The Passchendaele Campaign, 1917

Andrew Rawson

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781526704009
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526704023
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la Grande-Bretagne

This is an account of the British Expeditionary Forces battles in the summer and autumn of 1917. It begins with the Allied plan to free up the Flanders coast, to limit German naval and submarine attacks on British shipping.The opening offensive began with the detonation of nineteen mines on 7 June and ended with the capture of the Messines Ridge. The main offensive started with success on 31 July but was soon bogged down due to the August rains. Three huge attacks between 20 September and 4 October had the Germans reeling, but again the weather intervened and the campaign concluded with futile attacks across the muddy slopes of the Passchendaele Ridge.Each large battle and minor action is given equal treatment, giving a detailed insight into the most talked about side of the campaign, the British side. There are details on the planning of each offensive and the changing tactics used by both sides. There is discussion about how the infantry, the artillery, the cavalry, the engineers and Royal Flying Corps worked together. Over sixty new maps chart the day-by-day progress of each battle and action.Together the narrative and maps provide an insight into the British Armys experience during this important campaign. The men who made a difference are mentioned; those who led the advances, those who stopped the counterattacks and those who were awarded the Victoria Cross. Discover the Passchendaele campaign and learn how the British Armys brave soldiers fought and died fighting for their objectives.

Chapter 1

A Growing Danger

The Plan for Flanders

Following the war of movement during the early months of the First World War, the front line settled down in October 1914. The British Expeditionary Force was transferred from the Aisne to Flanders, to shorten its logistics route, and it spent six weeks fighting against overwhelming numbers in the First Battle of Ypres. While some things could be acquired in France, soldiers, weapons and ammunition had to be shipped from England across the English Channel. The wounded had to be shipped back. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill was concerned that the German Navy would use the Flanders ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge as bases from which to attack the British convoys.

Churchill wanted the BEF to attack east of Ypres while the Royal Navy landed an invasion force on the Flanders coast. He suggested the idea to Field Marshal Sir John French, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, in December 1914. The commander of the French armies, General Joseph Joffre, was more concerned about defending Paris.

A German gas attack in April 1915, the first time chlorine gas was used, threatened to capture Ypres for a time but instead it just reduced the Salient to a much smaller area and the Flanders strategic situation did not change. The threat from the German Navy remained and the Admiralty announced it was ‘a growing danger’ in November 1915. The War Office’s General Staff, the Admiralty’s War Staff and the Dover Patrol’s staff (who tried to stop German shipping and submarines) studied how to get artillery in range of Ostend, either by advancing from Ypres or by landing on the coast.

The front available around Nieuport, on the coast, was too narrow, while draining the flooded River Yser either side of Dixmude would alert the Germans. General Sir Douglas Haig had just taken command of the BEF and he had a bigger scheme in mind, one which involved advancing northeast from Ypres, to clear the Germans from the whole Flanders coast.

First Army’s commander, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, was given the task of working out the details and he presented them on 13 January 1916. He suggested taking the plateau between Hooge and Gheluvelt first, before advancing north-east along the Passchendaele ridge. General Herbert Plumer, whose Second Army held the Ypres area, said they needed to capture Messines ridge, to the south of Ypres, first, to cover the flank of such an advance. His tunnellers had started digging three mines the previous August and another twenty tunnels had been started over the New Year period.

General Joffre soon agreed that the main British effort would be made in Flanders in the summer of 1916.

Rawlinson expanded his plan into six phases and it was issued on 5 March:

1) Capture Pilckem ridge, Gheluvelt plateau, Hill 60 and Messines ridge

2) Make a subsidiary attack around Neuve Chapelle, to draw attention from Flanders

3) Advance a mile east of Ypres

4) Advance across the Gheluvelt plateau and beyond Messines ridge

5) Clear the Passchendaele ridge, some 7 to 10 miles from Ypres

6) Advance towards Roulers and make a coastal attack at Nieuport

A month later General Plumer was asked to plan Second Army’s attack on Pilckem and Messines ridges, with a July date in mind.

But there were problems on the French front. The Germans had attacked on a 10-mile-wide front at Verdun on 21 February, advancing 3 miles towards the city in just three days. Two weeks later they extended their offensive to the west bank of the River Meuse. The advance had been stalled by the end of March but the huge number of casualties was wearing down the French army. On 27 March Joffre told Haig that he wanted the British to switch their main attack to the Somme where their two armies could fight side-by-side.

The BEF’s General Headquarters (GHQ) was still working on the Flanders scheme as plans for a battle on the Somme were pushed forward. On 16 May the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Lancelot Kiggell, confirmed General Rawlinson’s new Fourth Army would attack north of the River Somme while the French attacked south of the river.

The date was set for the end of June but General Plumer was still to plan an attack in Flanders in case the French could not fight on the Somme or if the attack failed. In either case, he planned to send Lieutenant General Sir Hubert Gough’s new Reserve Army north to Ypres. The Somme battle began on 1 July and while the French captured most of their objectives, the British only took a few, suffering 57,000 casualties on the first day. Despite the huge setback, Haig decided to continue Fourth Army’s attack while Gough’s Reserve Army took over part of its front. Second Army’s plans and its tunnels would have to wait until the following summer.

A Difficult Winter

The Somme campaign was coming to a close in October when Colonel Renouard of the French Operations Bureau and Brigadier General Davidson, head of GHQ’s Operations Branch, discussed plans for 1917. General Joffre was considering an attack between the Rivers Somme and Oise and he wanted Haig to do the same between Vimy and Bapaume. In mid-November, the two armies’ staffs met at the French general headquarters (Grand Quartier Général) in Chantilly. Joffre explained that the French Army was exhausted but the BEF was still growing, despite its huge losses on the Somme. It would soon have sixty-eight divisions supported by 1,500 heavy artillery pieces and British industry was able to provide enough ordnance and ammunition for them all. But the big unanswered question was, how much had the 1916 battles reduced German morale?

Haig, Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), and his Director of Military Operations, Major General Frederick Maurice, agreed they had to make attacks of a ‘decisive character’ on all fronts to divide the German reserves. General Sir Herbert Plumer was instructed to revise his plan for a Flanders offensive and prepare to capture the Messines ridge at only a month’s notice. He would submit one on 12 December and it had not changed.

The War Cabinet confirmed its interest in a Flanders operation on 23 November, stating there was no ‘greater importance than the expulsion of the enemy from the Belgian coast’. Robertson explained the consequences of leaving the coast in German hands to Joffre while the War Office wrote to the French asking for a Flanders offensive to be included in the plans for 1917. A meeting on 6 December confirmed there would be coordinated offensives on all fronts. However Russia was suffering political, military and economic problems and while the French wanted to increase their commitment in Macedonia, Robertson refused because of the difficult logistics.

December 1916 was a busy time on the political front. David Lloyd George replaced Herbert Asquith as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on the 5th. Lloyd George was a critic of Haig but he had to go along with the Unionists and the press, approving his promotion to Field Marshal at the end of the month. French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, reformed his government in December, creating a War Committee with President Raymond Poincaré at its head. Joffre resigned at the same time and his replacement, General Robert Nivelle, was famous for his defence of Verdun in the spring and summer of 1916. He immediately made optimistic promises for a huge attack in the spring.

Haig and Joffre agreed to a combined offensive on the Western Front at the end of February 1917 with the British attacking on the Somme and the French on the Aisne. Joffre also agreed there could then be a combined British and Belgian advance in Flanders followed by a landing by five divisions on the Flanders coast. Haig argued they should only land if the Ypres attack succeeded and that the BEF could only put two divisions ashore.

Lessons Learned

Many lessons had been learned during the Somme campaign. The artillery knew how to fire bogus barrages, to make the enemy gunners reveal their positions, and they used practice barrages to keep the enemy infantry on the alert. They also knew how different combinations of shrapnel and high-explosives worked while a new graze fuse, which exploded on contact rather than according to a timer, increased the effectiveness of their barrages.

The field artillery had been reorganised with many batteries formed into army field artillery brigades, so they could stay in action longer. It left each division with two mixed brigades, armed with 18-pounder and 4.5-inch howitzer batteries. The gunners had developed ways of firing an accurate creeping barrage which advanced at the optimum speed to suit the ground conditions. The infantry knew that staying close to (known as hugging) the exploding shells was the best way to survive. Communications had also been improved so defensive barrages, known as SOS barrages, could deal with counter-attacks.

Weather stations across France had been forwarding regular reports to GHQ for some time. Experiments had also shown that air temperature, wind speed and barometric pressure affected the artillery. GHQ issued weather corrections to the artillery on a daily basis, starting in January 1917. It was particularly helpful for making the creeping barrage more accurate.

Good infantry tactics had also been developed, with companies advancing in two waves. Each wave deployed its platoons in two lines and men were trained in specific tasks. The Lewis gunners and rifle bombers were trained to put down suppressive fire while the riflemen and bombers manoeuvred against the enemy position. Moppers up were detailed to deal with pockets of resistance and round up prisoners from dugouts. Other groups would carry equipment and ammunition forward to consolidate captured positions.

The Royal Flying Corps had thirty-six squadrons on the Western Front and there were another twelve squadrons fighting the Zeppelin menace over England. The Dover Patrol also had many planes patrolling the English Channel. Cooperation between the artillery and the Royal Flying Corps was always improving. There were increasing numbers of spotter planes equipped with wirelesses and crews were becoming more proficient at finding targets. Each corps had staff checking aerial photographs for targets and assessing damage, so they could keep the artillery busy.

Peace Proposals

By the end of 1916, the Chief of the German General Staff, General Paul von Hindenburg, and his Quartermaster General, General Erich Ludendorff, knew they had a problem. The Verdun and Somme campaigns had left the German armies short of men but the defeat of a Romanian attack in the autumn of 1916 had left them in a confident mood.

The main problem was that the Allied naval blockade was reducing the supplies reaching Germany to dangerous levels increasing the rationing which had been in place since the beginning of 1915. Meanwhile the Hindenburg Programme had been introduced in August 1916 to make every able-bodied man work for the war effort.

They considered a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare against the Allied merchant ships. It could bring Great Britain to the brink of starvation and force it to the peace table. But there was a danger it could also bring the United States of America into the war, if one of its ships was sunk. But Hindenburg and Ludendorff concluded that Great Britain could be forced to the peace table before an American army could be put into the field and it was a gamble they were prepared to take.

On 5 December 1916, Germany proposed peace discussions with the United States and the Holy See in Rome. The ambiguous offer was rejected and Germany used the refusal as an excuse to launch their submarine campaign. Two weeks later, President of the United States of America Woodrow Wilson suggested peace talks but the Allied governments refused to meet the Central Powers. Kaiser Wilhelm II issued the order to begin unrestricted submarine attacks on 9 January 1917 and the German Ambassador to the United States was handed his passport.

The Germany’s Unterseeboots, or U-Boats, went on the offensive on 1 February and their attacks were immediately successful. They sank nearly 500,000 tons of shipping in February and March while over 850,000 tons went to the bottom of the sea in April. It appeared the German plan could work.

But it was another unrelated development which caused the United States to declare war. The German Foreign Office had sent a telegram to their ambassador in Mexico suggesting an alliance between the two countries if America joined the Allied cause. British intelligence intercepted the telegram and it was published under the name of the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann. The Zimmermann telegram enraged public opinion across the United States, forcing President Wilson to declare war on 6 April.

Around the same time, France received a peace proposal from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Charles had become Emperor when his father Franz Joseph died in November 1916. He was also the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and believed they would be unable to fight much longer. Charles dismissed his Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf, and gave his brother-in-law Prince Sixte de Bourbon-Parma (an officer in the Belgian Army) a letter suggesting a separate peace deal. It reached President Raymond Poincaré in March 1917 but the secret negotiations failed. The letter would drive a wedge between Germany and Austria when it became public knowledge in April 1918.

Nivelle’s Spring Plan

On 20 December, General Nivelle met General Haig, knowing that he was about to replace Joffre. He wanted the BEF to take control of twenty miles of the Somme front, to release reserves so the French armies could break the German line on the Aisne. The British could attack after the French had broken through and their converging attacks would force the Germans to abandon around seventy miles of front either side of Compiègne.

Haig only wanted to take control of ten miles of trenches from the French, so the BEF could keep probing the German line. He also wanted to hand the sector back if the French offensive failed, so he had reserves for the Flanders offensive. Nivelle was annoyed by Haig’s suggestion and the British proposal was withdrawn during Nivelle’s visit on New Year’s Eve.

At the Inter-Allied Conference in Rome Lloyd George suggested sending 500 British and French heavy guns to Italy but everyone unanimously rejected the idea. Haig and Nivelle agreed at the next meeting in London on 15 January that the BEF would take control of twenty miles of front so the French would attack around 1 April. The politicians met again in Calais at the end of February and Robertson threatened to resign when Lloyd George suggested Nivelle should have authority over Haig. Instead the Calais Agreement stated that the British would give the French their full support during their offensive.

Haig was worried the Flanders plan would be shelved now the French were in charge while Nivelle was concerned about the British commitment to his plans. So both Haig and Nivelle were called to London on 13 March to sign an agreement pledging their support for the plans for 1917. Haig then told the War Cabinet how the BEF would make a spring offensive at Arras and a summer offensive in Flanders.

Nivelles plan for 1917 before the Germans withdrew.

The German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Regimental Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 A Growing Danger
• Chapter 2 Hell Itself Burst Forth
• Chapter 3 Each a Volcano in Itself
• Chapter 4 More Like a Picnic than a Battle
• Chapter 5 A Change from Going Over the Top
• Chapter 6 Every Time a Coconut
• Chapter 7 A Perfect Inferno
• Chapter 8 A Very Weak and Disorganised State
• Chapter 9 Hard Going Through the Mud
• Chapter 10 Bite and Hold
• Chapter 11 A Killing by the Artillery
• Chapter 12 Like Spectres Out of the Mist
• Chapter 13 Everything is Absolutely Très Bon
• Chapter 14 Men Plunged Onward into the Sticky Gloom
• Chapter 15 A Great Keenness and Determination
• Chapter 16 Like Beaters on a Pheasant Shoot
• Chapter 17 An Incredible Degree of Mismanagement
• Chapter 18 Rain is Our Most Effective Ally
• Chapter 19 No Troops Have Had to Face Worse Conditions
• Chapter 20 They Touched Bottom in the Way of Misery
• Conclusions on the Campaign
• Plate section