Today is the Anniversary of the Third Battle of Ypres, often (wrongly) called the Battle of Passchendaele, after the final village in Flanders that was taken in a snowstorm by Canadian troops at the end of the engagement in November 1917.
It was a battle of contrasts with some success in its early stages, but all too often this was coupled with terrible losses: the 31 July 1917 was the deadliest day at Ypres during all four years of the war there for British and Commonwealth soldiers, when more than 6,200 died on that first day of the battle.
Third Ypres is a battle known for rain which soaked the Flanders fields; ground pulverised by shell fire, a fatal combination which turned the battlefield into a vast muddy wasteland of shell craters. Yet on some days it was so hot the ground was baked hard, and shells bounced off.
Veteran Walter Cook, who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps, describes what we might see as typical conditions during that summer of 1917 (IWM sound archives):
It rained for three solid weeks and the plight of the men in the trenches in the northern part of Belgium was absolutely impossible. It was so impossible that the men coming out of the trenches who were wounded had to get rid of their kilts because they couldn’t walk because the pleats were covered in this horrible slime which made such a weight. I’ve never seen conditions like it; in every trench it was two feet of water!
Today the Flanders landscape has recovered after more than a century, but as the summer crops are lifted in the low fields around Ypres, the plough turns that shattered earth once more and the detritus of war emerges - the ‘ Iron Harvest’ of shells, grenades and mortar rounds, which still claim their victims.
At Ypres, there are days when it feels like the Great War has never ended.
Excellent rundown