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In Flanders fields: The 1917 campaign
A seminal work of research and a book of vivid descriptive power; a comprehensive exploration of the carnage of WWI. The author has other similar/closely-related titles but this is an edition of its own.
455 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
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950 people want to read
About the author
Leon Wolff
29 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Leon Wolff was born and raised in Chicago, the son of Abe Wolff, a traveling salesman, and Bessie Billow, a Russian emigrant. He graduated from Northwestern University, then served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.
After the war he started a correspondence school, the Lincoln School of Practical Nursing, in Chicago. In 1953, he and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he transplanted the business and cultivated his interests in golf and jazz.
Wolff wrote four books over the next dozen years. Low Level Mission (1957) described World War II's Operation Tidal Wave against the Ploești oil fields in Romania, by the US Army Air Force.
In Flanders Field: The 1917 Campaign (1958), an account of the World War I offensive in 1917, otherwise known as the Third Battle of Ypres, or Passchendaele.
Wolff also wrote the Francis Parkman Prize-winning book Little Brown Brother (1961), then wrote a final book, Lockout: The Story of the Homestead Strike of 1892 (1965), about the eponymous steel strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania.
He died in Los Angeles in 1991.
Leon Wolff was born and raised in Chicago, the son of Abe Wolff, a traveling salesman, and Bessie Billow, a Russian emigrant. He graduated from Northwestern University, then served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.
After the war he started a correspondence school, the Lincoln School of Practical Nursing, in Chicago. In 1953, he and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he transplanted the business and cultivated his interests in golf and jazz.
Wolff wrote four books over the next dozen years. Low Level Mission (1957) described World War II's Operation Tidal Wave against the Ploești oil fields in Romania, by the US Army Air Force.
In Flanders Field: The 1917 Campaign (1958), an account of the World War I offensive in 1917, otherwise known as the Third Battle of Ypres, or Passchendaele.
Wolff also wrote the Francis Parkman Prize-winning book Little Brown Brother (1961), then wrote a final book, Lockout: The Story of the Homestead Strike of 1892 (1965), about the eponymous steel strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania.
He died in Los Angeles in 1991.
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November 11, 2022
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row,/That mark our place…” The poem “In Flanders Fields,” by Canadian military surgeon John McCrae (1872-1918), is one of the best-loved works of literature to come out of the First World War, with its haunting evocation of the Allied dead speaking to the living from beyond the grave. And as so much of the worst of the fighting on World War I’s Western Front took place in those flat soggy fields of northern Belgium, it is appropriate that historian Leon Wolff drew upon the poem for the title of this thorough and thoughtful history of the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele.
Wolff, an American historian, served with the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War, and writes perceptively about these events of the First World War. Against a background of seemingly endless war – massive attacks that inflicted innumerable casualties while causing no movement in the battle lines; demoralization among the serving soldiers and disillusionment at home – a series of decisions culminated in the battle that is variously called either Passchendaele or the Third Battle of Ypres.
The British commanding general, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, approached the campaign in a spirit of doctrinaire inflexibility. He seemed to believe that he could blast through German lines that had held in place for three years, and make his way to the English Channel, with relatively little effort. And considerations of national pride seemed to play a disproportionate role in Haig’s strategic and tactical planning: “All this he intended to accomplish almost solely with British troops. He had little interest in the co-operation, then or eventually, of French or American forces. The Third Battle of Ypres was to be Britain’s day of glory, and his plans for the conduct of this offensive were already complete” (p. 50).
Wolff makes clear that Haig, in his inflexibility, failed to take into account that the Germans might resist more stubbornly than he anticipated. He neglected to consider how the landscape of Flanders – flat, muddy, flood-prone, with clay soil that, when wet, clings like quicksand to soldiers’ boots – might interfere with his plans for a quick and decisive attack. And his nationalist unwillingness to wait for the imminent arrival of the Americans, with their fresh troops and vast resources, would cost a great many British and Commonwealth soldiers’ lives.
To be sure, there were phases of the battle that seemed to go promisingly for the Allies. The Battle of Messines in June of 1917 began with the explosion of nineteen massive mines that the Allies had dug under the German lines. Wolff’s description of the mine attack on the German-held Messines Ridge – an event that may remind U.S. readers of the Petersburg Mine Assault from the American Civil War – shows his talent for evocative, almost Homeric description of combat:
A few seconds before 3.10 some of the heavy guns rearward began to fire. Then each of the nineteen land mines exploded almost in unison. The earth quaked, tumbling and staggering the British soldiers as they rose in awe to see the rim of the hated ridge burst skyward in a dense black cloud, beneath which gushed nineteen pillars of flame that lit the Salient with the red glare of hell. The pillars fused into greater mushrooms of fire that seemed to set flame to little clouds above. Then, a moment or two later, the long roar of nineteen explosions blended and reverberated into one long blast that stunned even the British troops, awakened the countryside, rolled through Flanders and northern France, hurtled the Channel, and was heard in London by Lloyd George, awake in his study at Number 10 Downing Street. (p. 100)
In the aftermath of Messines, with demoralized, broken Germans surrendering by the hundreds, it might have seemed that Haig would get his lightning victory after all. But as the Passchendaele battle proper got underway in August, Wolff makes clear, Allied gains turned out to be decidedly modest, no matter what an ordinary Londoner might gather from reading The Times. And the infamously bad rain of Flanders began to set in in earnest, creating a daunting prospect for even the most avid Haig supporters like General John Charteris: “Four days and nights it rained, and even Charteris, with a humility and despair uncommon for him, writes in his diary: ‘Every brook is swollen and the ground is a quagmire. If it were not that all the records in previous years had given us fair warning, it would seem as if Providence had declared against us'” (p. 150).
And the rain continued, as did Allied attacks and German counterattacks all along the Ypres salient. August wasted on into September and October, and thousands and thousands of soldiers died. By 7 October, the Allies had suffered more than 200,000 casualties in three months of fighting, and British generals Sir Herbert Plumer and Sir Hubert Gough called for a halt to the campaign. Yet Haig insisted on continuing with the campaign, even though, “By any normal standard, the campaign was over. Haig certainly knew that proper preparations, rested troops, and full artillery coverage were no longer possible. His armies were groping and floundering” (p. 200). That Haig insisted upon continuing with the same inflexible plans for his grand offensive, under circumstances that guaranteed that the already horrific Allied casualties would increase, may be, in Wolff’s reading, the most damning indictment of his lack of generalship.
As support for Haig’s campaign waned, both within the British Government and among the British people, a final attack, by Canadian troops on 6 November, took the village of Passchendaele, and enabled the Allies to say that they had gained some ground. But the Allies, Wolff makes clear, had had to destroy the village in order to save it: “The Canadians, smoking cigarettes and trailing their rifles as they walked over the site, could hardly grasp that it had once been a town….Not one building remained, other than the feeble remnant of the church. Not one brick stood on another….Passchendaele was effaced from the earth” (p. 253).
I read In Flanders Fields while traveling in Belgium. Driving between northern France and the city of Ghent, I noted that the landscape is indeed singularly flat, just as Wolff describes, and I know that I would not want to be assigned the task of leading a battle there. All the same, it is an outrage that someone in the Allied command could not sense that the small gain of territory at Passchendaele was not worth the vast human cost. The reader finishes In Flanders Fields with a sense of admiration for the valour of the ordinary soldiers of the Allied forces, and with an equally strong sense of outrage at the inflexibility of the senior officers who mis-led those good soldiers toward death.
Wolff, an American historian, served with the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War, and writes perceptively about these events of the First World War. Against a background of seemingly endless war – massive attacks that inflicted innumerable casualties while causing no movement in the battle lines; demoralization among the serving soldiers and disillusionment at home – a series of decisions culminated in the battle that is variously called either Passchendaele or the Third Battle of Ypres.
The British commanding general, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, approached the campaign in a spirit of doctrinaire inflexibility. He seemed to believe that he could blast through German lines that had held in place for three years, and make his way to the English Channel, with relatively little effort. And considerations of national pride seemed to play a disproportionate role in Haig’s strategic and tactical planning: “All this he intended to accomplish almost solely with British troops. He had little interest in the co-operation, then or eventually, of French or American forces. The Third Battle of Ypres was to be Britain’s day of glory, and his plans for the conduct of this offensive were already complete” (p. 50).
Wolff makes clear that Haig, in his inflexibility, failed to take into account that the Germans might resist more stubbornly than he anticipated. He neglected to consider how the landscape of Flanders – flat, muddy, flood-prone, with clay soil that, when wet, clings like quicksand to soldiers’ boots – might interfere with his plans for a quick and decisive attack. And his nationalist unwillingness to wait for the imminent arrival of the Americans, with their fresh troops and vast resources, would cost a great many British and Commonwealth soldiers’ lives.
To be sure, there were phases of the battle that seemed to go promisingly for the Allies. The Battle of Messines in June of 1917 began with the explosion of nineteen massive mines that the Allies had dug under the German lines. Wolff’s description of the mine attack on the German-held Messines Ridge – an event that may remind U.S. readers of the Petersburg Mine Assault from the American Civil War – shows his talent for evocative, almost Homeric description of combat:
A few seconds before 3.10 some of the heavy guns rearward began to fire. Then each of the nineteen land mines exploded almost in unison. The earth quaked, tumbling and staggering the British soldiers as they rose in awe to see the rim of the hated ridge burst skyward in a dense black cloud, beneath which gushed nineteen pillars of flame that lit the Salient with the red glare of hell. The pillars fused into greater mushrooms of fire that seemed to set flame to little clouds above. Then, a moment or two later, the long roar of nineteen explosions blended and reverberated into one long blast that stunned even the British troops, awakened the countryside, rolled through Flanders and northern France, hurtled the Channel, and was heard in London by Lloyd George, awake in his study at Number 10 Downing Street. (p. 100)
In the aftermath of Messines, with demoralized, broken Germans surrendering by the hundreds, it might have seemed that Haig would get his lightning victory after all. But as the Passchendaele battle proper got underway in August, Wolff makes clear, Allied gains turned out to be decidedly modest, no matter what an ordinary Londoner might gather from reading The Times. And the infamously bad rain of Flanders began to set in in earnest, creating a daunting prospect for even the most avid Haig supporters like General John Charteris: “Four days and nights it rained, and even Charteris, with a humility and despair uncommon for him, writes in his diary: ‘Every brook is swollen and the ground is a quagmire. If it were not that all the records in previous years had given us fair warning, it would seem as if Providence had declared against us'” (p. 150).
And the rain continued, as did Allied attacks and German counterattacks all along the Ypres salient. August wasted on into September and October, and thousands and thousands of soldiers died. By 7 October, the Allies had suffered more than 200,000 casualties in three months of fighting, and British generals Sir Herbert Plumer and Sir Hubert Gough called for a halt to the campaign. Yet Haig insisted on continuing with the campaign, even though, “By any normal standard, the campaign was over. Haig certainly knew that proper preparations, rested troops, and full artillery coverage were no longer possible. His armies were groping and floundering” (p. 200). That Haig insisted upon continuing with the same inflexible plans for his grand offensive, under circumstances that guaranteed that the already horrific Allied casualties would increase, may be, in Wolff’s reading, the most damning indictment of his lack of generalship.
As support for Haig’s campaign waned, both within the British Government and among the British people, a final attack, by Canadian troops on 6 November, took the village of Passchendaele, and enabled the Allies to say that they had gained some ground. But the Allies, Wolff makes clear, had had to destroy the village in order to save it: “The Canadians, smoking cigarettes and trailing their rifles as they walked over the site, could hardly grasp that it had once been a town….Not one building remained, other than the feeble remnant of the church. Not one brick stood on another….Passchendaele was effaced from the earth” (p. 253).
I read In Flanders Fields while traveling in Belgium. Driving between northern France and the city of Ghent, I noted that the landscape is indeed singularly flat, just as Wolff describes, and I know that I would not want to be assigned the task of leading a battle there. All the same, it is an outrage that someone in the Allied command could not sense that the small gain of territory at Passchendaele was not worth the vast human cost. The reader finishes In Flanders Fields with a sense of admiration for the valour of the ordinary soldiers of the Allied forces, and with an equally strong sense of outrage at the inflexibility of the senior officers who mis-led those good soldiers toward death.
August 12, 2017
This is a history of the 1917 third battle of Ypres (also known as the battle of Passchendaele). What is somewhat different about this history is that it tries to cover not only tactics and the views of the generals and politicians, but also the soldiers on the ground. Although it must be said that the majority of the discussion centres on Haig and his battle with Prime Minister Lloyd-George, who opposed Haig’s tactics. I’m not really interested in military tactics, but it is fascinating and horrifying to read the arguments of generals as they play dice with the lives of men.
When he puts his mind to it Wolff can capture scenes and give a glimpse of life at the front, as with this description of the aftermath of a battle;
“As the fighting simmered down, the waste products of the battle, like the precipitate in a cloudy glass, moved rearward - the walking wounded and the stretcher-borne wounded ('very cheery indeed,' according to Haig's diary), soaked, bloody, haggard with pain; the shrouded dead; the vague and stumbling shell-shocked. One artillery lieutenant had been struck in the throat by a bit of shrapnel. As the blood gushed, he walked 100 yards to a dressing station near Zillebeke, gasped to a doctor, 'My God, I'm going to die!' and immediately did so. The stretcher-bearers worked all day and night, helped by German prisoners, who had also begun to filter back early in the day - surprisingly young boys and older, grimmer veterans - all with sunken eyes, sodden clothing, boots full of water that squished at every step.”
There are vivid descriptions of the terrain and especially of the mud, which was so deep that men drowned in it. When one officer was asked to consolidate his advanced position, his response was;
"It is impossible to consolidate porridge. Trenches full of liquid mud. Smelt horribly. Full of dead Frenchmen too bad to touch. Men quite nauseated."
It is difficult to comprehend the full horror of that statement.
Wolff is probably trying to do too much with this book, but parts of it are interesting. There is a good deal of analysis of the characters of those in leadership roles, which has its place, but doesn’t sit easily with the descriptions of the front. Personally I prefer the literary explorations of the war.
When he puts his mind to it Wolff can capture scenes and give a glimpse of life at the front, as with this description of the aftermath of a battle;
“As the fighting simmered down, the waste products of the battle, like the precipitate in a cloudy glass, moved rearward - the walking wounded and the stretcher-borne wounded ('very cheery indeed,' according to Haig's diary), soaked, bloody, haggard with pain; the shrouded dead; the vague and stumbling shell-shocked. One artillery lieutenant had been struck in the throat by a bit of shrapnel. As the blood gushed, he walked 100 yards to a dressing station near Zillebeke, gasped to a doctor, 'My God, I'm going to die!' and immediately did so. The stretcher-bearers worked all day and night, helped by German prisoners, who had also begun to filter back early in the day - surprisingly young boys and older, grimmer veterans - all with sunken eyes, sodden clothing, boots full of water that squished at every step.”
There are vivid descriptions of the terrain and especially of the mud, which was so deep that men drowned in it. When one officer was asked to consolidate his advanced position, his response was;
"It is impossible to consolidate porridge. Trenches full of liquid mud. Smelt horribly. Full of dead Frenchmen too bad to touch. Men quite nauseated."
It is difficult to comprehend the full horror of that statement.
Wolff is probably trying to do too much with this book, but parts of it are interesting. There is a good deal of analysis of the characters of those in leadership roles, which has its place, but doesn’t sit easily with the descriptions of the front. Personally I prefer the literary explorations of the war.
July 20, 2024
This an effective and grim history of a particularly dark chapter of the Great War. The author offers a psychological portrait of Sir Douglas Haig who engineered an incredible bloodbath in Flanders in 1917. Utilizing diaries as a counterpoint to newspapers and military dispatches a Henry V effect is created. The series of attacks was a mistake on every level. One of the few coups was an effort to bore tunnels 200 feet deep under a ridge line and attendant fortifications. These tunnels lined with explosives and detonated. The leader of the effort quipped that while they may affect history they definitely would change geography. The crest was obliterated but to no lasting military implication. I found this a moving research.
October 16, 2021
I picked up this book some time ago at a second-hand bookshop, mainly because of the photo on the cover, to which I have a personal connection. When I was a young teenager in New Zealand in the early 1960s, an elderly couple lived next door for a few years then they moved away. My family paid them a visit in their new house & the NZ Herald had just published their centennial magazine. For 1917, they had included this photo, the one on this book’s cover. The old gentleman, Harry was his name, opened the magazine, pointed to the photo, to the soldier closest to the camera & said: “That’s me, there.” The caption read ‘It took 6 men, 6 hours to bring one wounded out from the mud of Passchendaele.’ Harry had always spoken with a very gruff voice & his wife, Gwen, told me it was the result of mustard gas that had killed his mate. It was a little incident I have always remembered and this book by Leon Wolff is a very descriptive, well researched book on the events & politics leading up to the tragic battle of Passchendaele, or the Third Battle of Ypres as it was also known. It began with the massive exploding of mines at Messines, the largest non-nuclear explosion which was estimated to have killed around 10,000 German soldiers. The battle proper began a Couple of months later & bogged down in the mud with horrific casualties. One of the many futile attacks took place on the 12 October and 843 NZ soldiers were killed in a couple of hours. This is the highest death toll of any disaster, manmade or natural, in New Zealand history. The indifference & ignorance of the generals was summed up by Leon Wolff : ‘The following day (7 November) Lieutenant-General Sir Launcelot Kiggell paid his first visit to the fighting zone. As the staff car lurched through swampland and neared the battleground he became more and more agitated. Finally he burst into tears and muttered “Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?” The man beside him, who had been through the campaign, replied tonelessly, “It’s worse further on up.”
For anyone interested in the tragedy of the Flanders Campaign, this is a good book to read, although the book is descriptive, we can never really appreciate the sheer hell that men like Harry went through. When I look back I feel it was his way of saying ‘Don’t forget us!’
For anyone interested in the tragedy of the Flanders Campaign, this is a good book to read, although the book is descriptive, we can never really appreciate the sheer hell that men like Harry went through. When I look back I feel it was his way of saying ‘Don’t forget us!’
April 4, 2012
“Only among duller minds, by that January 1, was the war still a splendid canvas without warts.” It was 1917, and the war that had been dragging on for an eternity, had no end in sight. In was apparent that the Americans would soon be entering the war on the side of the allies, and General Douglas Haig, the British commander in chief was eager to end the war before the Americans arrived and stole his victory. He argued that a surprise attack would overwhelm the Germans and create the breakthrough that both armies had been trying to achieve for almost four years.
That he insisted on a massive two-week bombardment (nearly five tons of explosive for every yard of territory) goes to his stupidity or arrogance for it eliminated any hope of surprise. He picked Flanders for the attack, an area that has extraordinarily gummy soil when wet and the rainy season had already turned the area into a quagmire. The bombardment destroyed the drainage system that Flemish farmers had created over centuries. There was plenty of warning. The Tank Corp staff had warned headquarters about the mud and drainage problems, but typically the General Staff and Haig’s immediate operational advisors did not go near the front — a damning charge also made by Stephen Ambrose (Citizen Soldiers) and David Hackworth ( )about the American high command in WWII, Vietnam and Korea. This ignorance combined with his sense that God had picked him to lead the British to victory over the heathen Huns produced in Haig a sense of divine right. He assumed he had special powers. Unfortunately, those special powers did not translate into fewer casualties. On the first day, the British suffered 67,000 casualties for hardly any territorial gain. And this was just the beginning.
1917 was a perfect time to end the war. Both sides had virtually exhausted themselves, some 2,000,000 men having been killed. The Germans had made numerous peace overtures, and history has shown that negotiated peace agreements are more profitable for both sides. The Allies could also have blockaded the Central Powers into forcing an agreement. Once America entered the war all hope of a negotiated settlement was lost. The result was the Verdun surrender that created the conditions leading to WWII.
Geology played an important role in the battle for Flanders. The soil consisted of a pure fine-grained clay. This combined with water to create a gluey mud. Since it rained, on average, every other day, in this part of Belgium, moving troops and supplies was very difficult. Men were often suffocated in mini-landslides. They were almost always in liquid mud up to their knees. The smell was terrible. The dead could rarely be buried and usually just rotted where they fell. Ground water became polluted so fresh water had to be brought up to the trenches every day. It was a very difficult task.
In 1197 – curious transposition of numerals, Philip Augustus was trapped in the same area and the Romans had suffered similar difficulties around Ypres.
It was here that Haig consulted with geologists to see if they could tunnel under the German lines, which occupied the only raised ground – so slight they could really not be called hills – at Messines. Deep down the clay was different. Blue in color, it was much heavier and permitted mining. It was also between eighty and one hundred twenty feet deep so any charges planted would not be likely to be blown up by random shelling. They worked for two years, planting thousands of pounds of explosives under the German lines in preparation for a new offensive. The Germans did some mining of their own, and on a couple of occasions ran their own mines within inches of the British tunnels. They could even be heard talking through the walls.
When finally detonated, the explosion could be heard in London, and it completely demoralized the German troops. They were dazed. The British moved in quickly, but, following orders, failed to capitalize on the German anguish and went far forward enough only to straighten out the salient. So it began all over again.
Haig had to convince the civilians in London of the wisdom of his new offensive. They were lukewarm at best, especially in the light that Haig had difficulty articulating his objectives. How could one measure success if the objectives failed to be articulated was the reasonable question. The longer the offensive was delayed, the more likely the rains that would turn the region into a quagmire. Dredged out from the sea, farmers were heavily punished if they failed to maintain the drainage ditches that kept the area from returning to its original swampy condition. Haig intended to use – and was counting on – many of the new Mark IV tanks. The tank commanders, looking at the terrain, realized this was the worst terrain for them over the entire front. They produced maps showing the effect that shelling would have and the resulting lakes that would be formed. The response from headquarters was emblematic: “Send us no more of those ridiculous maps.”
He also overlooked the results of the abortive Russian offensive that collapsed releasing thousands of troops for the western German defense. The offensive superiority that should have been five to one was only 15% greater and dwindling quickly. A child could have foretold the result.
Other titles I have read over the years that I can personally recommend: The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman that describes how and why the war began; The Price of Glory by Alastair Horne that relives the horror of Verdun, and the one with the most expressive title Donkeys by Alan Clark, a scathing indictment of the British and French generalship.
That he insisted on a massive two-week bombardment (nearly five tons of explosive for every yard of territory) goes to his stupidity or arrogance for it eliminated any hope of surprise. He picked Flanders for the attack, an area that has extraordinarily gummy soil when wet and the rainy season had already turned the area into a quagmire. The bombardment destroyed the drainage system that Flemish farmers had created over centuries. There was plenty of warning. The Tank Corp staff had warned headquarters about the mud and drainage problems, but typically the General Staff and Haig’s immediate operational advisors did not go near the front — a damning charge also made by Stephen Ambrose (Citizen Soldiers) and David Hackworth ( )about the American high command in WWII, Vietnam and Korea. This ignorance combined with his sense that God had picked him to lead the British to victory over the heathen Huns produced in Haig a sense of divine right. He assumed he had special powers. Unfortunately, those special powers did not translate into fewer casualties. On the first day, the British suffered 67,000 casualties for hardly any territorial gain. And this was just the beginning.
1917 was a perfect time to end the war. Both sides had virtually exhausted themselves, some 2,000,000 men having been killed. The Germans had made numerous peace overtures, and history has shown that negotiated peace agreements are more profitable for both sides. The Allies could also have blockaded the Central Powers into forcing an agreement. Once America entered the war all hope of a negotiated settlement was lost. The result was the Verdun surrender that created the conditions leading to WWII.
Geology played an important role in the battle for Flanders. The soil consisted of a pure fine-grained clay. This combined with water to create a gluey mud. Since it rained, on average, every other day, in this part of Belgium, moving troops and supplies was very difficult. Men were often suffocated in mini-landslides. They were almost always in liquid mud up to their knees. The smell was terrible. The dead could rarely be buried and usually just rotted where they fell. Ground water became polluted so fresh water had to be brought up to the trenches every day. It was a very difficult task.
In 1197 – curious transposition of numerals, Philip Augustus was trapped in the same area and the Romans had suffered similar difficulties around Ypres.
It was here that Haig consulted with geologists to see if they could tunnel under the German lines, which occupied the only raised ground – so slight they could really not be called hills – at Messines. Deep down the clay was different. Blue in color, it was much heavier and permitted mining. It was also between eighty and one hundred twenty feet deep so any charges planted would not be likely to be blown up by random shelling. They worked for two years, planting thousands of pounds of explosives under the German lines in preparation for a new offensive. The Germans did some mining of their own, and on a couple of occasions ran their own mines within inches of the British tunnels. They could even be heard talking through the walls.
When finally detonated, the explosion could be heard in London, and it completely demoralized the German troops. They were dazed. The British moved in quickly, but, following orders, failed to capitalize on the German anguish and went far forward enough only to straighten out the salient. So it began all over again.
Haig had to convince the civilians in London of the wisdom of his new offensive. They were lukewarm at best, especially in the light that Haig had difficulty articulating his objectives. How could one measure success if the objectives failed to be articulated was the reasonable question. The longer the offensive was delayed, the more likely the rains that would turn the region into a quagmire. Dredged out from the sea, farmers were heavily punished if they failed to maintain the drainage ditches that kept the area from returning to its original swampy condition. Haig intended to use – and was counting on – many of the new Mark IV tanks. The tank commanders, looking at the terrain, realized this was the worst terrain for them over the entire front. They produced maps showing the effect that shelling would have and the resulting lakes that would be formed. The response from headquarters was emblematic: “Send us no more of those ridiculous maps.”
He also overlooked the results of the abortive Russian offensive that collapsed releasing thousands of troops for the western German defense. The offensive superiority that should have been five to one was only 15% greater and dwindling quickly. A child could have foretold the result.
Other titles I have read over the years that I can personally recommend: The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman that describes how and why the war began; The Price of Glory by Alastair Horne that relives the horror of Verdun, and the one with the most expressive title Donkeys by Alan Clark, a scathing indictment of the British and French generalship.
September 8, 2012
This meticulously researched history of one of the most horrifying battles of World War I should make one feel that knowing the details of this senseless waste of human life might somehow help prevent it from happening again but for me it had the opposite effect; man’s capacity for brutality and senseless warfare seems boundless. In the summer and fall of 1917 British Field Marshall Douglas Haig sent wave after wave of his troops against well armed and well defended German forces in numerous attempts to win a few hundred yards of muddy Belgian territory but all to no avail. The reason for his seemingly endless onslaught is still debated today by military historians but the casualty figures are seldom in dispute, and if anything they have grown larger with passing time. And all this took place after the notorious battle of the Somme in 1916 where French General Foch was responsible for a blood bath of 60,000 French casualties in the first day of battle for a few square miles of "worthless tortured ground". “The Great War” now seems so long ago that most people today are only aware of it as a historical footnote but many of us had grandparents who were directly impacted by its events. The numbers alone tell an amazingly tragic story: troops killed 8,538,315; wounded 21,219,452; imprisoned or missing 7,750,919 with well over a million of these later presumed dead. The total deaths (not counting civilians) approach 10,000,000 and in the final tally it had meant nothing, solved nothing and proved nothing. It was followed two decades later by WWII.
March 1, 2014
This is about the Third Battle of Ypres, a.k.a. the Passchendaele campaign or the 1917 Flanders offensive which happened during the 4th year of the first world war.
What makes this different from other WW1 novels, accounts and memoirs I have read is that it does not confine itself to what happened in the battlefield but likewise dwelt at length on the generals, leaders and politicians who were never at the war front and made decisions in the comfort of their swivel chairs.
In the Author's Preface the origin of this war was explained in about ten short paragraphs. Let's not tire ourselves here by quoting them. Let me just do an analogy via an event so common that everyone of us either have experienced it ourselves or may have heard about such at least once in our lives.
Imagine England inside a bar drinking with its friends on one table and Germany with its own friends likewise getting drunk in an adjacent table. England throws a sharp glance at Germany which, in turn, glares at it--each one therefore thinking that the other is casting an evil eye upon the other. So they stand up, exchange hostile words, lunge at each other and before anyone can shout "charge!" are already at each other's throat. Their friends, of course, join the melee.
Later, after numbing deaths and destruction, they do not anymore know why they are there and why they are fighting and killing each other. Had they all read Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" maybe they would have been forewarned that that is the way of all wars:
"But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush. The men, pitching forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but tuned in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic. It made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be incapable of checking itself before granite and brass. There was the delirium that encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the odds. It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness. And because it was of this order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered, afterward, what reasons he could have had for being there."
That was, more or less, how WW1 started. The author, harking back to pre-historic intertribal rivalries onwards gave a conclusion: "the causes of wars remained as irrational as ever." I may add that in WW1 it was not only the causes which were irrational. It seemed even its methods were.
At least during ancient Greek or Roman times, as I've seen in the movies, warring armies would meet in an open field and frontally clash. They had the honesty of a boxing match. During WW1 it was the trench warfare. The opposing armies dug holes on the ground and fortified themselves. They face each other, separated by a stretch of the ground called the "No-Man's Land." Occasionally they would bomb and snipe at each other. But the majority of the millions who died on both sides did not lose their lives that way. They were sacrificed en masse by their commanders with their moustache and pants tucked inside their boots and who were not aware of the ground conditions (the mud! the mud!) as they made life-and-death decisions in the safety of their headquarters behind the front with their pencils and maps.
Against a well-entrenched enemy, secure in their positions with their artillery and machine guns, a general would order hundreds of thousands of his men to run towards their foes, across the no-man's land, amidst a hail of bullets and a rain of bombs. The logic would be that not all of them will be mowed down and the remnants may be able to overrun the enemy's position. A principle not too different to that of bowling pins which face the oncoming bowling balls.
Often, hundreds of thousands would be expended to take a few square kilometers of muddy ground only for the same to be lost to the enemy, retaken at the cost of more lives. This insane bloodletting went on for years and they all died like flies--close to ten million soldiers. Soldiers alone, ten million, not counting the civilian casualties of the fighting, disease and hunger. And I kept on remembering some of these dead, those whom I've met in my readings about this war, like Vera Brittain's brother, fiance and friends; Rudyard Kipling's only son, etc. And then I wonder if we would have had a much better world had these young men, the flowers of their generation, lived instead in peace and their talents not gone to waste.
July 8, 2012
There is the folly of war, which are the decisions made that lead into the disaster of war. And there is the folly of battle, the decisions made which needlessly cost lives. In Flanders Fields is an account of both. The particular folly of war in evidence here is that of the "in for a penny, in for a pound" syndrome. Wolff recounts David Lloyd George's clear insight into the folly of the Passchendaele campaign of 1917 and his inability to stop it. The same folly in Viet Nam cost Lyndon Johnson his presidency and the chance at presidential greatness.
The other folly is the folly of battle--the inability to see things as they are. This was the folly of Douglas Haig who threw wave after wave of men at entrenched and hardened German lines only to be cut down with machine guns and artillery, gaining in the end four miles or less at the cost of half a million casualties. Haig kept believing in the infantry offensive thrust followed up by cavalry through a break in the lines. Solid defenses and terrible ground never allowed for this. He neglected and held in contempt the tank. The one attack where tanks were used effectively could not be followed up because of how weakened his forces were.
While this isn't the narrative of every war or every battle, it is the narrative of too many. This book ought to be required reading for any leader considering taking a nation into battle, grim reading that it is.
The other folly is the folly of battle--the inability to see things as they are. This was the folly of Douglas Haig who threw wave after wave of men at entrenched and hardened German lines only to be cut down with machine guns and artillery, gaining in the end four miles or less at the cost of half a million casualties. Haig kept believing in the infantry offensive thrust followed up by cavalry through a break in the lines. Solid defenses and terrible ground never allowed for this. He neglected and held in contempt the tank. The one attack where tanks were used effectively could not be followed up because of how weakened his forces were.
While this isn't the narrative of every war or every battle, it is the narrative of too many. This book ought to be required reading for any leader considering taking a nation into battle, grim reading that it is.
October 11, 2015
In this grim volume, Wolff recounts the checkered, up-and-down history of the curious Flanders campaign of 1917, in which the key players were David Lloyd George, Douglas Haig, and mud. The campaign is known for the strategic debate between Lloyd George on one side and Haig and William Robertson on the other, and Wolff describes this interaction in detail. Following the result of a mere four miles’ gain (each paid in blood by 100,000 casualties) and the offensive literally getting bogged down, of course, Lloyd George soon sacked Robertson, and afterwards kept Haig’s forces deliberately weak in order to prevent similar disasters. Wolff describes all of these events in detail.
Wolff does a fine job telling this story and bringing together all the relevant sources, although it doesn’t add anything new. The narrative is broad, but it is almost entirely a pure military history, and there is little discussion of the question of why Lloyd George even allowed the operation to proceed, or on any of the political context. The only way the question of higher policy is really addressed is by discussion of Lloyd George’s role alone.
Still, a well-written history of the Flanders campaign, with a vivid, readable narrative.
Wolff does a fine job telling this story and bringing together all the relevant sources, although it doesn’t add anything new. The narrative is broad, but it is almost entirely a pure military history, and there is little discussion of the question of why Lloyd George even allowed the operation to proceed, or on any of the political context. The only way the question of higher policy is really addressed is by discussion of Lloyd George’s role alone.
Still, a well-written history of the Flanders campaign, with a vivid, readable narrative.
May 9, 2012
Even if you don’t already hate war and generals, In Flanders Fields should seal the deal for you. Leon Wolff takes his title, of course, from the famous John McCrae poem about poppies and corpses. He then gives an exhaustive account of the decisions and motives behind them that resulted the slaughter that WWI trench warfare perpetrated. Repeated senseless assaults in waist deep mud that gained no ground and cost tens of thousands of lives--that sums up what happened during 1916-17, the year that Wolff details. Narrow, unimaginative, ego-driven commanders and politicians to whom soldiers were no more than cannon fodder or media tools. A sycophantic press ready to publish any jingoistic crap the establishment feeds them.
The reading about the founding of Turkey has given me some new insight into WWI that has convinced me it was a stupid and horrid series of battles, followed by a stupid and horrid series of treaties that did a lot to help set up WWII as well as the conflicts we’re mired in right now. Would that literature could really change minds. We had Johnny Got His Gun and All Quiet on the Western Front to work with, but we seemingly can’t stop. Shit.
The reading about the founding of Turkey has given me some new insight into WWI that has convinced me it was a stupid and horrid series of battles, followed by a stupid and horrid series of treaties that did a lot to help set up WWII as well as the conflicts we’re mired in right now. Would that literature could really change minds. We had Johnny Got His Gun and All Quiet on the Western Front to work with, but we seemingly can’t stop. Shit.
October 29, 2016
A brilliant book one of the best I've read on the Flanders campaign. I only wish I'd read it whilst I was there as the book is so descriptive it could be used as a tour guide!
Charts the whole campaign up to armistice then the last chapter covers what happened to the leaders and the salient after the war.
Charts the whole campaign up to armistice then the last chapter covers what happened to the leaders and the salient after the war.
January 11, 2021
Good literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, mirrors various realities. So too does In Flanders Fields. Here are two examples:
" '...the professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling...' " (H.G. Wells, qtd. on 266)
We can become prisoners of our own unwillingness to embrace flexibility and toleration, thereby inhibiting the imagination. Perhaps this statement by Wells symbolizes the extreme case of this World War I campaign that cost thousands of lives due to leadership's tragic adherence to a flawed plan of attack, the foul weather, and the overall circumstances leading up to poor decisions. The mud and torrential rain flooding the lowland of Flanders was mainly responsible for the deaths of so many fine soldiers, any of whom were volunteers. Leon Wolff painstakingly details the events, the personalities, and the fates that led to such a campaign, a campaign debated over time as to its prudence.
"If people really knew, the war would bestowed tomorrow, but of course, they don't-and can't know. The correspondents don't write and the censorship wouldn't pass the truth" (272).
Sound familiar? In today's society, where is our level of confidence in the press? That uncertain faith has been ongoing for centuries: WW I, WW II, Vietnam, Watergate, the COVID-19 virus, etc. Literature mirror society's flaws.
This book reveals the immense suffering and hardships of that particular campaign, while magnifying the main character of Sir Douglas Haig and his decision-making. In spite of the concrete detail, perhaps no one will ever know the actual truth about any research or investigative reporting. We take what we hear, we form half-baked opinions, we listen to our neighbors or friends, and we believe what we want to believe, with rational thought as its foundation or otherwise.
A good read.
" '...the professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling...' " (H.G. Wells, qtd. on 266)
We can become prisoners of our own unwillingness to embrace flexibility and toleration, thereby inhibiting the imagination. Perhaps this statement by Wells symbolizes the extreme case of this World War I campaign that cost thousands of lives due to leadership's tragic adherence to a flawed plan of attack, the foul weather, and the overall circumstances leading up to poor decisions. The mud and torrential rain flooding the lowland of Flanders was mainly responsible for the deaths of so many fine soldiers, any of whom were volunteers. Leon Wolff painstakingly details the events, the personalities, and the fates that led to such a campaign, a campaign debated over time as to its prudence.
"If people really knew, the war would bestowed tomorrow, but of course, they don't-and can't know. The correspondents don't write and the censorship wouldn't pass the truth" (272).
Sound familiar? In today's society, where is our level of confidence in the press? That uncertain faith has been ongoing for centuries: WW I, WW II, Vietnam, Watergate, the COVID-19 virus, etc. Literature mirror society's flaws.
This book reveals the immense suffering and hardships of that particular campaign, while magnifying the main character of Sir Douglas Haig and his decision-making. In spite of the concrete detail, perhaps no one will ever know the actual truth about any research or investigative reporting. We take what we hear, we form half-baked opinions, we listen to our neighbors or friends, and we believe what we want to believe, with rational thought as its foundation or otherwise.
A good read.
April 11, 2023
I rated In Flanders Fields by Leon Wolff four stars as it was very good; it lived up to my expectations, and I really enjoyed reading it. Describing the military conflicts in 1917, the book mainly follows the battles in and around flanders and belgium, going over various campaigns and the eventual retaking of belgian soil. It explains various events, such as the race to the sean or the battle of flanders, or the stand at Yser. I discovered this book when looking through my schools local library, and found it's explanatory nature interesting. I like how the book really went in depth while not making everything too complicated for others not invested into the topic to understand. For example, various maps are included to reference battles and campaigns and various battalions and platoons are talked about. What I criticize about this book is it's somewhat lack of historical citing. Sure, there's moments where they cite the references, but often are facts and knowledge thrown in there without much explanation. This book holds the potential to inform and entertain, as it holds the various battles and facts with relative comprehensibility, and it can also attone to history buffs like myself. I would read another book by this author if it were to be on the same topic as they do a very good job with formatting sequences of information. If you enjoy historical nonfiction, or just random intense facts, this is a good book for you!
March 22, 2021
After reading this, all I can really think is that I need to read more military history. It may seem silly, but only being dimly aware of the basic facts of WWI, and certainly not enough to identify which individual leaders and campaigns were successful, is probably the best way to experience this account. It is detailed, and riveting and, importantly, doesn't spoil it's own narrative by skipping ahead too much and giving away the ending. I don't know enough to say whether the account is truly unbiased, but it seems to do a decent job of showing all sides of the disputes, even if the author clearly settled on his preferred take.
March 19, 2024
Ugh. Not an easy read. Excellent job describing the hardships endured by the soldiers. Of course, a description will never equal reality, even with the photos included. The nearly constant rain, the ubiquitous mud and the shell holes filled with rain made for horrible fighting conditions. I was particularly intrigued by the thought that the endless water disguised the underlying soil/mud. Walking through the water and mud, you never see the shell hole until you fall into it. And all of this will begin bombarded by artillery, shot at and gassed. Causalities never offset the meager gains.
July 21, 2017
Interesting and horrible look at 1917 campaign on northern British front in World War One (100 years ago). Politicians should have held generals more accountable. Gen. Haig was suited for defense but not for offense where many lives were wasted in attacks that did not get much done. Rain and mud in Flanders made it a real hell for soldiers. To understand WW II it really helps to find out about WW I.
September 16, 2025
1st published in 1958, Wolf's classic account of Third Ypres is an engaging portrait of the infamous 1917 campaign. If officers a more strategic view of the campaign, short on operational and tactical matters. Wolf epitomizes the anti-war (and particularly is anti British military leadership) of his era, which has not aged well with subsequent scholarship. That said, this is an eminently readable account, that does a nice job of capturing the mindless madness of these battles.
January 29, 2024
A wonderful book, moving, sorrowful, exact and yet beautiful in many ways. The words used to describe hell are sometimes so sad they moved me to tears and head shaking. So many Australians died in this theatre of war, so many young, strong, brave slaughtered for no reason except for the stupidity and stubbornness and sheer bloody-mindedness of incompetent generals.
July 22, 2017
Very well-written step-by-step account of the Third Ypres battles (Paschendaele) and the personalities involved, e.g., Haig, Robertson, Lloyd George, etc. Critical of Haig but seems balanced. Published in 1958 but with a later introduction in this edition.
July 31, 2018
You'd be hard pressed to find a darker and more depressing book anywhere on any topic. The author intentionally takes a blithe and unfeeling tone toward the events of 1917, and lets the reader arrive alone in overwhelming disgust and anger at the senselessness of it all.
June 22, 2018
Monumental stupidity and pig-headedness at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives wasted in troglodyte conditions. Well written.
March 2, 2020
Excellent book on the third battle of Ypres. Just one problem there was 455 pages not 310
If your studying World War One this is a must.
If your studying World War One this is a must.
Read
August 5, 2020An important basic book for WWI studies.
August 29, 2020
A brutal and necessary read.
August 16, 2025
Took me a while to read and had to concentrate to remember who was who but generally a very informative book that gave me an insight into the politics of ww1 and certainly added to my knowledge.
September 24, 2022
A surprisingly easy to read factual book about the First World War and particularly the major campaigns of 1917. I was drawn to this book by my Grandfather’s experience in this war.
August 23, 2016
More a big picture WWI book, more character study than blood and guts, actions and decisions at high levels of British command, politicians vs generals pov's, and rapid societal change. (Many people LOVED the war that brought economic stimulation and a relaxation of British social stiffness today we'd call sex, drugs and rock and roll.) Quotes from luminaries such as Churchill, GB Shaw, HG Wells. I'd give it 5 stars were it not for the fact that WWI was a monotonous dreary war of attrition.
Brilliant research and journalism with edgy cynicism:
"The war ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. It had meant nothing, solved nothing, and proved nothing; and in so doing had killed 8,838,3115 men and variously wounded 21,219,452 . . .the total deaths (not counting civilians) approach 10,000,000."
In a DLGeorge memoir: "Haig emerges as a stubborn, fame-hungry, cold-blooded, deceiving oaf, and his campaign a military abortion unparalleled in the history of the western world."
Note: I'm surprised there wasn't more output from Leon Wolff, a massive talent.
Brilliant research and journalism with edgy cynicism:
"The war ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. It had meant nothing, solved nothing, and proved nothing; and in so doing had killed 8,838,3115 men and variously wounded 21,219,452 . . .the total deaths (not counting civilians) approach 10,000,000."
In a DLGeorge memoir: "Haig emerges as a stubborn, fame-hungry, cold-blooded, deceiving oaf, and his campaign a military abortion unparalleled in the history of the western world."
Note: I'm surprised there wasn't more output from Leon Wolff, a massive talent.
December 4, 2013
read another one from the perspective of the english re: ypres, etc...need to find a book on the german perspective (or even a french opinion on the various battles, granted their involvement wasn't as great)...
every general/decision maker involved in this campaign on both sides should've been tried for war crimes...what these soldiers did and how they kept on defies belief...
"I was lying out in no man's land. A little German dog trotted up and licked my British face. I pulled his German ears and stroked his German back. He wagged his German tail. My little friend abolished no man's land, and so in time can we." (Englishman scouting the area before he died - Battle of Poelcapelle, p231)
"My opinion is that the senior generals who direct these operations are not conversant with the conditions, mud, cold, rain, and no shelter for the men..." (New Zealand brigadier - p238)
"What shall we be
When we aren't what we are?..." (272)
every general/decision maker involved in this campaign on both sides should've been tried for war crimes...what these soldiers did and how they kept on defies belief...
"I was lying out in no man's land. A little German dog trotted up and licked my British face. I pulled his German ears and stroked his German back. He wagged his German tail. My little friend abolished no man's land, and so in time can we." (Englishman scouting the area before he died - Battle of Poelcapelle, p231)
"My opinion is that the senior generals who direct these operations are not conversant with the conditions, mud, cold, rain, and no shelter for the men..." (New Zealand brigadier - p238)
"What shall we be
When we aren't what we are?..." (272)
July 7, 2011
This is one of the best books from the military history genre which I have ever read. It is an excellent survey of World War I's most brutal battle. The narrative goes deeper than this single battle however. I enjoyed that the author included a lot of information about what was going on in the political realm, as well as the world conflict in general before, during, and after this battle. It is a well rounded, through, splendidly written account.
January 15, 2013
I browsed this book as a small child; and remember its seriousness and force--but was much too young to grasp what its about. Just found it on Amazon; but it was not yet listed on Goodreads--although other titles by the same author are present. I'm intending to explore it seriously now as an adult. It has a great reputation for factual detail and narrative power.
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