The Battle of Passchendaele

One hundred years ago today, the Third Battle of Ypres—better known as the Battle of Passchendaele—began in Belgium.  It was an attempt to gain high ground near the northern end of the Western Front, before German reinforcements arrived from the Eastern Front, in the wake of the Russian collapse there.  

The prior three years had been a horrific, bloody stalemate near Ypres, with troops in mud-filled trenches—shouting distance apart—under constant artillery bombardment.  

In a war remembered for wasteful, senseless carnage, Passchendaele is remembered as one of the worst.  A wildly optimistic British plan for quick victory, degraded by weather into a battle of attrition. By the time the fighting slowed (it never actually stopped on the Western Front) in mid-November, over a half million casualties had been suffered by the British, their imperial and commonwealth allies, and Germans.  

Nasty little crossroads in that area.  Twenty-three years later, there would be a massive evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk, about 40 miles northwest of Passchendaele.  And 103 years earlier, Napoleon’s career ended about 90 miles east, near a place called Waterloo.  

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-40727428