after midday a counterattack rolled in.
Fire was brought to bear on them with good effect and the Brigade were informed of the situation. Orders were issued that our positions were to be kept at all costs … the SOS was sent at 4.15 pm Our guns responded immediately but the enemy were in very superior numbers. The weight of the counterattack seemed to be directed against the 12th King’s Liverpools on our left and, after a gallant fight, they were forced to give ground. This let the enemy in on our left and our advanced posts had been driven in. The enemy bombed up our trench and our left Company B was practically wiped out – Capt T. Dove MC was killed, 2/Lt W. F. Munsey severely wounded and a few men were taken prisoners. A defensive flank was thrown back and touch again established with 12th King’s Liverpools … Consolidation was continued during the night …
The battalion was relieved by 10/Welsh on the morning of 19 August, and returned to Malakoff Farm whence it had departed on the 15th. ‘Very tired but cheery,’ reported its diarist, ‘and after a good meal everyone turned in for a good sleep.’ It had lost five officers killed, one died of wounds, two wounded and missing and three wounded. Forty soldiers were killed and another seventeen died of wounds: forty-seven were missing, and 134 wounded. Sergeant Cooper duly received his Victoria Cross and died in his bed as a retired major. Arthur Thornton-Smith did not live to see his acting captaincy confirmed, but was killed in the first advance. He has no known grave, but is commemorated, with so many of his regiment’s dead, on the Tyne Cot memorial.93
The weather continued to be filthy. On 27 August Corporal Robert Chambers of the Bedfordshire Regiment wrote in his diary: ‘Raining like fury. Everywhere a quagmire. Fancy fighting the Germans for land like this. If it were mine I’d give them the whole damn rotten country.’94 In the middle of the month Gough visited Haig to announce that ‘tactical success was not possible and would be too costly under these conditions’, and recommended that the attack should be abandoned. Haig disagreed. Buoyed up by Charteris’s assertion that German manpower was wilting under the strain, he was determined to continue the battle, but decided to entrust the main thrust to the methodical Plumer.
The next phase of the battle began well. The weather improved, and 2nd Army’s careful preparation helped the first attack, launched on 20 September, to take most of its objectives and break up German counterattacks with artillery fire. On 26 September the Australians took Polygon Wood, squarely in the middle of the battlefield, and on 4 October Plumer’s men pressed even deeper, with 5th Army keeping pace on their left. By now both the army commanders felt that the weather made any continuation of the advance impossible, and told Haig so. Haig disagreed again. This decision is even more controversial than that of mid-August. Although the balance of historical opinion is now set against Haig on the issue, the Australian Official History suggests. ‘Let the student, looking at the prospect as it appeared at noon on 4th October, ask himself: “In view of three step-by-step blows all successful, what will be the result of three more in the next fortnight?”’95
The last phase of the fighting, formally christened the battles of Poelcappelle and Passchendaele, eventually took the British onto Passchendaele Ridge: the village was taken by the Canadians on 6 November. By now it was clear that no further advance could be expected. The project for the amphibious landing, already badly disrupted by German artillery attack on British positions at Nieuport, was shelved in October when Haig realised that its essential precondition, British capture of Roulers, would not now
