WW1 - Fighting in Flanders "Preparing for Passchendaele" (1917)

Curator's clip description

by Paul Byrnes

Horse-drawn wagons and trucks move forward in the run-up to the Third Battle for Ypres (also known as Passchendaele), in September 1917. The road heads east from Ypres past Hellfire Corner, a famously dangerous place on the Menin Road. Hessian screens have been erected to make the traffic less visible to German artillery, which pounds the route day and night. Soldiers unload large supplies of shells for the barrage that is to precede the attack. At Hooge Crater, Australian tunnellers and pioneers are busy preparing underground bunkers for the headquarters of the Australian units. The ground is so wet that the dugouts must be continually pumped out by men operating hand pumps.
Curator's notes

Having failed to break the stalemate on the Western Front in the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig conceived another offensive further north around Ypres, in order to relieve pressure on the French armies further south, and to try to drive the Germans back from the Belgian ports. German U-boats were causing havoc with British and American shipping in the Atlantic, and denying them bases on this coast would restrict their offensive ability. The problem for both sides was mud, as these scenes make clear. The low-lying Belgian countryside was drained by a system of canals and channels built up over hundreds of years. The effect of three years of heavy shellfire was to destroy those drainage systems completely. With nowhere to go, the water made the battlefields of Flanders even worse than the Somme. Heavy rain preceded the Battle for Menin Road, which began on 20 September, along a front of eight miles (13 kilometres). For the first time, two Australian divisions fought side by side, in the centre of the attack -- the 1st and 2nd Divisions, AIF. Their advance followed an artillery bombardment of extraordinary proportions: at the end of the first day, the British had fired 3.5 million shells onto German pillboxes and fortified outposts during the lead-up. The Germans responded in kind, and it is their shelling that we see in some of these clips.
More info: http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/fighting-in-flanders/clip1/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Passchendaele
• Flanders Fields
• Battle Of Passchendaele