Walking through the centre of Belgian Ypres now, 100 years after the outbreak of World War One, one cannot imagine this town ever suffered from the fighting. Beyond the town borders, the numerous cemeteries, where row upon row of white stone mark the grave of “a soldier of the Great War, known unto God”, tell the tale of the endless fighting. But Ypres itself is alive. Constantly remembered the fight with its museums and the nightly last post at the Menenpoort, but alive nonetheless, seemingly unharmed.Yet every building, no matter how medieval or baroque in its appearance, shows one clue on its façade. “Anno 1922”. “Anno 1920”. “Anno 1929”. Not a single stone, of a single house, in the entire town is original. Everything is a duplicate, a carefully recreated and inhabitable monument of what once was.It’s one thing to know that the farm fields outside the towns of Ypres, Passchendaele and Zonnebeke were blown apart by years of relentless and desperate shelling. To realize the same happened to entire cities, makes this conflict all the more horrific. Though many a fictitious work has been published on the matter, the staggering brutality, horror, despair and loss of the First World War has never been captured as vividly and real as it has been done by Lyn Macdonald in “Passchendaele: The Story of the Third Battle of Ypres 1917”. By looking up and interviewing hundreds of men who have found during the war, she builds up a panoramic view of the doomed and appalling campaign fought in the muddy remains of Belgium. The final result jumps back and forth between her research in her own words, and the words of the soldiers themselves, and forms a surprisingly coherent and readable whole. Events like the attack on the Messines Ridge – where the subterranean detonation of several thousand pounds of explosives finally broke the German lines – or the final push into Passchendaele are described with such thrill and flair, that no other work of fiction, movie or photograph would ever capture the excitement or fear of that moment in the way this book does.The only real shortcoming of this book might be that, though epic in scope thanks to all the people who helped her, Macdonald only examines the British side of the battle. The French, Canadian, Anzac and – perhaps most importantly – German side of the story never gets mentioned. Rather, the men of these nationalities show up a anonymous entities whenever a British account asks for it. But their efforts, experiences and pain never get but a fraction of the attention that the British get, making for a rather one-sided report of the events.With the centenary this year of the outbreak of the Great War, museums, studios and publishers are doing whatever they can to show those living today what it was like to live – and die – back then. A noble and important case, surely, but the tales and efforts of those who found (not only in and around Ypres, but everywhere on Earth) should be remembered and read about for much longer. Though it was supposed to be the war to end all wars, man has shown to have learned little in these 100 years, despite the cautionary tales of “Passchendaele: The Story of the Third Battle of Ypres 1917”.
Fine piece of scholarship. Lyn Macdonald calmly sets out the unbelievable (and I do mean unbelievable) horrors of the marathon slugging match of Passchendaele in graphic and often really moving style, often simply quoting the words of the soldiers who fought and died there. Very powerful. I have two "if only" comments. One feels a bit curmudgeonly to list the criticisms of such a good piece of work. But that's what a review is for I suppose. The first concerns sex. Sex sex sex. I freely acknowledge that Lyn M is the one who did all the research and not me. But as it happens, pretty much the only thing my own grandfather ever told me about the carnage of WWI - he wouldn't talk about it often - was that the men were under such relentless stress and so inured to the probability of dying: that they devoted a lot of their recreational time to the brothels.My logic tells me that was probably so, and indeed Lyn M does touch on this tentatively here and there. Maybe it's just me, but she seemed to succeed only in conveying a certain sense of "no sex please we're British", and that's a pity. If my grandfather was right - and surely he was - then a key dimension of the madness has been censored out by ladylike gentility. And finally, not really a criticism, more just a comment. The book does exactly what it says on the cover: an account of the British and allies in Passchendaele. In that sense she achieved precisely what she set out to do (apart from the sex anyway). But it is by definition therefore only a partial account, because it barely touches on what went on behind the German lines, only a few hundred yards away. This can be misleading, because a relentless concentration on the butchery that went on amongst the British soldiers tends to convey that they were getting beaten. In one way of course, they were - but my point is that they were also beating the Germans at the same time. It came as a slight surprise towards the end of the book to learn that the Germans probably lost just as many young men. This isn't a question of 'being nice to Germans' (though why not). It's a question of scholarship and balance: you simply can't give a full account of, say, the World Cup football final by concentrating exclusively on how well Brazil kicked the ball around. You need to mention the other team too. That book still needs to be written!
Do You like book They Called It Passchendaele (1993)?
This book is incredible. Eyewitness accounts from the allied survivors of the Third Battle of Ypres. The stories are compelling - the months of idleness and then the incessant rain and mud. We are shown the horror of war on the front line, what it means to lose friends and families and the horrendous gulf between the generals who ordered advances and the advancing men who knew their missions were both futile and fatal. Having said that, the accounts are all from Brits, Canadians and Australians, so to balance the view I need to read Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel. I'm looking forward to reading more Lynn MacDonald.
—Chas Bayfield
I have recently read They Called It Passchendaele by Lyn MacDonald and whilst it gave a good account of the battle of Passchendaele I thought that it could have been better.I found that the book was too short and felt that the author ran out of steam towards to the end which was a shame because it started very promisingly.The eyewitness accounts by the soldiers which fought at Passchendaele are what make this book as engaging as it is. To hear firsthand accounts of what the soldiers went through puts a lot of things into perspective and helps you appreciate why we continue to remember such events and why WWI and WWII should be studied more in our schools.The author is very good at guiding you through the background to the battle and reasons why it was fought as well as the human and animal sacrifice played out each day.Unfortunately I thought that the book ended a bit abruptly which I cannot understand? The whole book was leading up to the capture of Passchendaele, but this part of the story, maybe the most important, is only given a short chapter whereas the mining at the beginning of the battle is given a much longer and in-depth chapter.Aside from this little point I found the book to be a good read and not cumbersome or bogged down with regiment statistics and numbers.I would recommend this book, but without reading other books on the subject I cannot say if it is the best account of this period of the war.
—Leigh Clayton
