The town itself, located in the map center, has been reduced to a chaotic labyrinth of half-standing masonry, blasted mounds of timber and all manner of other debris. To subscribe to the magazine, click here. When the German offensive failed, Falkenhayn ordered the capture of Ypres to gain a local advantage. [53] Lieutenant-Colonel Albrecht von Thaer, Chief of Staff of Gruppe Wijtschate (Group Wytschaete, the headquarters of the IX Reserve Corps), noted that casualties after 14 days in the line averaged 1,500–2,000 men, compared to 4,000 men on the Somme in 1916 and that German troop morale was higher than the year before. The attackers on the southern flank quickly captured Crest Farm and sent patrols beyond the final objective into Passchendaele. Passchendaele is a rural locality in the Southern Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. United Kingdom and New Zealand servicemen who died after that date are named on the memorial at Tyne Cot Cemetery. Click here to purchase the back issue and read the full feature. The 3rd Canadian Division captured Vapour Farm on the corps boundary, Furst Farm to the west of Meetcheele and the crossroads at Meetcheele but remained short of its objective. [10], In January 1916, Plumer began to plan offensives against Messines Ridge, Lille and Houthulst Forest. New Zealand machine-gunners repulsed a counter-attack but the New Zealand infantry were 150 yd (140 m) short of the first objective; another attempt after dark was cancelled because of the full moon and the arrival of German reinforcements. Boff wrote that this narrative was facile and that it avoided the problem faced by the Germans in late 1917. Encouraged by the Allies' capture of the Messine Ridge on 7 June, where the British exploded 19 underground mines before successfully storming the ridge, Haig decided to launch the offensive from the British-held Ypres salient. [157] Conditions in the salient improved with the completion of transport routes and the refurbishment of German pillboxes. Sporadic fighting continued into October, adding to the German difficulties on the Western Front and elsewhere. [32] On 14 February 1917, Colonel Norman MacMullen of GHQ proposed that the plateau be taken by a massed tank attack, reducing the need for artillery; in April a reconnaissance by Captain Giffard LeQuesne Martel found that the area was unsuitable for tanks. The noise of the British assembly and the difficulty of moving across muddy and waterlogged ground had also alerted the Germans. The Third Battle of Ypres (German: Dritte Flandernschlacht; French: Troisième Bataille des Flandres; Dutch: Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (/ˈpæʃəndeɪl/), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the Allies against the German Empire. Haig preferred an advance from Ypres, to bypass the flooded area around the Yser and the coast, before attempting a coastal attack to clear the coast to the Dutch border. Each brigade spent four days in the front line, four in support and four in reserve. [18] On 1 May 1917, Haig wrote that the Nivelle Offensive had weakened the German army but that an attempt at a decisive blow would be premature. The Canadian operation was to be three limited attacks, on 26 October, 30 October and 6 November. During the morning, Gough had told the Fifth Army corps commanders to push on but when reports arrived of a repulse at 19 Metre Hill, the order was cancelled. This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. A New Zealand advance of 600 yd (550 m) on a 400 yd (370 m) front, would shield the area north of the Reutelbeek stream from German observers on the Gheluvelt spur. Systematic defensive artillery-fire was forfeited by the Germans, due to uncertainty over the position of their infantry, just when the British infantry benefited from the opposite. [103], Unternehmen Hohensturm (Operation High Storm) was planned by Gruppe Ypern to recapture the Tokio Spur from Zonnebeke south to Molenaarelsthoek at the eastern edge of Polygon Wood on 3 October. On 9 June, Crown Prince Rupprecht proposed a withdrawal to the Flandern line east of Messines. Passchendaele State Forest is a forest reserve in Queensland and has an elevation of 905 metres. The shorter and quicker advances possible once the ground dried, were intended to be consolidated on tactically advantageous ground, especially on any reverse slopes in the area, with the infantry still in contact with the artillery and aircraft, ready to repulse counter-attacks. [65], In Field Marshal Earl Haig (1929), Brigadier-General John Charteris, the BEF Chief of Intelligence from 1915 to 1918, wrote that. The 98th Brigade was to advance and cover the right flank of the 5th Australian Division and the 100th Brigade was to re-capture the lost ground further south. The high point of the ridge is at Wytschaete, 7,000 yd (4.0 mi; 6.4 km) from Ypres, while at Hollebeke the ridge is 4,000 yd (2.3 mi; 3.7 km) distant and recedes to 7,000 yd (4.0 mi; 6.4 km) at Polygon Wood. The British Army and German Empire are the opposing forces for Passchendaele. [151], Leon Wolff, writing in 1958, gave German casualties as 270,713 and British casualties as 448,688. However, three battles in early autumn eventually gave the British the upper hand: the Battle of Menin Road Ridge (which began on 20 September) the Battle of Polygon Wood (on 26 September) and the Battle of Broodseinde (on 4 October) , which established Allied possession of the ridge east of Ypres. [113] All of the German divisions holding front zones were relieved and an extra division brought forward, because the British advances had lengthened the front line. [146] In 1940, C. R. M. F. Cruttwell recorded 300,000 British casualties and 400,000 German. The tempo of British attacks and the effect of attrition meant that although six divisions were sent to the 4th Army by 10 October, they were either novice units deficient in training or veteran formations with low morale after earlier defeats; good divisions had been diluted with too many replacements. [45], Haig selected Gough to command the offensive on 30 April, and on 10 June Gough and the Fifth Army headquarters took over the Ypres salient north of Messines Ridge. [29] A study of weather data recorded at Lille, 16 mi (26 km) from Ypres from 1867–1916, published in 1989, showed that August was more often dry than wet, that there was a trend towards dry autumns (September–November) and that average rainfall in October had decreased since the 1860s. German and British forces became locked in a mud-drenched stalemate for a month and a half, with Australian and New Zealand divisions joining the British in September. Divided into two ten-day and an eleven-day period, there were 53.6, 32.4 and 41.3 mm (2, 1 and 2 in) of rain; in the 61 hours before 6:00 p.m. on 31 July, 12.5 mm (0 in) fell. From 1901 to 1916, records from a weather station at Cap Gris Nez showed that 65 percent of August days were dry and that from 1913 to 1916, there were 26, 23, 23 and 21 rainless days and monthly rainfall of 17, 28, 22 and 96 mm (0.67, 1.10, 0.87 and 3.78 in); ...during the summers preceding the Flanders campaign August days were more often dry than wet. Roads and light railways were extended to the new front line, to allow artillery and ammunition to be moved forward. [60], On the higher ground, the Germans continued to inflict many losses on the British divisions beyond Langemarck but on 19 August, after two fine dry days, XVIII Corps conducted a novel infantry, tank, aircraft and artillery operation. Can you tell us more about the information on this page? The commanders agreed on a strategy of simultaneous attacks, to overwhelm the Central Powers on the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts, by the first fortnight of February 1917. Byng wanted the operations at Ypres continued, to hold German troops in Flanders. Reserve battalions moved back behind the artillery protective line and the Eingreif divisions were organised to intervene as swiftly as possible once an attack commenced, despite the risk of British artillery-fire. The Prime Minister David Lloyd George disapproved of the plan, only allowing it to happen as there were no other credible ideas at the time.