By VICTORIA MOORE

Last updated at 16:07 31 July 2007

They are the most remarkable pictures of one of the most hellish places on earth.

Never seen before, these astonishing photographs, lovingly hand-touched in colour to bring to life the nightmare of Passchendaele, were released this week to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the battle that, between July and November 1917, claimed a staggering 2,121 lives a day and in total some quarter of a million Allied soldiers.

What was once pretty countryside around the Belgian village that gave the battlefield its name was reduced to an infernal swamp where the ground oozed with foul-smelling slime, and mustard gas that blistered the skin and made the lungs bleed.

Today, the Queen will attend a Last Post ceremony in Passchendaele at the Menin Gate, where a memorial arch is engraved with the names of the 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died with no known graves.

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She will also visit the Tyne Cot cemetery, where 11,952 graves are laid out in neat concentric circles, their tombstones white against the green grass, in peaceful defiance of the brutal battle that took their lives.

One of the major conflicts of World War I, it was conceived by British Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig as a "big push" that would, finally, bring a breakthrough in the stalemate in Flanders.

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Officially named the Third Battle of Ypres, the hope was that by breaking through German lines at this point on the Western Front, the Allies could reach the Belgian coast and capture the German submarine bases there.

The Allies prepared the way with a massive two-week bombardment in which 3,000 heavy guns sent more than four million shells pouring into the German lines.

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Then, on July 31, the troops poured into a No Man's Land that within days and under torrential rain had become a sodden bog.

It became so deep that men, horses and pack mules drowned in it. What was supposed to be a breakthrough became a battle of attrition.

By November, the British and Empire forces had advanced just five miles at terrible cost, to take the village of Passchendaele - which at least provided an excuse for them to call a halt.

Their one consolation was that the Germans had also suffered grievously.