“Blood and mud, blood and mud, they can think of nothing better!”

– British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1917)

How do you make the ghastly, traumatizing, charnel house moonscape of a First World War Western Front battlefield more horrific? Add water.

Third Ypres (also known as “The Battle of Passchendaele”) combined all the atrocious features of other Western Front battles, with swamp-like conditions that were so appalling that it’s hard to imagine that conducting modern military operations there was even possible.

While rain and mud were a common feature of First World War battles, the conditions at Passchendaele were uniquely terrible. Men, horses and equipment sunk in the quicksand-like muck. The rain and standing water drowned the wounded. The day-to-day existence for the soldiers living and fighting in thigh-deep mud or water was appalling. And it went on month after month. At least half a million soldiers became casualties.