Far From Suitable? Haig, Gough and Passchendaele: A Reappraisal

 

By Nicholas Ridley

Helion & Company 2024

Reviewed by Jim Gallen

Stretcher Bearers Crossing the Inundated
Passchendaele Battlefield

Far From Suitable? Haig, Gough and Passchendaele: A Reappraisal is an in-depth study of responsibility for the battle of Passchendaele and its legacy in Great War memory.  The principal contenders are Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, Commander of British Armies on the Western Front and overall commander of the campaign, General Sir Hubert Gough, commander of the Fifth Army, the motor of the Battle during its first month, and General Sir Herbert Plumer, commander of the Second Army, positioned to Gough’s right.  This is not narrative history.  Focusing on the first month of the offensive, it is an examination of the plans for the campaign, whether they were deficient, negligent or even reckless, and whether they caused unnecessary loss.

The Battle of Passchendaele, or Third Ypres, ravaged Belgium from 31 July to 10 November 1917.  Initially intended to clear the Belgian coast of German forces, it advanced the British front a maximum of five miles and never came near achieving the depth of penetration which would justify the launch of the seaborne assault intended to link up with it.  As the weather produced deep and cloying mud, movement for men, guns and animals became all but impossible. In the Spring of 1918, the gains achieved had to be abandoned to the German Georgette offensive.  Passchendaele, the name of the unfortunate village devoured in the battle, became the Great War’s synonym for military failure, one of “the most gigantic, tenacious, grim, futile and bloody fights ever waged in the history of the war” and “a muddy and muddle-headed adventure,” in Lloyd George’s words.

The First of Several Helpful Maps from This Volume

When the soldiers’ war of shot and shell goes silent, the historians’ wars of words and ideas occupy the field.  Passchendaele is a case study of how histories change over time.  Objectives, strategies and concepts of victory and defeat are debated and changed and as perspectives lengthen.  Historical literature of the 1930s placed blame on Haig who ‘embarked upon an offensive whose strategic direction was a serious mistake…which was ‘doomed from the start’ by its own destruction by bombardment of the Flanders drainage system for which the Germans were, having had ample warning since Messines, very well prepared.” In the Official History written in 1948 in the wake of the Second World War, Historian Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds diverted the narrative, writing that “Aspersions on the character of Field-Marshall Earl Haig should not require contradiction… but some refutation of the legend cannot be entirely neglected.”

Sir James redirected appraisals by claiming that the offensive was a success, contradicting prior claims regarding the effect of the weather and extent of casualties.  Edmonds asserted that the battle achieved its essential purpose, keeping the enemy away from the French Army, then broken by mutiny, and “that the German losses at Passchendaele, the exhaustion, practically the destruction, of their best divisions, prevented complete success in their 1918 Offensives.”  Edmonds and historians who followed him set the stage for author Nicholas Ridley’s reappraisal.

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Far From Suitable? consists of Ridley’s extremely detailed dissection of the evidence of objectives, facts, mental impressions, motivations and information that were available to each commander.  To paraphrase Sen. Baker of Watergate fame, what did the generals know and when did they know it?  As I advanced through this account, I felt that I was reading the notes of a lawyer preparing for trial.  His biographical information confirmed the author’s career as a barrister.

I found this presentation to be an intensively researched argument over responsibility for the outcome of the Passchendaele Offensive.  Details of the battle are only discerned by reference and inference.  I recommend it to Roads to the Great War readers with a deep interest in the inner workings of this offensive, so costly in its day, and so controversial in ours.

Jim Gallen