Passchendaele and the Somme

31 July – 10 November 1917

Battle of Passchendaele

PASSCHENDAELE > AND THE SOMME

PASSCHENDAELE AND

PASSCHENDAELE AND THE SOMME

FLANDERS 195

The only thing our so-called admirers at home praised in the Passchendaele campaign was the heroism of the soldier; they might go a little further now and curse those men who led us into this ghastly shambles. What use was it for us to add a little more flesh and bone to that sewage-heap! What con- ceivable value could such surrender of clean, good life be to the glory of a country eulogized by paunchy carpet-knights! The Passchen- daele battle had absolutely nothing to recommend it—military, strategic, political, moral: every one felt when he was picking a gluey way over noisome shell-holes, beside poor broken relics of humanity, among bursting shells, that he was picking a way to death, certainly not to a glory of victory. The dull ache kept us in that silent misery ~ which cannot be relieved by curses: with it was the feeling that we were paying rather dearly for this firework pageant, not so much with life as with self-respect. Don Quixotes resuscitated, tilting at windmills with as little purpose! With his illusion all might have sounded glorious, romantic ; we might have been fraying wings in an immense effort to get to the beyond, the cynosure of the world, the mailed incarna- tion of heroism dauntless to death, carving

FLANDERS 197

Our friends at home expanded chests at the thought of heroism at Passchendaele ; but was it heroism that should ever have been demanded from the Army? Was it not rather a disgraceful trifling with the most sacred instincts of life, when the soldier was asked to perform deeds of bleak horror unrelieved by purpose or even success ? Now that the business is over, the soldier cannot look back on shell-holes and acres of dead Germans as monuments to the heroism of the British Army: he has a dim sense of shame as at some unnatural, disgraceful thing he was forced to do, which neither instinct, sentiment, nor reason could invest with pride. With that comes the ironic feeling of sacrifice to the political intrigues of worthless statesmen : we could not explain the Passchendaele offensive from a military point of view, consequently we could only see in it a political, a calm, cold-blooded sacrifice of life for miserable diplomatic advancement. The only image of it that came to the mind was that of a man patting familiarly on the back, but in reality seeking the right place to sink the knife. We were bespattered with words of praise from Army commanders, from Jingo newspapers, were termed Sir Galahads whetting a lance in the