31/7!

"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
07/31/2017 at 15:32 • Filed to: First World War, Passchendaele, Passendale

One hundred years ago today both sides in the First World War embarked on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (or the Third Battle of Ypres according to taste). The various battles took place between the Belgian towns of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (modern spelling) and Ieper (local spelling of the place called Ypres by the French and British)

This picture was taken on the day and shows troops in good spirits, given that some of them were going to their deaths.

In the event things turned very nasty indeed and soon looked like this:

Hostilities continued to the 10th of November. The number of casualties has been argued about ever since but figures of about 260,000 dead and wounded on each side are thought to be as good an estimate as any other.

DISCUSSION (6)

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > Cé hé sin
07/31/2017 at 15:37

lot of coverage of this on the local news for me... to put it in words that dont even come close to doing it justice... ww1 was a horrible meatgrinder of a war

Svend > Cé hé sin
07/31/2017 at 15:38

At school we studied the war poets in history class and English class.

The two quite prominent ones were Wilfred Owen and Seigfried Sassoon.

The poem by Wilfred Owen will always stay with me as the most vivid of what happened. Dulce Et Decorum Est.

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BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

ttyymmnn > Cé hé sin
07/31/2017 at 15:47

In the battles of the Middle Ages, the two sides clashed on the battlefield in hand-to-hand combat until just about everybody was dead. WWI was no different than the battles 500 years earlier, it was just done on a grander, industrialized scale. It may not have been the war to end all wars, but it was perhaps the last war of its kind.

Jonee > Cé hé sin
07/31/2017 at 22:06

I’m about to go on a tour of WWI sites and battlefields with my father and we’re starting up in Ypres. It’s kind of amazing just about how every town in Northeast France was part of one battle or another or several.

Cé hé sin > Jonee
08/01/2017 at 05:05

Yes indeed.

As it happens my brother is hatching plans for some of us to go to Rouen for my great uncle’s anniversary next year. He’s buried there and I was at the grave a couple of years ago. It’s impressive how well the cemeteries are organised - it took me approximately two minutes on the internet to find not just the right cemetery but the plot and a map as well.

I’ve visited Messines, Ypres/Ieper ( I was confused by the local name at first!) and Vimy Ridge and driven through Passendale. I stayed a couple of nights in Albert which is near where the First Battle of the Somme started.

Jonee > Cé hé sin
08/01/2017 at 22:25

Ah, very cool. We’re hoping to visit all those spots. And, it seems like a lot of the war museums have been updated for the 100th anniversary, so it should be an interesting trip.