dispute over precise figures.
Passchendaele, like the Somme, represented a British victory on points and, also like the Somme, provides the historian with another stark confrontation between head and heart. It played its part in the wearing out of the German army, was not an unreasonable response to the situation confronting Haig in early 1917, and, given good weather and limited objectives, might have produced a respectable tactical victory: it is hard not to speculate what might have been the case had Plumer been in command from the start.96 Yet it did not produce a breakthrough, impose such a strain that the Germans collapsed, or prevent the Germans from launching, in March the following year, an offensive which so nearly won them the war.
And while its cost in human terms was actually lower than that of the Somme, it did more serious damage to British morale. Philip Gibbs wrote that: ‘For the first time the British army lost its spirit of optimism, and there was a sense of deadly depression among the many officers and men with whom I came in touch.’97 Charles Bean, then a war correspondent and later the Australian official historian, assessed that his countrymen were reaching the end of their tether. After attending a conference given by Plumer’s chief of staff in October he wrote: ‘They don’t realise how very strong our morale had to be to get through the last three fights.’98
However, two official surveys of censored mail concluded that morale remained sound, though one observed that in 2nd Army ‘the favourable and unfavourable letters were almost evenly balanced’.99 There was no sudden rise in infractions of discipline, and in the case of 5th Army, whose records are complete enough to enable us to form an opinion, convictions for self-inflicted wounds, desertion and absence without leave remained low. An unnamed young officer summed up the harsh paradox of 1917: the army was better trained but less confident.
I am certainly not the same as I was a year ago. I can no longer write home to you, as I once did, of victory. We just live for the day and think of little else but our job, the next show, and our billets and rations. I may be a better soldier and know my job better than I did, but I dare not think of anything beyond that. After all, just imagine my life out here: the chance of surviving the next battle for us platoon commanders is about 4 to 1 against!100
First-hand accounts leave us in no doubt of the horror of Third Ypres, but also hint at the mixture of natural discipline, loyalty and sheer endurance that kept men going. On 27 August Lieutenant Edwin Campion Vaughan of 8/Royal Warwicks advanced on a German pillbox, nicknamed Springfield, with the remnants of his company.
Up the road we staggered, shells bursting around us. A man stopped dead in front of me, and exasperated I cursed him and butted him with my knee. Very gently he said ‘I’m blind, sir,’ and turned to show me his eyes and nose torn away by a piece of shell. ‘Oh, God! I’m sorry, sonny,’ I said. ‘Keep going on the hard part,’ and left him staggering back in his darkness … Around us were numerous dead, and in the shell-holes where they had crawled for safety were wounded men. Many others, too weak to move, were lying where they had fallen and cheered us faintly as we passed: ‘Go on boys! Give ‘em hell!’ Several wounded men of the 8th Worcesters and 9th Warwicks jumped out of their shell-holes and joined us.
A tank had churned its way slowly round behind Springfield and opened fire; a moment later I looked and nothing remained of it but a heap of crumpled iron: it had been hit by a large shell. It was now almost dark and there was no firing from the enemy; ploughing across the final stretch of mud, I saw grenades bursting around the pillbox and a party of British rushed in from the other side. As we all closed in, the Boche garrison ran out with their hands up; in the confused party I recognised Reynolds of the 7th Battalion, who had been working forward all afternoon. We sent the 16 prisoners back but they had only gone a hundred yards when a German machine gun mowed them down.101
The inside of the pillbox was filled with ‘indescribable filth’, two dead Germans and a badly wounded one. He soon noticed that his servant, Private Dunham, was carrying, in addition to rifle, bayonet, and a ‘Christmas tree’ of webbing, a mud-soaked sandbag. ‘What the hell are you carrying in there, Dunham?’ he asked. ‘Your rabbit, Sir!’ he replied stoutly. ‘You said you would eat it on Langemarck Ridge.’
Private Albert Bullock was in the Hampshires when he arrived in France that September. He was posted to the Royal Warwicks at Rouen, and joined the 8th Battalion at Ypres on the 29th, two days after the exploit described above. ‘Colonel Carson gave us a talk on the attack,’ he wrote. ‘Didn’t understand it much.’ He was in action the next day.
Lay on ground for some time and could feel cold breeze from shells that were going overhead … 7 o’clock move up over Steinbeek Stream supposed to be but more of a stinking cess-pool. Got in a hole with three others. 6-inch shell pitched 6ft away gave me clout in the back with lump of dirt and half buried us but didn’t explode. Counter barrage falling heavily 20 yards behind us … 12 o’clock move up to original front line in reserve, can see Germans moving about easily on Passchendaele. Am shaking from head to foot through concussion of so many shells, feel very anxious to see all that’s going on so keep from feeling windy.
He lost his platoon commander five days later:
He was only 19 same as myself and was walking about on the top with only a stick, dressed in an ordinary private’s clothes as were all officers so as not to be picked off by the snipers – heard later that he was shot through the heart just after I saw him.
Sent back through the mud, Bullock
reached Winchester Farm after a struggle. It was an Advanced Aid Post, and was like a slaughterhouse. The RAMC corporal asked us to take a blind Gloster down to Habnor Farm, he was an old chap and seemed to know what was up with him, it was very pathetic.
Creature comforts and curiosity helped keep Bullock going. He became more cheerful when a ‘B Coy chap … daft with fear’ bolted and abandoned his pack after a shell half-buried them. ‘We dug ourselves out and went through his pack,’ he wrote. ‘Found 200 Woodbines.’ Things were even better when he was out of the line a few days later, guarding some prisoners. ‘Helped prisoners raid truck of rations,’ he wrote. ‘Applied for transfer to R[oyal] F[lying] C[orps]. Some hopes.’102
Gunner Aubrey Wade, a Royal Field Artillery signaller, crossed the Steenbeek on
a bridge, composed of a compact mass of human bodies over which I stepped gingerly. I was not at all squeamish, the sight of dead men having long lost its terror for me, but making use of corpses, even enemy corpses, for bridge-building purposes seemed about the limit of callousness. The Major said nothing, but stopped to light his pipe on the farther bank of the stream.103
When he got back to the gun-line he saw a sight as characteristic of the artillery battle as widespread lines of men were for the infantry.
A few yards away the guns were incessantly firing, their barrels red-hot, their breechblocks jamming and having to be opened with pickaxes for the next round; the gunners, faces blackened with oil-splashes and smoke, mechanically slamming home the shells and staring sore-eyed through the sights.104
But his spirits lifted as soon as his battery came out of the line.
What did it matter that we were rotten
