Passchendaele
The Daily Mail has a series of hand-tinted photographs taken at the battle of Passchendaele, more commonly called the Third Battle of Ypres. On July 31, 1917, Allied soldiers pushed into a rain-sodden no man's land. By the time the battle ended in November, the Allies had advanced about five miles from their start point. One quarter of a million Allied soldiers died, averaging a staggering 2,121 each day.
One of the major conflicts of World War I, it was conceived by British Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig as a "big push" that would, finally, bring a breakthrough in the stalemate in Flanders.
Officially named the Third Battle of Ypres, the hope was that by breaking through German lines at this point on the Western Front, the Allies could reach the Belgian coast and capture the German submarine bases there.
The Allies prepared the way with a massive two-week bombardment in which 3,000 heavy guns sent more than four million shells pouring into the German lines.
Then, on July 31, the troops poured into a No Man's Land that within days and under torrential rain had become a sodden bog.
It became so deep that men, horses and pack mules drowned in it. What was supposed to be a breakthrough became a battle of attrition.
The total number of dead in the battle reached almost 500,000.
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By ThomasD, Thursday, 12 July , 2007 @ 6:38 pm
As silly as it sounds, WWI was a civilized sort of war. Civilized in that major civilian areas were spared the brunt of the lethality and most participants adhered to something of a code of conduct. Life at the front may have been horrid and extremely short, but elsewhere life went on pretty much apace.
The chances of this type of restraint being seen in a regional conflice in the ME are about zero. Imagine something more of a mix of Passchendaeles, Beirut, Rwanda and a smattering of Lidice then maybe you’ll get a closer approximation.