Passchendaele 1917: Messines Mines, Plumer's Bite and Hold, Endless Mud

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In 1917 the British held the low ground of the Ypres salient while the Germans watched from the ridges around its rim. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig planned to take those ridges, seize the railway hub at Roulers, and push on to the Belgian coast and its U-boat bases. Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French chief of staff Ferdinand Foch opposed the plan, but the Nivelle Offensive had sparked French army mutinies, Russia was faltering after the Kerensky offensive, and American troops were months away. As a prelude, tunnelers spent months digging under Messines Ridge, and at 3:10 a.m. on June 7, 19 mines packed with nearly a million pounds of explosives went off together.

The main offensive opened on July 31 at Pilckem Ridge under General Hubert Gough, whose deep advances ran into German defense in depth, concrete pillboxes, Eingreif counterattack divisions, and about five inches of August rain on ground whose drainage the bombardment had wrecked. General Herbert Plumer's bite and hold attacks at Menin Road Ridge and Polygon Wood in September turned the tide until the October rains returned. The Canadian Corps took the ruined village of Passchendaele on November 10.

• The Messines blast was reportedly heard by the Prime Minister in London.
• Intelligence chief John Charteris blamed a regular August monsoon, but John Hussey's analysis of 1901 to 1916 records showed August was usually dry.
• Plumer's infantry advanced about 1,500 yards behind a creeping barrage landing roughly 50 yards ahead, then dug in to meet German counterattacks.
• On October 12 an ANZAC attack became one of the darkest days in New Zealand military history, with wounded men drowning in the mud.
• British official historian James Edmonds put German losses at 400,000 against 244,000 British, while Jack Sheldon estimates about 217,000 German casualties.