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Topic: Passchendaele (Read 958 times)
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Mike Blais
SSM (NATO Bar), CPSM, UN-Cyp, CD
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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Let we forget the valour of those who carried the torch before us....
Pro Patria.
Passchendaele horror remembered
Half a million dead, wounded or missing after five-month battle ended
July 12, 2007
Canadian Press
PASSCHENDAELE, Belgium – Soldiers from Britain, Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth countries killed 90 years ago in one the First World War's bloodiest battles were honoured today by the Queen, Belgian royals and thousands of other dignitaries and onlookers.
Despite windy and wet conditions, around 4,000 locals and visitors attended with the British monarch, Commonwealth leaders and their host, Belgium's Queen Paola a solemn commemoration just outside this tiny village at Tyne Cot military cemetery.
Canada was represented by Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson and Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.
While mournful bagpipes played, the royals and officials from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries laid wreaths of remembrance to those who fought and died in the Battle of Passchendaele, described by historians as one of the greatest slaughters of the war.
The wreaths were put at the foot of a large white cross cenotaph that dominates the vast gravesite. A vintage biplane flew overhead and spread red poppy petals over Tyne Cot in tribute to the dead.
The ceremony also included prayers, poems and hymns to mark the last of several large battles that pitted soldiers from Britain and its former colonies against Germany on the war's western front.
Some 500,000 soldiers were either dead, wounded or missing at the end of the battle that raged from July to November 1917.
"Not one family was left untouched by the First World War" in Scotland, said Isla St. Clair, who had relatives that fought here and who sung two hymns during the ceremony.
Rupert Forrester, 18, from Leeds, England, whose ancestors fought near Tyne Cot, said the anniversary has led him to discover a lot about his family ties to Passchendaele.
"My great great grandfather Harry and Ronald his son ... they both died on the same day," Forrester said. "We found the story of how they died and it has meant a lot more to us now."
The two were listed as missing but are both commemorated on the Tyne Cot's wall of memorial.
The cemetery at Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth military burial site in the world, located just a few kilometres from the tiny village of Passchendaele, which gave its name to one of the last battles of attrition of the war.
The Queen, dressed in a purple overcoat and purple hat, along with other dignitaries also opened a new visitors centre at the cemetery, which was originally a fortification used by the Germans against advancing British-led forces in 1917.
Many among the crowd at the cemetery had family links to the battle.
"My father told me about the mud, the rain and the men dying in shell holes full of water, drowning," said Joe Hubble, 75, a retired member of the Black Watch Regiment, from Kent in southeast England. He visits Flanders Fields every year.
"It means everything for me to be here at this moment," said 15-year-old Nicola Plews, member of an military cadet group from Australia, which helped form an honour guard today at Tyne Cot.
Also attending the anniversary was the Australia's governor general, Maj.-Gen. Michael Jeffery, and New Zealand's governor general, Anand Satyanand.
There are 12,000 graves and 35,000 names of missing persons engraved on memorial walls at Tyne Cot, situated on a ridge captured by Australian forces during the battle in 1917. It overlooks the nearby city of Ieper that was better known to the soldiers of 1914-18 by its French name, Ypres.
Ahead of attending the Tyne Cot ceremony, the Queen layed a wreath at the famous Menen Gate war memorial located in Ieper while buglers played the "Last Post."
The arched limestone gate, which marks its 80th anniversary this year, has 55,000 names of missing soldiers engraved on its walls.
Tyne Cot and the Menen Gate draw 200,000 war pilgrims a year, who also visit the 30 other smaller monuments and numerous military grave sites that dot the region.
Dubbed "road to Passiondale" by incoming reinforcements, the battle became a symbol of utter destruction and senseless killing in brutal trench warfare carried out in days of endless rain, back and forth volleys of millions of shells creating a cratered landscape littered with dead bodies and flattened villages.
It also saw the first use of mustard gas. Even now, the remains of soldiers, bombs and gas canisters are still dug up every year by farmers plowing the region's fields.
"Passchendaele is the lowest of the low, it's the place in popular memory where the general sends the soldier off to die, in fruitless battles where soldiers are slaughtered in the mud, held up by wire and more troops are behind them," said Tim Cook, a Canadian war historian.
The battle was called to a halt after Canadian reinforcements replaced devastated British, Australian and New Zealand units near Passchendaele and captured the ruined village on Nov. 10, 1917.
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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Mike Blais
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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BATTLE ANNIVERSARY
The Globe and Mail
A muted lesson from Passchendaele
Wasteful slaughter in Belgium was larger than Vimy, but draws far less attention
July 12, 2007
ZONNEBEKE, BELGIUM -- It was the bloodiest moment in Canadian history. Nine decades ago, 100,000 young Canadian men were ordered to throw themselves at an insignificant looking hillock, and after three weeks, they had captured a two-kilometre stretch of mud and corpses, at a cost of about 16,000 casualties.
It marked the final victory in the battle of Passchendaele, a Belgian village that has become a byword for senseless slaughter, after a quarter of a million English-speaking soldiers lost their lives or their limbs in a largely pointless four-month battle.
After British, Australian and New Zealand forces had been decimated, it was the Canadians who finally won it. But when the 90th anniversary of the battle is commemorated in Belgium today, the Canadian presence will be surprisingly small and muted.
The reasons, it seems, have everything to do with another war taking place in another century. The NATO headquarters is only an hour's drive from the farm-field soil that still holds 2,000 unrecovered Canadian corpses, and there is no desire for Ottawa to draw much attention to this prominent piece of history today.
Back in April, Ottawa spent millions on an enormous live television gala at the site of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the French hill that Canadians successfully conquered in a much smaller 1917 operation.
At Vimy, thousands of schoolchildren and veterans were flown over, the site's monument was spruced up at great cost and Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a prominent speech that implicitly linked the sacrifice at Vimy to current Canadian efforts in Afghanistan.
In comparison, the Canadian government will be represented at Passchendaele today by the ministers of Indian and Northern Affairs and Veterans Affairs. There will be no television. Ottawa's expenditures are largely limited to a small and intelligently designed interpretive display, erected on the battlefield by the National War Museum, at a total cost of less than $60,000.
"It was all we could do," said one Canadian official involved with the commemoration, which will be attended by the Queen and is the subject of media attention in Britain. "They told us they'd spent all the money at Vimy, and that was it for us."
Historians say that it is a familiar pattern.
"When countries make monuments to battles, they don't put them in the places where the best fighting was done or the most people died - they usually pick the ones that can offer inspiring lessons for the wars being fought today," said Franky Bostyn, curator of the Belgian-run Passchendaele museum, which contains reproductions of the battle's putrid dugouts and trenches.
The Passchendaele victory is considered by many to be Canada's bravest and most skillful military success, and also the country's most tragic. It won Canadians the largest number of Victoria Crosses for bravery and established a reputation for the Canadian corps as the toughest and most successful storm troopers in the war.
Vimy Ridge has long been used as a propaganda point by Canadian governments, just as the largest and more bloody Canadian role in Passchendaele, Arleux, Fresnoy, and Hill 70 have been played down. Vimy is the site of a park and a Canadian-funded monument that serves as a shrine to Canadian sacrifice.
Historians point out that there is a clear reason for this: Vimy offers the lesson that military sacrifice is worth it in the end. Passchendaele offers another, potentially relevant lesson: that military endeavours are enormously wasteful if they serve no greater end.
"I think that the lesson of Passchendaele is that when you enter a war, there have to be clear objectives - and in the heat of fighting, when you are losing many lives, it is very dangerous to lose sight of those objectives." Mr. Bostyn said. "It's a lesson that's being forgotten in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Less than a year after the Passchendaele victory, in which about 5,000 Canadians died, the hill was surrendered without a fight to the Germans, the British leaders having realized it had no strategic value.
"I think it's important that Canada has a presence here. We had a presence on the battle field 90 years ago. It's the low point; it doesn't get any worse than this - this is the bog of mud and bodies. It's hard to imagine 16,000 casualties to capture a tiny target," said Tim Cook, the National War Museum historian who designed the interpretive display.
"Within the context of the war, this is what the Canadians were called upon to do; this is what they did. It tempered Canada - we went through something terrible and we came out the other side. It nearly ruined us and it caused crises that lasted for decades. But in its own way, as much as Vimy, it shaped us as a nation."
BATTLE OF THE AGES
While the Battle of Vimy Ridge is remembered as one of Canada's greatest military triumphs, the Battle of Passchendaele is considered one of Canada's most costly and brutal victories.
SOURCES: DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE, CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
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Thanks Mike, this one is a great read and hope all will take the time. From what i have been able to learn this last Battle at Paeschendale was largely as you say here.. sensless, in the fact that there was nothing to be gained... it seems a lot of commanders did not know what else to do, but i think they were probing to find ways to get the battle out in the open, into an offensive , to tyr to conclude things... and it did much that way, with battles that folowed being offensive as opposed to defensive and try for a bit of ground....Amiens in 1918 , was a resounding succes for the allies, and my belief is that it had alot to do with Paesschendale learnings... and i must add to any that are interested, there are many more facts coming forward to this day with archival material being studied and lost facts found... some good books i am at these days..there is ' Europes Last Summer' by David Fromkin, 2004...ISBN 0-375-41156-9.. and it deals with newer archval material that has bee lost before, another is ' Amiens..Dawn of Victory '.. by James McWilliams and R. James Steel ..2001.. ISBN 1-55002-342-X which is an allied version of this decisive battle, which of course include The RCR.... it is a very good read and has much updated material, again which was not known before... ranrad
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RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
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Jerry Robertson
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Mike,
great post. I just came back from there. Its amazing when you look over the fields, relize they were all mud and you wonder how the hell did they ever take that dam ridge! I also have pics of all the RCR's that are on the Menin Gate wall which I will post asap. Someone may have a relative on there and it would be my priviledge to post it. Vimy was absolutely amazing to.
Jerry
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Mike Blais
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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Alright Jerry! Lets see some pictures
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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george burrows
redpatch43
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Nothing has changed in 90 years. Whenever Passchendale is mentioned in the media or TV is always quoted as ' THE BRITISH CAPTURED PASSCHENDALE.
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george burrows
redpatch43
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The Canadians captured PASSCHENDAELE : the British and French lost a major portion of their Armies in their attempt.heir losses were very heavy as we all know. Still ,today nothing has changed.Why pass credit when you can keep it for yourself? SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW:
Excellent story Mike. Keep then coming. I really enjoy them too. I do not contribute as much anymore as I do nor feel I have much left to say. Still the comradship though!
PRO PATRIA
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Mike Blais
SSM (NATO Bar), CPSM, UN-Cyp, CD
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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An old soldier always has something to say, George! 
And those who would follow would be well advised to damn well listen!
Pro Patria, brother.
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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Jerry Robertson
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Mike is right George. You have plenty to say and we can do well to listen to jump in and speak your mind sir. I always have time for a D Day Dodger sir. Ill try and get those pics up today or tomorrow Mike.
Jerry
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Jerry Robertson
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Where are the instructions on how to post pictures? i cant find them. There goes my self esteem again.
Jerry
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Jerry Robertson
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I think I may have it, this is the list of Royals on the Menin Gate in Ypres.
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Jerry Robertson
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Pictures of the ground at Passchendake the Canadians had to take. This from the monument. One pic is of the Menin Gate.
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Jerry Robertson
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Here are some pics of Vimy. There is also one of Rick Ireland, Frankie Thiebault and myself.
Jerry
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Jerry Robertson
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Here are some pics of Vimy. There is also one of Rick Ireland, Frankie Thiebault and myself.
Jerry
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Don Marche
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Hi Jerry, thanks for the pictures sure bring back some good memories, I was there in 67 with the Bn.
Don
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1964-1965 RCR Depot North West Canada Pl,
A Coy 2 RCR London
1965-1968 B Coy 2 RCR Fort York Germany,
Promoted to Cpl 68.
1968-1973 D Coy 1 RCR London,
Promoted M\Cpl 69
1970 Cyprus
Promoted to Sgt 73
Took my release in Sep 1973 Rank Sgt
Pro Patria
SSM, Peace Keeping, UN-Cyprus, Queen's Jubilee, CD1
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Mike Blais
SSM (NATO Bar), CPSM, UN-Cyp, CD
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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Excellent!!!!
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
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Hey , great pics and info here Jerry , thanks for sharing...a lot of names of the heart of the Royals...Lest We Forget... ranrad
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RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
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george burrows
redpatch43
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These photos are fantastic. I have seen the real thing and both ways its very beautiful. My sincere thanks to the photographer and friends who took them and gave them to the Association.
Pro Patria to all.
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Mike Blais
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A ROYAL CANADIAN "NEVER PASSES A FAULT"
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Passchendaele: The price of principle paid in Canadian blood
Stephen Hume
Special to the Sun
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
To the Germans it was Dritte Flanderschlacht. To the British, the Third Battle of Ypres. To Canadians, Passchendaele.
Friday is the 90th anniversary of the bloodiest military experience in Canadian history. So, as parliamentarians indulge in tit-for-tat political theatre over the nature and duration of Canada's military role in Afghanistan, perhaps some reflection on the price of principle is timely.
The Passchendaele offensive began July 31, 1917. The British would punch through German lines, wheel coastward, seize the Belgian channel ports from which U-boats sortied and then liberate Belgium.
This grand plan degenerated into grisly stalemate. The British advanced three kilometres and lost 10 men for every step. After four weeks, 68,000 were dead, missing or wounded, more than 3,400 of them field officers.
Almost five million artillery rounds denuded the earth. Shell craters filled with tangles of rotting corpses, the "naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair, bulged, clotted heads" of Siegfried Sassoon's image lay partly submerged in scummy green water from which skin-searing mustard gas or lung-eating chlorine bubbled and burped.
This unimaginable place, eerily lit all night by flares, was churned by constant barrages and counter-barrages. The high explosives uncovered, buried and uncovered again decomposing body parts, while shrapnel from "whizzbangs" shredded the living with a randomness that mocked and demoralized the survivors.
Wilfrid Owen wrote about sheltering in an abandoned German dugout while shells rained down and "rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime, kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour" until suddenly "Thud! Flump! Thud! Down the steep steps came thumping and sploshing in the flood, deluging muck, the sentry's body; then his rifle, handles of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck."
"I died in hell (they called it Passchendaele)" wrote Sassoon, nicknamed "Mad Jack" for his bravery on night patrol. Sassoon described one comrade among the 80,000 driven mad who "moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked while he was kneeling half-naked on the floor. In my belief such men have lost all patriotic feeling."
Sassoon's own diary from 1917 recorded an episode in which "the floor is littered with parcels of dead flesh and bones, faces glaring at the ceiling, faces turned to the floor, hands clutching neck or belly; a livid grinning face with bristly moustache peers at me over the edge of my bed, the hands clutching my sheets."
The war hero threw away his Military Cross in disgust at patriotic jingoism and denounced "the insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed." The Canadians were to fix all that. They were elite shock troops selected to spearhead a third phase in the battle that had exhausted the British and Australians.
General Arthur Currie didn't like the prospect. He didn't like the ground. He didn't like the preparations. He had little confidence in senior British commanders. Currie warned that Passchendaele would cost 16,000 Canadian casualties. But, on Oct. 26, the Canadians were ordered to advance into a sea of oozing yellow mud so deep that it swallowed whole men, pack mules and vehicles.
On the first day, seven of 10 men in the South Saskatchewan Regiment were killed or wounded. Thereafter it was known as "the Suicide Battalion." Next the Loyal Edmonton Regiment took 75 per cent casualties. Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, "mowed down like wheat," lost 80 per cent of its officers and 60 per cent of its privates. The Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Nova Scotia Highlanders lost half their men in an afternoon. The Victoria Rifles were in the front line three days and lost 234.
In the first days at Passchendaele, Canadians fell at the rate of 1,000 per day. By the time they had reached their objective, 15,654 were casualties. Canadian newspapers stopped carrying long lists of the dead and wounded.
The casualty count for both sides in the battle remains controversial. It seems likely to have exceeded 460,000. On the British side alone, 90,000 bodies were unidentifiable and 42,000 were never found.
As for reflection upon Passchendaele and its price -- the awful, bloodsoaked ground the Canadians won at such cost was abandoned as militarily unimportant a few months later.
shume@islandnet.com
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1RCR 1977-79 Depot (Italy PL), B Coy, Mortars, Pioneers, D Coy (CFB London)
3RCR 1979-82 M Coy, Pipes & Drums, Sigs, Mortars. (CFB Baden-Soellingen)
1RCR 1982-88 Mortars. Dukes, Cyprus-Welfare NCO 84-85, Injured, WO&Sgts Mess, (CFB London)
1988-92 Med-remuster to HELL/ 35 DU, CFB Baden
1992 Medical release. God Bless you all!
Pro Patria
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BJ MacLean
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Jerry
Iis that Frank Thebault with you and Rick.
BJ
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B.J. MacLean
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dave sewell
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Great Pic's and the story line by Mike was very informative, good going guys well done
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ranrad
Ron [Andy] Andrews
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Once again , great pics, and a dandy write up on the history of the battle Mike.. May we NEVER FORGET these men, who gave their all in the grimest of circumstances.. it is hard to even try to imagine what the sheer horror of it all must have been....will we ever see such men again?? ranrad
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RCAF,CAF, converted RCR?,1RCR 74-77 CD: SSM (Nato);CPSM,;UN-Cyp.; UN- Golan
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Mike Blais
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