Download The Third Battle Of Ypres

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The Third Battle Of Ypres:
Popularly Known As The Battle Of Passchendaele.
By Roger Lee’s – Army Historian, Army History Unit
T
he Battle of Polygon Wood,
fought on 26 September ninety
years ago this year, was one of
a series of bloody engagements that
marked one of the toughest tests of
the Infantryman and his craft in the
history of the Australian Army. Polygon
Wood was one of the great battles
of the Passchendaele offensive, more
properly known as the Third Battle of
Ypres, that have passed into legend
for the indescribable conditions under
which they were fought. The first part
of this two part article will look at the
strategic and operational background
to the various battles that made up
Third Ypres while the second part will
look in some depth at the individual
Troops of the 5th Division walking along
a winding duckboard, known as Jabber
Track, through the waterlogged and
sodden valleys in Albania Woods, in the
Ypres sector. On this date, the 3rd and ...
battles, especially the Battle for
Polygon Wood itself.
In popular memory, the
Passchendaele campaign of August
to November 1917 has become
synonymous with ‘mud’, and the mud
was as formidable an adversary as
the Germans. It stopped movement, it
killed men and animals by drowning
and guns and equipment by
swallowing them. Arguably not even
in New Guinea in World War Two
did waterlogged ground so define the
course and conduct of battle than at
Passchendaele.
Yet this focus on the appalling
conditions and suffering of the
campaign does a disservice to the
soldiers who fought the battles. Their
achievements, their sheer determination
to succeed despite the conditions, their
willingness to return again and again to
the front line, their demonstrated tactical
innovation and flexibility are worthy
memories to be salvaged from what
ultimately was an operational disaster.
Strategic Background.
The Passchendaele campaign was
one of the great campaigns of the
British and Empire Armies of the First
World War on the Western Front.
Argument still rages about why it was
fought and about why it was fought
in Belgium.
The most common explanation
is that it was ‘just another’ in the
many attempts to break through the
German line and drive the enemy
out of occupied Belgium. The
historical evidence tends to support
this explanation. The fact that it, like
so many others before it, failed is
often used to point out how stupid the
British High Command was and how it
lacked originality in tactical thinking.
While no one can argue that
mistakes were made during the
planning and implementation of this
and other major assaults, the fact
remained that the war was not going
to be won by the Allies remaining on
the defensive. To bring the war to an
end, they had to defeat the German
Army. And they were only going
to defeat it by breaking through the
line, disrupting the complex defences
that protected it and bringing it to
battle in circumstances that favoured
the attacker. Failure to defeat the
Germans at Third Ypres is not, of
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itself, evidence that the attack was
strategically wrong or misguided.
A second reason often put forward
is that German submarines, operating
from bases on the Belgian North Sea
coast, were literally starving the British
Isles almost to the point of surrender.
The rationale was, if the British
Army could drive the Germans out
of these bases, the submarine threat
would be reduced. Historically, this
explanation does not really add up.
The submarine campaign could still
have been continued from ports closer
to Germany and if the Germans had
lost control of the Belgian sea coast,
it is likely they would have been in
such serious military trouble that the
submarine factor would not be an
element in their strategic thinking.
A further justification for the
Passchendaele offensive frequently
cited is that the British had to launch
a major attack to divert the Germans
from the calamitous state of the
French Army. After the failure of the
Nivelle Offensive in April 1917, the
French Army mutinied and refused
to participate in any more offensive
operations, although they still fought
defensively. Until the French Army
could be nursed back to offensive
health, the responsibility for carrying on
the war devolved solely to the British.
However, there is no evidence the
Germans ever appreciated the poor
state of the French Army or that the
British had any reason to believe
they did and were preparing to take
advantage of it. Indeed, in the face
of the obvious build-up of British
preparations for the Ypres offensive,
the Germans moved as many guns
and men to Belgium as could be
spared from other parts of the Front.
On the evidence, it seems certain
the offensive was another attempt to
bring the war to an end by the defeat
of the enemy in the field. Having
decided on this course, the issue for
the British Commander, General Sir
Douglas Haig, was who to appoint
to command the attack and which
tactical approach to the conduct of
the battle to employ to achieve that
aim? Both these decisions were
extremely important for the conduct of
the offensive.
Haig had limited options when it
came to commanders – the pre-war
British Army was simply too small to
‘grow’ a large number of commanders
skilled in the handling of armies and
even those who were available had
obtained the necessary experience only
in the preceding three years of war.
Given the size of the offensive,
Haig was compelled to employ two
armies and had therefore to entrust
responsibility to two separate Army
Commanders. The two chosen were
Generals Sir Hubert Gough and Sir
Herbert Plumer. Plumer commanded
Second Army in the opening attack,
in the south at Messines and then
directed the supporting attacks on the
southern flank of the main attack, while
Gough and his Fifth Army was given
responsibility for the main operation.
Plumer, an Infantryman, was a
careful and methodical planner
who recognized the limitations of
the offensive on the battlefield of
1917. Unfortunately, caution was
not the characteristic needed to
achieve the grand objectives of Third
Ypres, despite the fact that the battle
of Messines that he planned and
commanded was a major victory.
Consequently, the Commander-in-Chief
looked elsewhere for someone to
conduct the big strategic break-through
he envisaged. Haig turned to Gough.
Gough was a cavalryman and,
by comparison with Plumer, had a
poor reputation as a commander and
planner, being given to excessive
optimism and a worrying inability to
appreciate potential difficulties. Known
as a ‘thruster’ for his willingness to press
on with attacks in the face of heavy
casualties, he was the natural choice for
Haig to command the main attack.
The available choice of tactics
paralleled the character of the two
commanders. After three years of war,
both sides had recognized that the
defence was dominant on the Western
Front battlefields. Both sides had
View of the countryside near
Glencorse Wood and Inverness
Copse at the time that a German
counter attack was in progress.
demonstrated that while it was easy to
break into the line and even possible
to break through it under certain
conditions, it was almost impossible
to break through the line and hold the
breach open long enough to exploit
the situation. The power of the defence
was such that even when a break-in
was achieved, the defender could
move enough men and artillery to close
off the gap faster than the attacker
could feed enough fresh troops and
artillery across the broken ground of
the former No Man’s land to exploit
their success. While the initial gains
could be held, advancing beyond the
break-in point was rarely successful
and, even when successful, was limited
in time and scale by the impossibility of
reinforcement and resupply. Perversely,
therefore, commanders had the choice
of planning a battle with limited tactical
aims that would probably succeed,
or planning a battle with strategically
important, even potentially war-winning,
aims that would invariably fail.
The Third Battle of Ypres exhibited
both types of aim. At Messines,
the British Commander (Plumer)
deliberately chose limited objectives
that meant that the infantry did not
have to advance beyond the range of
its artillery support. This tactic, known
as ‘bite and hold’, enabled the infantry
to break in and occupy the enemy’s
front line. Once this captured section
was consolidated, the artillery was
repositioned and the whole process
done again to advance the front line
a bit further. Slow and methodical as
it was, ‘bite and hold’ was the only
method for advancing the front that
had been shown to work. But the
slow speed of the advance gave the
Germans time to strengthen their next
line of defences so ‘bite and hold’
never offered the prospect of breaking
through in sufficient strength to defeat
the German Army. ‘Bite and hold’
operations were not going to win the
War quickly.
Haig was not looking for a
methodical and slow advance – he
was looking to end the war in 1917.
This could only be done by smashing
through the front line and advancing
deep into the enemy’s rear areas
and this was what Haig was trying
to achieve with the rest of the Third
Ypres operation. Gough, like Haig
but unlike most of the other British
Army commanders, had no difficulty
focusing on objectives well behind the
front line. Even Fifth Army’s objectives
for the first day, involving an advance
of some 5000 yards, were extremely
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ambitious. However, the fact that
the British cavalry divisions, the only
weapon of exploitation available
to Gough, were held far to the rear
suggests that not even Gough was
expecting an immediate breakthrough.
Third Ypres was an operation with
strategic aims - a break-through and
advance of some 15 miles (32
kilometres) to the Roulers-Thourout
railway line then straight on to Ostend
on the coast. This would, it was
believed, so unhinge the German
defences that the planned coastal
landing of Fourth Army would turn a
German retreat into a rout and into a
quick liberation of occupied Belgium.
The fact that no breakthrough by either
side in the war so far had achieved
anything like this ambitious plan was
not seen by either Haig or Gough as
reason to doubt the eventual outcome.
One reason for this confidence
was the scale of the British attack.
Both Haig and Gough also justified
their optimism for the success of the
operation on their belief that the
German Army, particularly its morale,
was on the point of collapse. While a
number of intelligence assessments
This mound, which stood on the far
side of Polygon Wood, was taken by
the 5th Division in the Battle
gave some credence to this belief, the
performance of the German defenders
at and after Messines did not sustain
such a belief. Including Messines, the
Third Ypres offensive was second only
to the Somme in scale and intensity
for the British Empire’s armies for the
whole of the War to that point. Over
a quarter of a million allied soldiers
were involved in the campaign.
The Germans too committed a large
proportion to their available front line
formations to the defences opposite the
Ypres salient. Facing the allied assault
troops was General Sixt von Arnim’s
Fourth Army, organized into five
‘Groups,’ with further reserve Divisions
to the rear. The five Groups, roughly
equating to British Corps, were Group
Lille to the south (not much involved in
the battle), Group Wytschaete which
covered the Gheluvelt Plateau and sat
astride the Menin Road, Group Ypres
which held the front from Bellewaarde
Lake to the Ypres-Staden railway,
Group Dixmude which defended the
largely flooded area from the YpresStaden railway to Noordschoote and
Group Nord which held the coastal
sector and was intended to blunt any
coastal thrust. These Groups ranged
in strength from Group Nord, which
comprised only one Division to Group
Wytschaete which had five front line
Divisions. Behind these Groups, the
Germans held another 11 Divisions in
a series of reserves, extending back
to Ghent and Bruges, with one held in
Antwerp to deal with any amphibious
landing attempted by the British.
The defences were planned and
developed by the German’s leading
tactician of defensive warfare, Colonel
von Lossberg, and new techniques
devised. Artillery was much
strengthened and artillery positions
were heavily camouflaged to reduce
the impact of British counter-battery fire.
The defence strategy relied heavily on
a lightly defended front line, designed
to slow and disrupt the advancing
British with strong artillery attrition of
the attacking forces and local heavy
counter- attack to recover lost ground.
Unfortunately for the Germans, these
tactics proved to be as costly in
manpower as the British attack.
Part 2 of this fascinating battle “The
Third Battle of Ypres” will appear in the
April 2008 edition of AIM.
The Dark Blue Double Diamond
Part One: Timor, A Personal Perspective.
By Ken Wright
A
t the end of World War 2, the
2/4 Australian Commando
Squadron had a unique record
when compared with units of a similar
type. From the personal memoirs of ex
2/4 Sergeant Ralph Coyne, this brief
description of the achievements of the
Commando unit and its members help
to keep their memory alive.
In November 1940, a secret
British military mission arrived in
Australia to set up a training scheme
to establish an Australian version of
the British Commandos. Each soldier
had to be a volunteer, be physically
fit, possess individual initiative and be
of above average intelligence. They
were trained to accept responsibility
far in excess of their rank and to be
able to fend for themselves under
the most severe conditions. British
commandos were trained to carry
Betano, Portuguese Timor. 1942.
The wreck of HMAS Voyager.
out sudden sneak attacks then
withdraw back to their bases whereas
the Australians were taught to stay
behind, live off the land and carry out
guerrilla warfare against an attacking
enemy. They were called Independent
Companies and were not officially
known as commandos until 1943.
The training was to be conducted
by Australian and New Zealand
officers specially detailed for the task.
Twenty year old Ralph Coyne was
training in the Australian Imperial
Forces to be a signaller during March
1941 and was expecting to be
posted to the Middle East.
‘One day on parade, a Major
asked for volunteers to serve in a
small group to operate in enemy
territory. Of the 500 on parade,
twelve of us stepped forward. We
were immediately put on a truck and
An informal group portrait of
members of “Sparrow Force”, 2/2
Independent Company, AIF, and
Timorese locals with a live crocodile
tied to a rod. Locals had carried this
crocodile twelve miles as a friendly
gesture for an Australian officer.