Horror In The Mud: What Was It Like To Fight At Ypres? | The Last Voices of World War One | Timeline

In a remarkable exercise spanning 15 years, the last survivors of the Great War were interviewed on film. These are unique stories of courage, sacrifice and tragedy, told by the men who were there. These extraordinary interviews have been brought together for the first time. In this film, we hear from the veterans who fought on the Western Front during 1917. It was a year in which British servicemen suffered in two of the most dreadful battles of the war. The first, fought at Arras, ended in a bloody war of attrition, where casualty rates on the ground and in the air were appalling. The second, fought in the muddy swamps near the town of Ypres, has become synonymous with sacrifice and slaughter on an unimaginable scale. Today, it is known simply as Passchendaele. My job was to kill Germans. I mean, to me, they weren't human beings, you know. I wasn't shooting a man, I was just shooting an object. It gets dark tonight. Okay, everything may be quiet. But you're gonna see the sun come up in the morning. And when the sun comes in the morning, I wonder if I should see it set at night. That was the feeling you had. You were living on borrowed time. These are the last voices of World War I. In the spring of 1917, the British began their next major offensive to the east of the town of Arras. Further south, the French planned a huge assault close to the river Aisne. The Allies hoped the combined attack would bring the German army to its knees. Newsreel cameras captured footage of French villagers welcoming the arrival of this advanced cyclist patrol. But the sights that greeted 19-year-old artillery driver Alfred Hen as he neared Arras were far too horrific ever to be filmed. We were going through a very narrow street in Arras, and there was hell of a noise going on, guns fired in, and anyway, we suddenly we came to a halt. And then you could see on the wall opposite, it was full of pieces of flesh blown from horses or men. So it was a very nice position, and we had to sit there until we could move. It was a terrible sight, I tell you, and the poor horses were more frightened than we were, I think. Zero day for the main offensive was set for the 9th of April, but there were still minor skirmishes in the days leading up to the attack as the Allies sought to regain lost ground. On April the 1st, a party of men from the Honourable Artillery Company were ordered to attack a German trench near the village of Écouste. Tommy Thompson was in the front line and witnessed the reaction of the officer about to lead the attack. He was terrified and visibly showed it, and that's the reason he should never have been put in there to lead the attack. He was supposed to lead the attack. He shouldn't have been. I got his servant and I said, what's the matter with him? He said he knows he's going to be killed, and he was killed. He's the only one in the party to attack this German trench. We got near enough to have both his legs blown off by hand grenades. I can still see him lying back in agony, his hands clasped. He's one of the 28 that were killed. A stupid attack would never have taken place. After the horror of the Battle of the Somme, it was hardly surprising that men lived with the constant fear of injury or death. For many, it wasn't only friends and colleagues who had been lost in battle, but courage and patriotic spirit too. To make matters worse, the winter of 1916 had been one of the coldest on record. Those who had survived the Somme had been forced to endure a miserable existence as temperatures plummeted. Alfred Henn had spent the winter freezing on the front line. Yes, we were always wet through. You had to put up with it. If you was wet all night, you slipped in, and that was it. I got a horse, and he'd only got one eye. I called him Nelson. I sat on the horse one day. I was absolutely perished cold, you know, waiting there, and a shell come very, very near and burst about six feet from the ground. Huge ball of fire. I thought, oh, if it had only come a bit closer, I could have warmed my hands on it. I don't remember that as plain as anything. I thought if it had come any closer, it would have blown me to pieces. Living for weeks on end in these dreadful conditions, many thousands began to suffer from a debilitating condition known as trench foot. Nineteen-year-old Andrew Bowie from Edinburgh had arrived on the Somme in the winter of 1916. The slump came on the end step off my left foot mainly. The right foot wasn't so bad. Came up about the size of a golf ball. Just dirt collecting pus. Andrew's foot became so swollen and blistered that he was taken to hospital, and as he discovered, the treatment could be swift and brutal. So the next day they came round, and they had a look at it. The whole thing had burst open. And I said, oh, well, jock, he says, that saved us a big job. So they passed on, and I beckoned to the corporal. I says, what do you mean by a big job? He looked at his list. Oh, your left leg was due for amputation below the knee. Andrew's leg was saved, and he was sent to England to recover. But his war was not over yet. By the middle of March 1917, the German army had abandoned the Somme and made a 40-mile withdrawal to a new system of highly fortified defences known as the Hindenburg Line. In their wake, they left a trail of destruction. Villages were razed to the ground and roads and bridges destroyed to hamper any Allied advance. To break through the German lines, the Allies would be forced to attack the new defences head-on. The Battle of Arras was about to begin. In the spring of 1917, the British planned a major offensive against the Germans east of the town of Arras. Joining the volunteers already at the front was a new breed of soldier, the conscript. Conscription had been introduced early in 1916, and by the end of the year, call-up papers had been delivered to all men between the ages of 18 and 41. Now, these often reluctant soldiers began to arrive in France. Among them was 19-year-old apprentice plumber Harry Patch from Somerset. I didn't want to go, but it was a case of had to. I live a sheltered life, I suppose, and army life didn't appeal to me at all. I had no inclination to fight anybody. I mean, why should I go out and kill somebody I never knew? For what reason? There was no reason at all in it, in my way of thinking. There were others who went to extreme lengths to avoid being called up to the trenches. Attracted by the glamour of flying, 19-year-old Bill Hall joined the fledgling Royal Naval Air Service. Well, first of all, of course, like we all did in those days, we saw the pictures of the soldiers in the trenches. Well, that wasn't for me. All the mud, up to their knees in mud, through the trenches, sleeping in all that mud. And then when they had to go over the trenches through the barbed wire and all that sort of thing, I didn't fancy that. But I thought a pilot, oh, that's lovely. I thought it was something really marvellous, because it's very new in those days, piloting and flying. So I thought I'd try it. Sidney James was also keen to avoid frontline action. So he volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps. I was in the army to start, and then they asked for volunteers. And then I jumped at the opportunity. However, like so many who volunteered for service, Sidney found his mother didn't approve of his decision. She said, whatever you do, don't go flying. I said, but madam, don't you realise that all war is dangerous, and I fancy flying, because if it did come down, it would be instant death. It was all a great shame to me. But within months, the games would be over, and Britain's new volunteer pilots would find themselves at the heart of the Battle of Arras. On the 4th of April 1917, the British began a five-day artillery bombardment along a 12-mile stretch of the German lines near Arras. To avoid a repeat of the first day of the song, shells were now fitted with a new type of fuse, which detonated on impact to destroy barbed wire fences. And planes from the Royal Flying Corps flew over the trenches to direct artillery fire towards German gun positions. But aerial observation was dangerous work. Flying low over German trenches, many planes were lost to enemy shell fire when they ventured too close. What you did feel was when enemy bombs shells came over and just flew under you. That was all you really ever felt, from guns on ground. When it passed under you, you'd get that up and down. It created an air wave. But the Flying Corps was soon to face a far more dangerous adversary, Baron Manfred von Richthofen and his Flying Circus. The Red Baron was already Germany's most celebrated fighter pilot, with 30 kills to his name. Together with his crack squadron of pilots, he was transferred to the Arras region to help swing the balance of air power back to the Germans. The Battle of the Skies was about to begin. Meanwhile on the ground at Arras, artillery gunners like 19-year-old Londoner Fred Taylor were relying on the skill and good fortune of the RFC for their coordinates. Suddenly, whistle blew, and the boss shouts out, or the sergeant shouts out, number five gun, prepare for action. He calls out so and so, so and so, so and so, numbers, right or left, and you turn the wheels and that sort of thing until the points, your gun's pointing in the right height and right width. And then suddenly he says, two rounds gunfire. Bang goes one. Open the shell, put the bullet in, shut it, make sure it's on the right. Another one. He suddenly comes out, shouts out, number five gun, excellent, right in the middle of them. Thank you, sir. So you've done your bit. While the combined operations of the Royal Flying Corps and artillery units targeted German positions at the front, the Royal Naval Air Service were flying sorties deeper into German territory to destroy munitions and aircraft before they could be deployed. As a bomb aimer, it was Bill Hall's responsibility to make sure they hit their target. We'll say you had a particular point where we knew they were building certain machines. See, you'd have a direction to go there, wherever that place was, or perhaps an aerodrome from which airplanes were giving a lot of trouble. Well, we'd have to go and bomb them. Discover the past with exclusive military history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians, all on History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Download the app now to watch everything from the gripping story of the Band of Brothers to Operation Barbarossa and D-Day. Immerse yourself in the dramatic stories of this remarkable era by signing up via the link in the description. And everything which affected the German ability to try to overcome the British, whether it was the airplane or what it was. But in 1917, flying long-range missions was a dangerous pursuit as the primitive aircraft were not always up to the demands of the job. 20-year-old Henry Allingham from London was an air mechanic in the Royal Naval Air Service. It was very primitive in those days. It wasn't until late 17s that they got really efficient aircraft. Until then, there was a lot of teething troubles and things going wrong. I've seen fellows fighting for their lives to regain control because little things go wrong. And then they used to cut down. And when you got down, you had to get out of the plane quick because it caught fire. Well, some of those men had come back from being over the line and they were just about all in when they got back, you see. And then they didn't get out fast enough. It was in flames. You see them burnt alive there and their arms would go up like that. And you didn't have anything to put that out, nothing whatsoever. So you just had to stand and watch. That was all there was to it. The Battle of Arras began on the 9th of April 1917, and in the first two days of the offensive, the Allies made spectacular progress for relatively few casualties. Troops went over the top behind a creeping barrage of slowly advancing shell fire, which protected them as they made their way towards the German lines. This time the enemy were unable to offer any significant resistance. Here at last came the opportunity for Tommy Thompson to avenge the loss of his dead colleagues. And that's when I say I fired the first time and only time I ever fired in anger. I'd fired, I think it must be 110 or 115 shots. Every single one was aimed at a German. And I picked them off one by one. I wish I knew how many I'd killed. I shouldn't be at all surprised it didn't go into three figures. Because I was a very good shot. I had very good eyesight. Very good indeed. I mean, to me, they weren't human beings, you know. I wasn't shooting a man, I was just shooting an object. While the men on the ground continued to advance, in the skies above Arras, Britain's airmen were engaged in a deadly struggle with their German opponents. With a life expectancy of just 18 hours in the air, it was a terrifying time to be a pilot. Dealing with the daily loss of friends and colleagues was painful, but in the heat of the battle, there was no time for grief. You'd lost a man, you wouldn't mention his name again, which was sensible. And so that was the only way. If you did, you know, it'd all boil up. So you had to obliterate it. Sidney James, however, was one of those having some success shooting down enemy planes. I forget how many. I know I shot one or two down. I think they very often managed to glide down into their own country. So whether they were killed, you never found out. And you got a feeling of satisfaction when they went down. 245 British planes were lost in a month of aerial combat, which became known as Bloody April. But the Germans were unable to gain complete supremacy in the skies, and British airmen continued to carry out their objectives, despite the losses. After the initial advances, the Battle of Arras quickly developed into a battle of attrition, as the Germans fought hard to protect their defences. Despite repeated efforts, the Allies again failed to break the German line, and by the end of the fighting on the 16th of May, British and Empire casualties totaled almost 160,000 men. The battle had resulted in the highest daily casualty rate of the war. And in the age of mechanised warfare, death for so many arrived unannounced, leaving lifeless bodies frozen in time. There was a big log of wood, and there were three soldiers sitting there with their hands on the top of their rifles. I got my eyes closed, and I thought, fancy sleeping through all this lot, you know. Anyway, the next day, they were still there. A flash of a gun must have killed them outright, in seconds. Nobody had moved them at all. They sat there. Meanwhile, the French offensive on the Aisne had ended in catastrophe, as mutiny spread through the ranks. On the 27th of May, 30,000 French troops left the front line and refused to fight on. Arrests and executions followed, but the French had lost their appetite for costly large-scale battles. From then on, the burden of responsibility on the Western Front fell to the British. However, in 1917, mutiny wouldn't be confined to the French alone. At Étaples, in northern France, British and Empire troops en route to the front line were forced to pass through a notorious training arena known as the Bull Ring. Both raw recruits and battle-weary veterans were subjected to a strict and punitive training regime, so harsh many soldiers were only too glad to be sent on to the front. At the end of the summer, over 1,000 British and Empire troops mutinied at Étaples after heavy-handed action by the military police led to the accidental shooting of a Scottish soldier. The ringleader of the mutiny was later executed by firing squad. Andrew Bowie passed through the Bull Ring on his way to the front after recovering from Trenchfoot. This squadron of about a dozen men came along and there was a man in the middle, I can see his face now really, and he had that look on his face and no hat on, and these men were around him like marching, he was in the middle. And I asked this chap, I said, what's he, what are they doing? Oh, he said, taking that fellow away to be shot. And like that, I just about collapsed, just like that. During the Great War, 306 British soldiers were executed by firing squad, mostly for cowardice or desertion. It was a sobering thought for soldiers newly posted to the front, like young conscript Harry Patch. Well, you always had that in the back of your mind that if you were caught sleeping or refused to go over the top, well, then you knew what was coming. The fear of that drove a good many soldiers over the top. At least half of those executed served in the Ypres salient, and it was here that General Haig turned his attention in the summer of 1917. Already the site of two major battles, Haig was convinced that a breakthrough at Ypres would lead to the collapse of the German army. The battle that followed has become synonymous with slaughter and sacrifice endured in the most appalling conditions. Today, it's known simply as Passchendaele. The village of Passchendaele lay northeast of Ypres in Belgian Flanders. It was significant as it was positioned at the head of a series of natural ridges which rose gently above the otherwise flat landscape, giving the occupying German army an unbroken panorama of the surrounding area. Each of these ridges would have to be captured for the British to advance. German defenses in the region were widespread and forbidding. Countless streams and canals crisscrossed the low-lying fields of Flanders, and the ground was often too wet for trenches. In their place, the Germans constructed fortifications above ground, together with a network of mutually supporting pillboxes, from which machine gun crews could strafe attackers with impunity. And from the high ground, artillery posts could rain shells down onto advancing infantry with devastating effect. Amongst those about to face these impregnable defenses was Harry Patch, who had been assigned to a Lewis gun section. Thrown into action for the first time, Harry and his team quickly formed a very close bond. You were a team, and that was it. You were with them night and day. You shared everything with them, and you talked about everything. You could say it was more of a love than a comradeship, in a way. And as he moved up into the front lines, Harry needed all the support he could get. He was, after all, an unwilling conscript with no desire to fight. And if any man tells you he ever went to France and went in the front line, I'll tell you he wasn't scared that he's a damn liar. I think every man that went in the front line at some time or another was scared. I know I was. And I know when it came to the point when we went into action, really, I was scared stiff, because I thought the first time over the top, you don't know how long you're going to live. That's it. The battle for Passchendaele began on the 31st of July, 1917. Although it was summertime, heavy rain, combined with the four and a half million shells fired by the Allies in their preliminary bombardment, had turned the landscape into a quagmire. Roads disappeared and deep shell holes filled with water, making much of the battlefield almost impassable. The conditions were hopeless. The mud was almost ankle deep. And if you dropped down with your rifle, you'd find out your rifle was useless with mud. There was no joke. The worst position I'd ever been in. You couldn't walk for mud. The whole situation looked hopeless. On the 16th of August, Harry Patch and his colleagues made their way towards the village of Longmark, one of several objectives that lay between the Allies and Passchendaele. Engineers had worked unceasingly to lay makeshift roads across the swampland, but countless soldiers drowned after falling into mud-filled shell holes. We were always told that when we were going up or coming back, if a fellow fell into a shell hole which was filled with water, leave him there. Because it was liquid mud. If you tried to get him out, you'd go in yourself and that was it. And some of those shell holes were 10, 20 feet deep and they were just mud at the bottom. If a fellow slipped and went in, well, that was it. While he was on night duty, Fred Taylor saw a vision so terrifying, it seemed like the stuff of nightmares. I was on duty and as I got to the last gun, I happened to look, it's just in front of me there, and there was a face in the mud. And when I looked, it seemed as though it laughed at me. And it was rather scary. And although I realised afterwards, a wisp of cloud passed over the moon, which made it look as though the man, the poor devil in the shell hole, laughed. So I made a complaint about it. So the next day they came along and took him away. But it was a bit scary at the time to just see a face in the water, as though it laughed at you. Transporting heavy guns in these conditions pushed artillery crews to the limit. We've taken them in there, and the guns themselves sank up to the top of the wheels. So we had to get them out by hand. And it wasn't only the guns that became stuck. Alfred's artillery team also lost horses that sank in the mud. I mean, they're weighty things, weighty animals. And as fast as you shoveled it away, the mud had come back again, you see. And they used to have to stand in it all night, right up to the belly sometimes. When they couldn't get out, an officer would come along with his revolver and shoot it. They wouldn't be bothered trying to get it out. Well, you'd be upset if you saw a nice animal being shot, just through no fault of its own. The village of Longmark fell on the 16th of August, but Allied casualties were enormous. By the end of the month, they would total almost 68,000 men. As his battalion prepared for the next attack, Andrew Bowery realised their chances of survival were diminishing by the day. Yes, I think there was an atmosphere of nervousness that went through the whole company, really. You felt that, will this be the last time? You know, you always had that in mind. It didn't matter how strong I think you were, you'd say, well, this might be the last time, but you wouldn't show it to be something to yourself. You'd feel as if you were a weakling if you showed fear, if you started to weep or something like that. I didn't find anybody doing that, but you could tell that there was that anxiety and what was going to happen after daylight tomorrow. You were all the time, more or less, or at least I was, all the time more or less scared. It gets dark tonight, okay, everything may be quiet, but you're going to see the sun come up in the morning, and when the sun comes in the morning, wonder if I should see it set at night. That was the feeling you had, at least the feeling that I had, the whole of the time I was out there. You were living on borrowed time. And for Harry Patch, that time was quickly running out. As September arrived, the heavy rain at last subsided. Bright sunshine now sucked the moisture from the ground, and in many places clouds of dust filled the air. The push towards Passchendaele continued, and on the 20th of September, the Allies launched their next attack on the Menin Road ridge. After another huge bombardment, German pillboxes were attacked at close quarters, and Lewis gun teams had great success breaking through enemy defences. However, in places the fighting was so intense, it was difficult to get a clear aim. If we had had a clearer view, say, of half a dozen Germans coming out to join in the fray, well then we'd have given them half a dozen rounds. That was our job. But they were so close together that if you fired three, you would have had one of our fellows. On the 22nd of September, Harry Patch and his crew left the front line and were making their way across open ground when they were hit by a random shell. Well, the whiz bang came over. I saw the flash. You don't hear any sound from it. You simply see the flash. And it must have been the force of the explosion that blew me down. I didn't know I'd been hit until some minutes after where I was hit. All the feeling went out as if the nerves were gone. And it was several minutes before the pain came back. And then I could see the blood. They put the... got a bandage out, put it on it. But the other fellows, they must have been right back where the shell burst, really. And they must have been blown to pieces with it. But they never found anything of them. For Harry, the war was over and he was returned to England to recover. But for Andrew Bowie, the worst was yet to come. The battle for Passchendaele itself. At 5.20am on the 12th of October, Andrew Bowie and his battalion went over the top to attack the village of Passchendaele. By that time, the onset of heavy autumn rain, combined with the constant shelling, had turned the surrounding countryside back into a muddy swamp. As the men lurched forward through the mire, they faced a maelstrom of machine gun bullets and shrapnel fired from pillboxes and artillery positions. When it came to attack, the whole hell was let loose, the Germans. The shrapnel machine guns playing on us. We hadn't a chance. It was suicide, really. They just blasted us off the earth. Men were dropping all around us. Pinned down by the enemy, Andrew spent the entire day cowering in a shell hole as bullets and shrapnel whizzed above him. He was lucky to survive. In that day alone, the Allies suffered some 13,000 casualties. For Andrew's battalion, the losses were devastating. The whole affair seemed to be over in hours. The battalion just wiped out. The actual roll call after the affair was 39 out of over 600, 680 approximately. So many were killed, of course. So many were wounded and couldn't get out, probably die in the mud. The village of Passchendaele was finally captured by Canadian troops on the 10th of November. By the end of the battle, 300,000 Allied soldiers had been killed or wounded. Over 40,000 were never found, their bodies blown apart by shell fire, or lost forever in the Flanders mud. Passchendaele was the last battle of attrition fought in the Great War. Whether or not the sacrifice was justified remains a matter of debate. But what is certain is that when the Germans launched their spring offensive in 1918, all the ground captured by the Allies was lost. And for Andrew Bowie, there would be one final horror to face before his war came to an end. In 1917, the German army unleashed another horror onto the battlefields of Flanders, mustard gas. It wasn't the first time gas had been used during the Great War. At Ypres in 1915, the Germans used chlorine gas for the first time to devastating effect. But countermeasures like gas masks were quickly introduced and chlorine's effectiveness as a weapon of mass destruction soon diminished. Mustard gas was far more terrifying. After being launched in shells, this deadly toxin could remain in the environment for weeks, and any contact with skin or tissue caused terrible blisters, breathing difficulties and blindness. The worst affected died in agony days later. 20-year-old Andrew Bowie was gassed shortly after the Battle of Passchendaele. The effects stayed with him for the rest of his life. Causes your eyes to begin with, and it chokes you. That's the first effect you feel. You feel choking. Your throat's cocked, and you can't breathe very well. And you try to vomit, that's another thing. That's the main symptoms of being gassed. And anything else that's moist will get it. It clings to it. So from there on you're a real victim of it. You can't do anything about it. And it seems to bore its way into you, down your throat. You try to vomit, that's a horrible feeling. You vomit and there's nothing to vomit. You just lean forward and try to draw it up from your inside. Try to draw the poison out. You think it says it, but nothing comes up. I had to go, give in, go to get medical attention. And when I got there, there were about 20 or more there, all the same. Lying on the ground, screaming somewhere and shouting. Andrew was sent home to recover, but was told by doctors that his lungs had been so badly damaged he would be dead within five years. He lived to be 104 years old. For some of those who had knowingly killed the enemy during the terrible fighting of 1917, there remained a feeling of remorse. Airman Bill Hall was concerned that he might have killed innocent civilians during bombing raids over Germany. Because I was a churchman, I had a word with the clergyman. I said, there's one thing that does worry me. If we're doing a raid on a Sunday night, when I knew the people in the church, and I knew it was possible I was killing them, I didn't like that. And he said, no, you can reassure yourself there. You're doing your duty. He said, anything like that happens is most unfortunate. So he tried to reassure me not to worry. But that's the only really thought I gave out there. I never thought about the people in the factories, who were bombing the factories, never thought of that. I always thought that I'm bombing the something which was going to help Britain. Others, like Alfred Henn, were left with nothing but a feeling of anger, as they considered the terrible battles of 1917 to have been a worthless sacrifice. Now, I was angry, because I thought it was unnecessary. It could have been settled by generals or anybody before it started. That's how I think of it today. It's all a lot of nonsense. It doesn't solve anything. It's wicked. I wouldn't volunteer again to do it. They'd have to call me up and do something, I don't know. We thought it was going to be a lovely little game, you know. Because it wasn't. It was wicked. Wicked. Sacrifice of young lives for nothing. Harry Patch is the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the trenches in the Great War. For over 90 years, his thoughts have drifted back to the 22nd of September 1917, the day when a German shell took the lives of three of his best friends. I still forget the three I lost behind me. That upsets me more than anything. We were a team together, and that was it. We were five of us in the team. We lost three of them. September the 22nd. That is my Remembrance Day, not Armistice Day. Cenotaph service is all right. The rest of it is simply a military show to me.