Battle of Passchendaele

The British commander Douglas Haig launched the Third Battle of Ypres on 31 July 1917, hoping to break out of the Ypres salient and reach the Belgian coast. Heavy rain fell soon after the opening, and months of shelling had wrecked the drainage of the low ground, turning the battlefield into a sea of mud where men and guns sank. Careful, limited attacks in September gained ground at heavy cost, but the autumn rains returned and progress slowed to a crawl. In early November the Canadian Corps took the ruins of Passchendaele village, bringing the offensive to an end. The advance had gained only about eight kilometres, and the coast was never reached.

Passchendaele is the British Army's byword for futile slaughter, but historians have argued over that picture for decades. Some defend Haig's aims, pointing out that the offensive wore down a German army and relieved pressure on the French after their mutinies, and that bad weather, not folly, set the terms. Others argue the objectives were unrealistic and that the casualty ratio did not favour the attackers as once claimed. The German casualty figures are especially contested, since the army counted its losses differently from the British. The memory of the mud has also shaped how the war is imagined in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where the name still stands for mud and waste.