Dimitri’s Reviews > Passchendaele: The Untold Story > Status Update

This ersatz infantry training too was a manifestation of how differently things were done in Second Army: the desired distant objective did not dictate the preparations. The object was total suppression of hostile resistance.

But the best laid plans of Great War tacticians ... hit the best snags. First, As usual the bad weather rendered the ambitious counter battery program myopious,

A fivefold creeping barrage would plaster the 1km deep zone of assault all day, hugging the foot soldiers advance by progressively slowing down to a standing pillar of fire in front of the day's final objective.

The infantry training over resembling terrain and around scale models instilled a large measure of conformism to match the close advance of the barrage.

By the end of the month Haig decided to go with a Big Push: Plumer's Second Army was to stretch out a helping hand at Gheluvelt. Plumer wanted to do it step by step: Nonne Boschen, Polygon Wood..using 5 divisions: 3 in X corps & 2 in Anzac corps, feat. the biggest baddest concentration of battering batteries ever seen in the West: 575 Heavies & 720 field guns in a 5km wide arc, for 3 times the density 31/7.

Here Prior is spot on. "These improvements did not adress the essence of his difficulties. 5th army was unable to supply fire of sufficient accuracy & density to carry troops through German defences at little cost, nor to maintain those that did get forward on their objectives in the face of unsuppressed artillery operating in conjunction with the counter-attack forces."

The first operation went stellar. 19/8 saw 3 dry days, just enough to firm up a few roads for tanks, Cambrai style, to lumber down a few 100 yards, to gulp up those fortified farms. It was the only dry road they would enjoy.

A few later failures-by-yard altered Haig to the tenacity of the German chessboard defence pattern, but he could not simply forward his guns through the muck, only more mop-up infantry

Sufficiently cowed (or embittered) by the failure of his grand opening, Gough decided to approach Passchendaele in 6 smaller steps. But his handling of "bite & hold" didn't go well.

Prior is unusually condemning about this phase: "what we are looking at are five piecemeal narrow front attacks of a sort that had been tried in 15 16 and early 17 with singular lack of succes".

August saw twice the normal amount of rain, without dry days, resulting in the haunting image of wounded slowly drowning in craters. A second heavy push against Gheluvelt Plateau on 16/8 achieved virtually nothing. Gough blamed his own infantry for bunching up forward. Haig did nothing to stop it: yet he carries the responsibility for the Go with [insufficient] guns and in such bad weather.

Was there any way to look positively on this day ?

It was a "good catch" two-thirds along the line, with a lower casualty-to-mile ratio than the infamous 1st of July 1916, but still, for all the metal thrown, again the cavalry command had not scored a rupture.

The right wing's abundant infantry allocation (II corps had 3 rather than 2 divisions) faced abundantly worse odds against a greater number of intact pill boxes and pre-registered German counter fire. Plumers' act of deception, meanwhile, distracted exactly ...nobody.

The center lost some ground to counter-attacks at the bayonet by unaffected counter infantry from Passchendaele village itself.

Herein lays the Crux of the "More Guns Solve Everything" philosophy. Were there ever enough to go round ? Artillery was anointed 1917 Queen of the Battlefield by the uselessness of infantry weapons and 120 underpowered Mark IV tanks in swamps.

Artillery commitment had to be total. The Field Artillery was made responsible for the first creeping barrage at two times the density of Arras & some wire-cutting as well.