Passchendaele in Perspective

Book Review

by Old Duffer

(Ed. Peter Liddle, Pen & Sword)

An alliterative assemblage accompanies authors, anguished and Australian who celebrate the Third Battle of Wipers. Just to run you through the Morally Outraged History of The War (which coincides with reality quite a lot) in 1914 the plucky Regulars give the Boches a nasty but very small shock. In 1915 the remaining regulars, Territorials and volunteers fight a number of learning battles without adequate shells at Loos, Neuve Chapelle etc. 1916 is the Somme and a lot of weeping and wailing at losses that look like an 18th century battle (something Britain very carefully left to Johnny Foreigner during that era). 1917 sees the French go over the edge under Charles Nivelle (Lloyd George's favourite general, for a while) leaving the Brits to step up to the plate before those appalling American appear in numbers (and equipped) to win the war - a prospect too ghastly to contemplate. Passchendaele was fought to break-through to Roulers, cut the rail network and link up with a landing to clear the U-boat pens on the Belgian coast. It opened with an enormous mine explosion at Messines under Daddy Plumer, followed by Gough mismanaging a series of big pushes, this necessitates the switch back to Plumer's command. His incremental methods of attacking required time, and this was running out as the weather worsened and the attack slowed yet more. The attacks went forward in smaller and smaller frontages petering out at the eponymous village. The length of the "battle", its ordeal by mud, and the continued protestations by generals that the breakthrough was about to occur left both Germans and British morally shattered but not broken. Although British tactics improved they frequently were not employed fully because of time limits (so attacks still ran into uncut wire). Similarly the Germans experimented with a number of responses (thin front-line, thick front-line) to no real solution to the mass of steel. Both sides bled profusely but did not bend. 1918 was the time for the latter.

Liddle has amassed thirty essays from a mixed bunch of authors which cover a very impressive range of topics. There are a number of duds, but the standard is high and the views wide-ranging, though mostly revisionist. Four essays take us through the context of the battle; militarily politically and in the views of the two High Commands. Nine essays go through British operational command; its tactics, the naval planning, the French Army operations, the operational management of Haig via Gough and Plumer, the weather (apparently not Haig's fault at all), and the RFC. Nine essays follow on the various forces; British (a useful summary of divisional employment), Australian (whinging naturally, but a useful specific against revisionism), Canucks, Kiwis, South Africans and German with notes on kit, morale and the style of the fighting. We then have two essays on how the battle was seen in the UK, and six on its legacy (including what the Belgians did about recovering the area). Brian Bond summarises very well in a way that will send you back to read some of the essays again.

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