‘Four years of war turned Ypres into a ghost town. Not a leaf grew on a tree. Scarcely one stone stood upon another. From the battered ramparts the eye swept clean across a field of rubble to the swamp-lands beyond . . .’ Among the most devastating campaigns ever fought, the Third Battle of Ypres culminated in a desperate struggle for the ridge and small village of Passchendaele. Over a million Tommies, Canadians and Anzacs — the majority of them raw young recruits eager to serve King and Country — gathered at the Ypres Salient in the summer of 1917. What followed was a descent into mud, terror and mounting disillusion as wave after wave of increasingly desperate attacks took their toll. Yet this is equally a story of extraordinary courage, enduring comradeship, resilient high spirits and stubborn hope. Drawing on the testimonies of more than 600 soldiers, Lyn Macdonald allows the men who were there to tell their own story — presenting events from the only perspective that truly counts.
ISBN 13: 9780241952412
Author: Lyn MacDonald
