Battle of Passchendaele The Battle of Passchendaele or the 3rd Battle of Ypres was a battle that had taken place on the village of Passchendaele , though strategically inconclusive , the Battle of Pachendaele was a tactical victory to the allied army , as the Germans had taken unraplaceable losses . History . The official name of the battle is " 3rd Battle of Ypres " , but is universally known as the Battle of Passchendaele , because it was a series of skirmishes with one goal , taking the village of Passchendaele and the high ground around them . It began on July 31 , 1917 with the attack in the northern plains at Pilcken on the left and ravine Gheluvelt at right . The troops would be supported in Pilcken by massive formations of tanks and attack proved initially successful but , unfortunately , the troops of the right flank were blocked and failed to achieve his goal : conquesting the ravine Gheluvelt . At four o ' clock the rain began . The weather remained wet for days and floods on the terrain don ' t allowed operations with tanks . Although the Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig had proposed a short battle in order to penetrate the German lines , it was patently impossible now , he still insisted on continuing to Battle of Langemark at north . General Humbert Gough , chosen by Haig as one of the most aggressive of his generals of division , warned Haig that it would be wiser to stop the battle , but the inflexibility of the Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces decided that it would continue for another three weeks until 26 August , despite the casualties suffered crippling . Haig decided to shift the focus of the battle for the North East and when the good weather finally arrived , ordering the assault in the ravine itself . He also changed his staff , and General Herbert Plumer was appointed to lead the next offensive . Plumer , one of the most astute British generals , was a staunch advocate of advances in small scale , under the protection of portentous artillery barrages , that would prevent German counterattacks . Such a philosophy would lead to a tremendous concentration of power in a relatively small front , which facilitates the exchange of tired men and the distribution of food and ammunition . Men should go behind the shelter of bullets and the enemy would be obscured by smoke and debris from the barrage , however , this would be impossible if , by chance , it rained and the ground became a mass of mud . The Battle of Menim Road on 20 September , was the first of three famous victories using a new tactic advocated by Plumer . At dawn of day , after a saturation bombing of five days , the Anzacs were able to perform an attack with two victorious Australian divisions side by side and supported by a Scottish division to its left . The Australians reached the bottom , the Polygon wood , the deed has cost 5 , 000 casualties to the troops , and then the forest was captured . The land seized was consolidated and backed by a railway line and secondary roads were quickly opened to allow the rapid arrival of new supplies to the front . On September 26 the weather was still good and the ground had dried up , that day the saturation barrage of Plumer worked well and the Anzacs could proceed under such coverage , very quickly . The 4th Australian Division then took the rest of the Polygon wood area , or what was left of it . They had then reached a position that would strike the main ravine Broodseinde . The Battle of Broodseinde took place at dawn on October 3 . Australian troops on standby were bombarded with heavy mortars in their trenches and , as reached the top , were overtaken by German troops advancing under cover of the barrage , by coincidence the enemy troops had launched an assault at the same time . The Germans were eventually driven back by charging with fixed bayonets of Australians , however the German machine guns were causing increasing casualties and retained part of the attack . After the Australian charge , the Germans retreated to where their trenches where , together with their reserves , they were struck by intensive English artillery , which caused heavy casualties to the Germans . The artillery barrage was directed deep into German lines , and then turned to the Australian position , which , under cover , stepped forward and captured the hill later on October 4 , a day described by Ludendorff as " the german black day . " As the Australians reached the top of the ravine , has enabled them to see behind German lines just in front , the only obstacle to their success was the occupied village of Passchendaele to the north . Those three wins were credited to the overwhelming success of the technique step - by - step guide on Plumer and were possible only because the weather had been dry enough to allow the mud to dry . But it began to rain on October 5 , the next day . It was not a torrencial rain , but a fine persistent rain . Sir Douglas Haig , however , encouraged by three wins , had ignored the rain and decided to make one more attempt to break the German lines on the mountain , to warn that the cavalry to be ready to follow the rush and start the chase . He ordered the Anzacs in the taking of Passchendaele on October 9 , even with the increase in rainfall intensity . Apparently he did not know the very weak conditions on the ground , that the barbed wire had not been cut and that the Germans had replaced their troops by new men , rested on its " relatively dry " bunkers . His reasons were to continue to allow their troops to winter in the ravine , without which the Germans might be able to target and " drier " , once the front line would be beyond the swamp . The Australians attacked at the August Forest , near Tyne Cot , Captain Clarence Jeffres organized a group and raided one of the bunkers , capturing four machine guns and 35 prisoners . He also led another charge , the next fort , but was killed by shrapnel fire . He was presented the Victoria Cross posthumously . According to Lieutenant John Laffin , all officers in his battalion were killed or wounded that day . Incredibly , and especially the bravery of Captain Jeffres , 20 men reached the wreckage that were part of the church of Passchendaele . Unfortunately the British on the right failed to support them and escort them and the Australians were forced to withdraw for the entire journey , until the slough of their original front line . At this point their artillery was almost out of ammunition and its projectile , when fired , were buried in mud , causing very little impact on the enemy Haig was still clung to the battle , even with the rain and cold that came on Oct . 12 . His crazely has ordered a further assault , which was destined to fail miserably , with men struggling to come up with mud on the heights of their hips and with jammed rifles . This attack cost 7000 casualties to allied forces , only the 3rd Australian Division lost 3 , 199 men in the first 24 hours of the offensive . The Australians finally fell exhausted , but Haig was pathologically obsessed with the capture of the village of Passchendaele and ordered to Canadians to assume the battle . However the General Elliot , one of the few state - of higher Haig who still had the good sense , refused to move the troops did not improve as time and adequate supplies were not available . Eventually , on November 12 , Canadians took Passchendaele , or what remained of the village , and the battle finally ended . Aerial photographs were taken after the battle of Passchendaele , an estimated half a million bullets holes could be seen in half a square mile of the city . It was there that , presumably , Haig hoped that his troops spent the winter . Even reaching the goal , he was useless in terms of the original plan : the attack by sea to Nieuport was abandoned and there were hopes of advancing against the German ports of La Mancha , which were subsequently blocked by the Admiralty through the sinking ship at Zeebrugge . Casualites . Passchendaele cost half a million lives in its three months . The Germans lost approximately 250 , 000 to 400 . 000 men and the allies lost 300 , 000 Britons , of whom 36 , 500 were Australian . 90 , 000 British or Australian bodies were never identified , 42 , 000 were never recovered , they were blown to pieces or were submerged in deadly mud . Many of the drowned were exhausted or wounded men who fainted or fell from the boards ( placed for crossing the seas of mud ) and could not escape the mass , sinking to their deaths as they struggled to survive . Passchendaele certainly sums up the extraordinary bravery of soldiers who attempted it was obviously impossible , but by superhuman efforts succeeded in fulfilling its objectives . Even though their efforts may be rendered useless by the excesses of the High Command , they should never be minimized or forgotten .