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20th July, 2017 in Military
By Chris McNab
In 1914, as war crept across the Flanders landscape, few people in Ypres could have conceived that their streets and fields would remain a battlefield for the next four years.
By early July the preparations for the forthcoming offensive were well under way.
On the evening of 30 July 1917, all British forces were in their place around the Ypres Salient, hearts thumping hard and anxiously behind khaki tunics. The Battle of Pilckem Ridge, which started at 3:50am on 31 July 1917, marked the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres.
The conditions in which men fought and died were dreadful beyond belief, especially once the rains set in.
The individual tragedies of the Battle of Passchendaele are legion, tens of thousands of men condemned to die in a pitiless landscape, a long way from the place that they call home.
Today, Passchendaele is a quiet and peaceful village in Flanders. Yet such is the violence of what occurred in the village and in Flanders a century ago, that the war has left an indelible mark.
Extracted from Passchendaele 1917 by Chris McNab, and with thanks to AirSeaLand Photos Limited (unless otherwise stated).
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