Second Battle of Passchendaele
When Lieutenant-General Arthur Currie was given the order to take Passchendaele, he did the arithmetic. He told Field Marshal Haig that capturing the village would cost the Canadian Corps about 16,000 casualties. He said this calmly, in writing, with his maps spread out, like a man pricing a contract. He had walked the ground. He had seen the Bellevue pillboxes and the swamp where the Ravebeek used to be a stream. He asked for a delay until 29 October so he could move artillery forward; Haig pushed him for 26 October. They compromised at 26 October, and Currie set the dates of the four phases. The casualty figure he predicted turned out to be almost exactly right.
What the Canadians Inherited
On 18 October the Canadian Corps relieved II Anzac in the valley between Gravenstafel Ridge and the high ground at Passchendaele. It was virtually the same front the 1st Canadian Division had occupied in April 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres, when chlorine drifted across these fields for the first time in history. Currie's gunners found the position the Australians had left in chaos. Out of the howitzers nominally available, only a fraction were in action. Of the 18-pounders, fewer than half could fire. The Provost Marshal had forbidden moving damaged guns rearward because the plank roads were too narrow. Mud had bogged the Australian batteries into two enormous clusters, easy targets for German counter-fire. Before any infantry could attack, ten field companies, seven tunnelling companies, and nine infantry battalions were sent out into the rain to lay road. Miles of double plank road and heavy tram line went down in two weeks, while engineers worked through gas alarms and shell-fire.
First Phase, 26 October
Constant shelling had blocked the Ravebeek stream until the valley between the two attacking divisions was an impassable swamp. The 3rd Canadian Division attacked on the left, up the rising ground of the Bellevue spur where the New Zealanders had broken two weeks earlier. This time the wire had been cut. Within an hour, the 9th Brigade captured the Bellevue pillboxes themselves, then held them through German counterattacks and friendly artillery falling on their own positions. On the right, the 4th Division took Decline Copse on the railway, lost it that evening to a misunderstanding with the Australians on their flank, and took it back on the night of 27 October. The Germans recaptured it the following night; the Canadians recaptured it again. By the time the first phase ended on 28 October, the corps had suffered around 2,500 casualties. They were on higher ground.
Second Phase, 30 October
The second attack went in toward Crest Farm and Meetcheele. The mud was deeper. Soldiers slipping off the duckboard tracks at night drowned under the weight of their kit, and parties moving up to the line stopped to pull comrades out of shell-holes until they could no longer stop. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry took Meetcheele after their commanding officer was killed and a sergeant, George Mullin, charged a pillbox alone and shot the crew with his revolver. The 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles took Crest Farm, the position the Australians had briefly reached on 12 October, and held it. From Crest Farm, the ruins of Passchendaele village were finally within reach: a low rise of broken brick perhaps a thousand metres ahead. Casualties for the second phase came to about 2,300.
The Village
There was nothing left to take. The Belgian village of Passchendaele had been a parish of farmers, with a church and a few hundred houses; by November 1917, three months of British and German bombardment had reduced it to a topographic feature. On 6 November the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions attacked through Crest Farm into the rubble. Within three hours they were standing in what had been the main street. There were no streets. Private James Peter Robertson of the 27th Battalion rushed a German machine-gun, turned it on its former crew, and was killed on 6 November carrying a wounded man back through fire. He received the Victoria Cross, posthumously. On 10 November, in a final smaller action, the Canadians extended their hold along the ridge toward Hill 52. The offensive ended. Haig formally closed the campaign on 20 November.
The Arithmetic
The Canadian Corps lost 15,634 killed, wounded, and missing in the Second Battle of Passchendaele. Currie's estimate had been close enough to be exact. Nine Victoria Crosses were awarded to Canadians for the fighting on this ridge. Five divisions were soon stripped from the salient and sent south to plug the Italian collapse at Caporetto and to prepare for Cambrai; four more went to take over French line on the Somme. By the spring offensive of 1918, the Germans would retake everything the Canadians had bought here, and more. The village was eventually rebuilt by the people who had lived in it before the war. They named the rebuilt church for those who had died. The ridge today is still the highest ground for miles, gentle and green, with a Canadian memorial at Crest Farm and the largest cemetery of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission a kilometre to the west.
From the Air
Located at 50.90 degrees north, 3.02 degrees east, on the Passchendaele ridge in West Flanders, Belgium. The Canadian assault ran east-northeast from the Bellevue spur, through Crest Farm, into the village (now Passendale). Recommended viewing altitude 2,500 to 3,500 feet to see the full ridge from Ypres east to Roulers. Nearest airports are Ostend-Bruges (EBOS) approximately 35 nautical miles northwest, Kortrijk-Wevelgem (EBKT) about 15 nautical miles south, and Lille (LFQQ) to the southwest in France. The ridge rises only about 50 metres above the surrounding plain but in a flat landscape this is enough to dominate the view east to the Belgian coast.