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00:00This is the War Memorial in Stratford, Ontario, and it's typical of all the War Memorials
00:15across Canada, in every village, in every town, and in every city.
00:19These memorials are gateways to the First World War.
00:24Unfortunately most Canadians have forgotten the First World War, and they don't realize
00:28that it was the greatest and most traumatic episode in our history.
00:35400,000 Canadians went overseas between 1914 and 18, and 60,000 died for King and Empire.
00:58The First World War Memorial
01:24In these quiet woodlands, you can still find reminders of a great war.
01:43Shell holes left from fierce battles fought here long ago.
01:49Muddy trenches, where thousands of men struggled to the death.
01:54Each year brings more reminders, a dangerous, often deadly, harvest of steel.
02:07It's a German shell, 21 centimetres.
02:26Rising up through the soil are thousands of high-explosive shells that farmers leave by
02:34the side of the road, lethal relics of one of the bloodiest battles in history.
02:41It's 3-4 kilometres from Paschendaele, so it's going to be from the big Paschendaele fight,
02:48one of the battlefields of Paschendaele.
02:52It's going to be from Paschendaele.
03:11Summer 1917, Flanders.
03:14British troops unload millions of shells, preparing for the battle that will go down in history
03:21under the name Paschendaele.
03:25The British commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, is about to launch his greatest
03:30offensive yet, to liberate northern Belgium from the Germans and seize its channel ports.
03:38Attacking from the city of Ypres, Haig plans to capture the German-held ridges around the city,
03:44and to send his cavalry galloping through shattered German lines, and on to victory.
03:54For ten days, four million shells thunder down on a few square kilometres of Flanders.
04:01Ordered to resist to the last man, German troops, like 22-year-old Ernst Jungen,
04:07can only hunker down and pray they will survive.
04:13We lay close to one another in the narrow and crowded ditch.
04:16Fire danced before our eyes.
04:18Twigs and claws whistled about our ears.
04:20Close on my left, a flash flared out, leaving a white, suffocating vapour.
04:25I crept on all fours to the man next to me.
04:28He moved no more.
04:30The blood trickled from many wounds caused by small, jagged splinters.
04:38But Haig's bombardment, the biggest of the war,
04:41destroys the centuries-old drainage system of Flanders.
04:47And within days, the rains begin, pouring down upon the Field Marshal's battlefield.
04:52We're standing on one of the most bloody, deadliest, infamous battlefields in history.
05:04And today it looks like this.
05:05The shelling over this period had destroyed all the creeks and all the drainage,
05:10like the little rave beak that's beside us here.
05:13And it just turned the whole thing into a sea of mud or a treacherous morass.
05:19And soldiers who fell off duckboards would drown in the mud.
05:22Mud rips the treads off Field Marshal Haig's tanks.
05:35His guns sink.
05:37His men and his mules drown.
05:39Whole armies are swallowed up.
05:41And Douglas Haig's great offensive flounders in a sea of stinking slime.
05:47Stubbornly, Haig decrees that the offensive will continue, and so it does, for almost three months.
05:57By October, the Field Marshal has lost a quarter of a million men.
06:07And the key ridge overlooking the city of Ypres, the ridge of Passchendaele, is still in German hands.
06:13We're standing on what were the German positions on Passchendaele Ridge.
06:28From here you can see Ypres, 12 kilometers in the distance.
06:32And in these fields in 1917, the British Army suffered more than 250,000 casualties.
06:38Yet they had not reached this position.
06:41In mid-October 1918, Canadian troops were ordered north,
06:45and they were given the impossible task of capturing Passchendaele.
06:55Since its victory at Vimy Ridge six months before,
06:58the Canadian Corps has been considered an elite force.
07:01But the price of victory had been heavy.
07:04Many are now new recruits, replacing the dead and the maimed.
07:08One of these fresh-faced rookies is a 22-year-old railway clerk from Ontario, John Harold Becker.
07:18We were lined up for Ypres, and it had a bad reputation.
07:20Every minute brought us closer to the front and further into the great wastes that were Belgium.
07:26Tremendous traffic congested the road.
07:28Troops were everywhere, and the roadside of Staminets were doing a thriving business.
07:34On the western edge of Ypres, we got out of our trucks and started our march.
07:38When the Canadians enter Ypres, they can see for themselves how, after three years of war,
07:45the city has, like so much of the world, been reduced to rubble.
07:50Only soldiers trudge through the shattered streets.
07:53The population is gone.
07:55And of the world-renowned monuments, such as the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral, only empty shells remain.
08:08The Gothic Jewel of Flanders exists no more.
08:12As we entered this city, we were spaced a considerable distance, each platoon moving by itself.
08:22There was only one route through Ypres, and this main road carried all the traffic to and from the Great Salient to the east.
08:31Every few minutes, a big shell landed somewhere in the neighborhood of the corner by the famous Cloth Hall.
08:36At intervals, a whole salvo was planted in the city.
08:48This is a large-caliber German naval shell.
08:52One of the many types of shells that were lobbed on Ypres in 1915 and throughout the Great War.
08:58Fortunately, this one did not explode, because if it had, it would have blown out a big chunk of this building
09:04or made a crater about 25 feet wide.
09:14When Agar Adamson, the commander of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry,
09:19enters the desolate ruins of Ypres, his first concern is to find shelter for his men.
09:27Dear Mabel, I shoved the men into what cellars could be found.
09:31I showed one of our new officers around the remains of the town.
09:35The shelling on both sides is most intense.
09:38The evening bombing accounted for some good dear fellows of another battalion.
09:43My love to you, ever thine, Agar.
09:51This is Rampart Cemetery.
09:53It's at the southern end of Yeap, and it's one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the Salient.
10:02This is the grave of Sapper Abe Borthwick of the Canadian Engineers, who was killed in action on the 16th of October 1917.
10:10Borthwick was one of the original men who came north from Vimy in preparation for the Passchendaele fighting.
10:15The men who came north, who had last been in Yeap in 1916, couldn't believe what they found here.
10:22It was all mud and total destruction, and the stench of death was everywhere.
10:27We're looking out over the moat here.
10:35This area was deadly. You couldn't show yourself during the day because of German shelling.
10:39There'd be bodies in the moat.
10:42The whole place was just demolished.
10:45It was hell on earth.
10:46The Canadian Corps were about 100,000 strong when they came north.
10:55The volunteers of 1914 were all dead, or wounded, or gone, and they brought up a new army.
11:02A very successful army, one that had won big victories at Vimy, Hill 70.
11:06This was a really cocky group, and these guys had a big challenge ahead of them when they came here at Yeap.
11:16After a three-month offensive, to save his career, Field Marshal Haig has to justify his huge casualties with at least one tangible success.
11:27He orders the commander of the Canadian Corps, Arthur Currie, to capture Passchendaele Ridge.
11:33Calculating that the ridge will cost 16,000 Canadian casualties, Currie declares that Passchendaele is not worth one drop of blood.
11:41Stubbornly, Haig insists, he orders Currie to attack, and finally Arthur Currie promises his Canadians will take Passchendaele.
11:54Only when they relieve the Australians and New Zealanders do the Canadians realize the full horror of the battle.
12:00The Anzacs had fought their way to the foot of Passchendaele Ridge, and there they had been slaughtered. 38,000 casualties.
12:10The survivors look more like ghosts than men.
12:13Dear Mabel, the condition of the ground, beggars description. Just one mass of shell holes, all full of water. The strongest and youngest men cannot navigate without falling down.
12:26The people we relieved tell me in the attack a great many of their men were drowned in shell holes for want of strength to pull themselves out when dog tired.
12:36Ever thine, Agar.
12:37Agar.
12:45The battlefield of Passchendaele.
12:48Kilometers of mud.
12:50A naked, barren morass.
12:52All of it exposed to German guns and bombers.
12:54Looking out over the wasteland, General Arthur Currie, the Canadian commander, realizes what faces him.
13:03Just to get to the foot of Passchendaele Ridge, he will have to build a network of floating plank roads.
13:10He puts the troops to work, and 22-year-old John Harold Becker finds himself in a work party.
13:16Daily, we plugged up that road, past the labor battalions working to fill in the new shell holes, and trying to keep the soupy mud below ankle depth.
13:31Past broken wagons and guns.
13:34Past ambulances going out with the wounded.
13:37Past bodies of young Canadians, English, Scotch, Irish and Australians.
13:43Past the smells of rotting flesh.
13:44Past bodies that were more recent casualties, but looked the same in the color of the mud, the color of the blood.
13:52Our own party usually numbered one or two less than on the ingoing trip.
14:01A big shell zoomed in right alongside our path, and cries went up for a stretcher bearer.
14:06Two men were killed outright, and Lance Corporal Bottomley had his right arm almost torn off.
14:11When I got to him, he was standing there calmly with a tight hold on the stump of his arm just above the wound.
14:18The rest of the arm was hanging by a couple of tendons.
14:20When he left with the other wounded fellows, he called out at Shiri, goodbye.
14:25When Becker dashes to shelter in an improvised trench, gas shells explode in front of him.
14:40With his face and body scalded by mustard gas, Becker can't breathe.
14:44He becomes just one more casualty.
14:47But he is lucky.
14:49Soon he is in an ambulance, and for Harold Becker, the Battle of Passchendaele is over.
14:57As the floating plank roads near completion, German air attacks intensify.
15:02Gotha bombers pound the Canadian road builders.
15:15Private Will Byrd, a veteran of Vimy Ridge, is caught out in the open as the Gothas sweep out of the clouds.
15:22At that moment, over came two big black-winged German Gothas and dropped bombs.
15:31Some ammunition mules were packed in line on a shaky board road made of planks,
15:35and one bomb made a direct hit on a broad mule rump.
15:39The Gothas flew off, and we saw men push the three dead mules into the mud.
15:45Shambles of head and entrails were shoveled into the mire, and then the ammunition train went on.
15:56We kept on, and arrived at a battery of five guns.
16:00The battery horses had drowned in mire as they tried to move the guns to the left
16:03where a slight rise afforded more solid ground.
16:06So now, thirty men of the 42nd took hold of the rope and tried to pull a gun.
16:11It was tremendous labor.
16:12Each man had to keep getting a new foot in, and often we sank in mud and water of gruel thickness
16:17until the slime rose above our hips.
16:19The only thing solid underneath was a huddled dead man,
16:22and we stumbled over five or six during the morning.
16:30On Passchendaele Ridge, the Germans know that if they can slow the Canadians down
16:35until the winter rains arrive, they will have won the battle.
16:38Night and day, the German guns never stop firing, saturating the Canadians with high explosive gas shells and shrapnel.
16:49But non-stop the work goes on.
16:52Soon the roads are complete, and General Currie is ready to launch his attack.
16:56But approaching the ridge, his men face the Wraithbeak Creek, then a flooded and deadly morass.
17:09So Currie has to split his attack in two, sending one division up Bellevue Spur to the north,
17:14and another up Passchendaele Ridge to the south.
17:18And because the mud slows everything down, Currie plans the attack in three stages,
17:23separated by a pause of several days.
17:27And so Arthur Currie launches his four divisions against the highest point of the ridge, Passchendaele Village.
17:33We're standing on the Bellevue Spur.
17:43This was the jump-off position for the Canadian attack on October 26, 1917.
17:48Up this ridge, approximately 4,000 Canadian soldiers went to attack the German positions.
17:53And on the far ridge over there, Passchendaele Ridge, another 4,000 were attacking.
18:00The attacks had to be two-pronged because the ground in between was a morass of mud and impassable.
18:09The first day they managed to push ahead around 700 yards, which by Passchendaele standards were very good.
18:15But the casualties were about 3,000 killed and wounded, which was pretty good again for Passchendaele standards.
18:28But they had a lot more work to go before they got to the village over here.
18:40As the men slog up the muddy slopes,
18:42Curry's massive creeping barrage is supposed to protect them.
18:46But the guns slip in the mud, lose their targets, and the shells fall short.
18:51As Private Pat Burns, a rookie with the 4th Division, soon discovers.
19:00We were on the move forward.
19:02I had not gone far when I was hit on the back of the head by a fragment of one of our own shells.
19:06I believed there were as many casualties, if not more, caused by our own guns as were caused by enemy fire.
19:15I went over with, I think, 15 men in the Lewis machine gun section.
19:19And every man was hit besides me.
19:21A fellow by the name of Piercy and I were the only two survivors who got to the objective.
19:26We jumped into a big hole, and I had the machine gun, which I knew nothing about.
19:29And all the ammunition we could carry.
19:32And there we were, holding the front line.
19:34The October 26th attack lasts a few hours, gains a thousand meters, and loses 3,000 men.
19:55600 dead.
19:56For every two meters gained, a man dies.
20:02A fine success is how Field Marshal Haig describes the attack.
20:07And the men still have 2,000 meters to go.
20:10General Curry's first attack towards Passchendaele has carried the line forward 1,000 meters.
20:25For his second attack, Curry plans a forward leap of another 1,000 meters.
20:31Venturing out to inspect the battlefield is Agar Adamson of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
20:48Dear Mabel, it rains or blows all the time.
20:52The condition of the ground is beyond words, and of course will be much worse after the barrage.
20:57I cannot see all the men together, because we are under observation.
21:02I am delighted with the spirit of the men, and if human endurance can stand it, we should be successful.
21:07But, of course, this game is the biggest of big gambles, and no one can foresee the future.
21:12But I am hopeful the dear old regiment will play up to their very best.
21:16Ever thine, Agar.
21:17Major Talbot Pepinot, a wealthy French-Canadian, often seen as a future Prime Minister.
21:27He has fought with the Princess Pats before, but is now safe in a staff job at headquarters.
21:33Just before the battle, Pepinot decides to return to Ypres.
21:38His place, he feels, is with his regiment.
21:40Dear Mother, I never felt so good.
21:44This morning we had a church service, and sang Nearer My God to Thee, familiar of how we used to sing as kids at Montebello.
21:52No one ever played the piano as well as you.
21:55Dear little Mother, how pitifully little I seem to have seen of you.
21:59But we will find a fund of buried affection after the war.
22:03Talbot.
22:04As Talbot Pepinot and his men crouch in a shell hole, Arthur Curry unleashes the Canadian barrage.
22:13The Germans scramble for cover, hunkering down inside their pillboxes.
22:18Laid out in a checkerboard pattern, hundreds of these concrete blocks dot Bellevue Spur and Passchendaele Ridge.
22:34Life in the cement block is hell.
22:37We are eleven men living here.
22:39Officers in other ranks share the lousy plank beds.
22:43The plague of flies is terrible.
22:45Water-locked shell craters are full of cadavers.
22:48Attracted by this, the flies gather here by the thousands, invade the shelters, creep over hands and faces, and settle down on foodstuffs.
22:56One cannot risk being seen outside.
22:59And worst of all, is the unbearable heir.
23:02Captain Stefan Lubinsky.
23:05One of the symbols of the Passchendaele fighting was the German concrete pillbox.
23:10Here is a perfect example of one.
23:13And contrary to popular belief, the pillbox was not for machine gun operation.
23:19It was for infantry to be protected from enemy shelling.
23:21There were hundreds of these such pillboxes around Ypres during the war.
23:28Most were destroyed by the Belgians in the 1920s and 30s.
23:31This is a really good example of one.
23:33You can actually see the doorway here.
23:36And you can see in a little bit.
23:39Anyway, it's about three feet thick.
23:41So during the war, even a direct hit by a high-explosive shell would do nothing to this at all.
23:46The reason the Germans resorted to this form of bunker was because of the high water table in the area.
23:53They couldn't make existing dugouts because they would automatically fill with water.
23:57So their whole defense was based on a series of bunkers.
24:00The bunkers could withstand even direct hits, but owing to ground conditions in the area, they could not be erected over a strong foundation.
24:13When a heavy shell opened a crater close to them, they would lean over, sometimes with the entrance down, with the soldiers trapped inside.
24:20There was no way of rescuing them, of course.
24:25This is a series of three.
24:26There may have been more.
24:28They would have been linked by a trench, lots of barbed wire.
24:33And they'd have one garrison for all three of them.
24:36This would be the machine gunners, maybe snipers, artillery observers.
24:40And they waited inside the bunker while the shelling was on.
24:43And as soon as the shelling was over, they'd come out to man the machine guns.
24:46They were very, very hard to get to because your artillery couldn't do anything to them.
24:53So really it came down to individual acts of bravery or small groups taking care of these positions.
25:01Only by charging headlong at them or slithering right up to them can the Canadians hope to eliminate the pillboxes.
25:08And in the Passchendaele fighting, for these incredibly foolhardy acts of bravery, nine Canadians are awarded the Empire's highest medal, the Victoria Cross.
25:21Men such as Captain Christopher O'Kelly of the 52nd Battalion, whose section eliminates six pillboxes and takes a hundred prisoners.
25:30Scrambling out of their shelters, the Germans who survived the Canadian bombardment prepare for the Princess Pat's attack.
25:44At zero hour, the German guns open up.
25:51Talbot Papineau turns to his friend, Major Hugh Niven, and says,
25:55You know, Hughie, this is suicide.
26:02The moment the Princess Pats go over the top, they are engulfed in a firestorm.
26:09Attacking across these fields, the Pats lose 360 of their 600 men for an advance of 500 meters.
26:17My dear Mabel, I am still all right and hanging on.
26:23Haggard, Papineau, Sullivan, Almond, all killed.
26:30I cannot help wondering if the position gained was worth the awful sacrifice of life.
26:35A pair of feet with reverse putties were seen sticking out of a shell hole full of water.
26:42Steward said, Major Papineau always wore his putties that way.
26:48They pulled the body out, and by examining the pockets, found it to be Papineau.
26:53He had been hit by part of a shell in the stomach, blowing everything else above away.
26:59Poor fellow. He would not have known what hit him.
27:01Dear Colonel Adamson, please accept my sincere thanks for your letter and your sympathy.
27:11Every word said about Talbot I read and reread, and in the expressions of admiration and esteem in which he was held, I find my only solace.
27:19The courage with which he faced what I am told was a desperate attack fills my heart with pride, but also with great bitterness.
27:30Nothing can console me for the loss of my boy.
27:33Sincerely yours, Carolyn Papineau.
27:35While the 3rd Division and the Princess Pats fight their way up Bellevue Spur, the 4th Division advances through a hailstorm of German fire on Passchendaele Ridge.
27:48In the first few minutes, Nova Scotia's 85th Battalion loses almost all its officers.
27:56This is the monument that commemorates the actions of the 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders on October 30th, 1917, and their action here against Passchendaele Village.
28:23On the 30th of October 1917, the 4th Division, including the 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders, launched a major attack on the Passchendaele Spur here, driving up closer to the village.
28:44They fought against uncut barbed wire, hill boxes, and just an incredible amount of mud.
28:50But they were successful in pushing the line closer to Passchendaele Village.
28:57This memorial commemorates all the dead of the 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders killed in that action right here on the 30th of October 1917.
29:07This was their worst day of the war.
29:10But the line was pushed closer to Passchendaele Village. They captured the small villages in here, and they were ready for a further assault on this village of Passchendaele itself.
29:22These fields are full of war material. Here's a hand grenade that was found by the local farmer. He's put it by the side of the fields for collection by the bomb disposal people.
29:39Here's another item. A French bullet, probably from 1914. This is another reminder of the Great War.
29:49At the end of the second attack, the Canadians had pushed ahead 900 meters and suffered 2,300 casualties, including 900 dead. For each meter gained, one man has died.
30:03There are still a thousand meters to go, and the Germans have brought in fresh troops to defend Passchendaele Village to the last.
30:24The peaceful Belgian village of Passchendaele. In the fighting for Passchendaele, more people died than were killed by the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
30:47Sitting near the highest point of the ridge, the village has become the final objective.
30:52The objective of Field Marshal Haig's Great Offensive. And the Field Marshal has sacrificed armies, trying to get there.
31:03In Flemish, the word Passchendaele means the Valley of Christ's Passion. The valley where God died.
31:11And for months, Haig's guns pound the village. Until in the end, he has reduced it to dust.
31:26With a thousand meters to go, Canadian units are ordered out on night raids to eliminate the remaining obstacles to their final assault, planned for November the 6th.
31:41We're on the Bellevue Spur, and this is the location of a night attack made by the 42nd Battalion on November the 3rd, 1917.
31:56And a group of his comrades were supposed to capture a German pillbox across the Passchendaele Road.
32:06Never through the whole war was I more sickened and discouraged than at that moment.
32:10We were new in the sector. None knew the terrain. None knew what defenses the German had or his strength.
32:17The place after dark was a swampy wilderness without anything to use as a guide.
32:22Half the men had never been in an attack, and that included the officers.
32:26Furthermore, in those few minutes, I discovered that Clark, as well as McIntyre, had had too much rum.
32:32The 42nd had come into the line the night before. They had to cross the battleground of October the 30th, 1917, by the corpses of the PPCLI, including Talbot Papineau.
32:45The whole area was mud and shell holes. There were no landmarks, and that is why the bird attack failed so miserably.
32:53Most of the men were either killed or wounded. It was a complete disaster.
32:58There was a flaming white-hot instant, and oblivion. When I recovered consciousness, my head was splitting with pain, and a terrible nausea had seized my stomach.
33:12Lying there, we heard plunging noises in the mud, and two dim figures came toward us, huffing and plowing, carrying something and grunting in conversation.
33:21They were Germans, big men, and had a machine gun on a tripod. I pulled the pin from one of my grenades, held it for a count of two, then hurled it at the Germans and flattened myself in the mud.
33:32The bomb burst between the two gunners. One German never moved but lay on his back, dead. The other pawed at his side feebly for a time, then was still.
33:44We went on. They were all dead. Bailey and Ira and Jennings lined together, rifle in hand, all shot through the head by one sweep of a German gun.
33:55The same night, other platoons attack. One Highlander platoon, Scotsmen all, is led by a Jew, Lieutenant Meyer T. Cohen, affectionately known to his men as Mack Cohen.
34:19Cohen takes his objective, and when the Germans counterattack, he dies defending it.
34:26This is the grave of Meyer Cohen, an officer of the Black Watch of Canada, killed at Graff House on the 3rd of November, 1917.
34:34He was one of the units of the 42nd that attacked up Bellevue Spur with Will Byrd, and he was killed in action on that day.
34:42His body was found in 1919, and reburied here in Paul Capel British Cemetery, probably the loneliest British cemetery in the entire salient.
34:49There are more than 7,500 burials here, 83% are unknown.
34:55No one comes to this cemetery, they'll visit Tyne Cot and some of the other places, but this lonely place just leaves these men even further into oblivion.
35:03November 6th, 1917. General Curry's final assault on Passchendaele.
35:136 a.m. Every Canadian gun opens fire.
35:14The barrage creeps forward, chewing up German defenses.
35:16Close behind the barrage, slogging through the mud.
35:17November 6th, 1917, General Curry's final assault on Passchendaele, 6am, every Canadian
35:30gun opens fire.
35:38The barrage creeps forward, chewing up German defenses.
35:43Close behind the barrage, slogging through the mud, the men of the 1st Division fight
35:48their way up Bellevue Spur, while the men of the 2nd Division struggle along Passchendaele
35:53Ridge.
35:56One by one, in short, vicious fights, the German strong points fall.
36:01In one of many acts of wild bravery, Private James Robertson of the 27th Battalion from
36:07Winnipeg leaps barbed wire, bayonets two German machine gunners, and turns the gun against
36:13the fleeing Germans.
36:15Minutes later, Robertson is killed, sacrificing his life for Passchendaele, now nothing but
36:21a pile of burnt masonry and shattered bricks.
36:28We're at the Canadian Battlefield Monument at Crest Farm, it commemorates the Battle of Passchendaele.
36:43This uninspiring design marks one of the bloodiest battles in the history of mankind.
36:51The inscription that commemorates the action reads, the Canadian Corps in October-November
36:581917 advanced across this valley, then a treacherous morass captured and held the Passchendaele
37:04Ridge.
37:08The Battle of Passchendaele cost the Canadians 16,000 killed and wounded, but it was their most
37:13tenacious and most courageous battle of the entire war.
37:23Canon Frederick Scott, the 57-year-old Canadian Army chaplain who has risked his life with the
37:28ordinary soldiers, now walks into the village of Passchendaele.
37:34The whole region was unspeakably horrible.
37:37Bearer parties, tired and pale, were carrying out the wounded on stretchers.
37:41The bodies of dead men lay here and there where they had fallen.
37:45The huge shell holes were half full of water, often reddened with human blood, and many of
37:51the wounded had fallen into them and drowned.
37:54I went ahead and found, sitting in the mud of a trench, his legs almost covered with water,
37:59a lad who told me he had been there many hours.
38:02He was smiling most cheerfully and made no complaint about what he had suffered.
38:07One of the men asked him if he was hid in the legs.
38:09He said, yes, but the man looked up at me and pulling up the boy's tunic showed me a hideous
38:15wound in his back.
38:18They carried him off, happy and cheerful.
38:21Whether he recovered or not, I do not know.
38:25We're at Tynecott British Cemetery.
38:31It's the largest Commonwealth Cemetery in the world.
38:34Almost all the burials here are men who were killed in the Passchendaele fighting.
38:39The cemetery contains 1,000 Canadians as well, and these Canadians were all killed in the
38:43advance of the Passchendaele village.
38:49The cemetery was established during the fighting at Passchendaele in 1917, but it was only a
38:54very small cemetery at that time.
38:57After the war, they brought in another 11,000 bodies from the surrounding battlefields.
39:02And now the cemetery contains close to 12,000, of which 70% are unknowns.
39:09The unknowns were our soldiers where they found the remains, but they could not give a name
39:13to them.
39:14They may identify the unit or the nationality, or sometimes that he was just British.
39:20But they could never actually determine what the man's name was.
39:35We're going to try to find the grave of J.P. Robertson.
39:38Robertson won his Victoria Cross in the capture of Passchendaele village, but he was killed in
39:42the action.
39:47Here it is, Private J.P. Robertson, V.C., 27th Battalion, Canadian Infantry, City of
39:57Winnipeg, 6 November 1917, age 35.
40:02His family put an inscription on the bottom of the stone,
40:05Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
40:12And it's obviously put in by his mother.
40:16The headstone is unique to those who won the Victoria Cross.
40:27Private H. Phillips, 102nd Battalion, Canadian Infantry, killed in action, 30th October 1917.
40:34He would have been killed at Crest Farm.
40:38R.P. Barr, 38th Battalion, Canadian Infantry, here from Ottawa.
40:43He was killed in action, 30th October 1917, and he was 19 years old.
40:48Well, I think this is the story of the Battle of Passchendaele, the dead, and the cemeteries.
40:59The plan to break through to the Channel ports was an excellent one.
41:15It started off with some promise, and then it died out here in the fields, in the mud, in the barbed wire.
41:22To sit here and see Yeap, 10 kilometers away, and to think that 300,000 men were killed and wounded,
41:31to get only this far, is just an incredible testament to failure.
41:38Under Sir Arthur Currie, the Canadians captured Passchendaele on schedule and according to plan.
42:08The day Passchendaele falls, Field Marshal Haig's Chief of Staff phones Arthur Currie and asks,
42:15Is it true that the village has fallen?
42:17Yes, Currie answers.
42:20Thank God, is the reply.
42:24The British newspapers hail a great British victory.
42:28The career of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig is saved.
42:34Taking Passchendaele had cost 16,000 Canadian casualties, precisely what Arthur Currie had predicted.
42:43For the German High Command, the loss of Passchendaele is a disaster.
42:53They are now determined to blast the Canadians from the ridge that has already caused so much blood.
43:02The Canadians have taken Passchendaele, but it is nothing but a pile of muddy bricks.
43:21With the other men of the 42nd Battalion, Will Bird and his buddy Mickey are sent to hold the line, while the Germans use every gun they have to blast the Canadians off the ridge.
43:40We got out, and went on down the road, and there came a salvo of whiz-bangs.
43:52As the last soul-tearing smash crashed in my ears, I saw Mickey spin and fall.
43:57I jumped to him. He had been hit in several places and could not live 10 minutes.
44:02Mickey, Mickey. I called his name and raised him up, and he nestled to me like a child.
44:07I'm through, he said. I don't want to kill people anyway. Tell my mother.
44:12His voice was so low I could not hear, but his lips still moved.
44:18Will Bird wrote one of the most graphic memoirs in the First World War.
44:27He served throughout the war with the 42nd Battalion, and in his memoir he mentions 120 of his friends and comrades,
44:34of which 60 were killed in the Great War.
44:36One of his best friends is buried here at Oxford Road Cemetery.
44:48This is it here.
44:56Lance Corporal D. McIlverry, 42nd Battalion, Canadian Infantry, 17th November 1917, age 33.
45:06One of the most graphic parts of his book describes holding the Passchendaele Ridge after the village had fallen,
45:13and the Canadians were wide open and the German shelling just ripped them apart.
45:17And this is where Mickey got killed, on the way back from the front.
45:21Bird was pretty caught up about this.
45:24For a man who was pretty used to death, this one hurt him pretty badly.
45:27Sadly, he'd see a lot more of his friends go in 1918.
45:36When the battalions returned from Passchendaele,
45:39their officers were often shocked to discover that only a handful of men were left.
45:44Only slowly did the survivors begin to consider themselves human beings.
45:49But no man who had endured Passchendaele would ever be the same again.
45:54He would forever be a stranger to himself.
45:58However, the
46:24Transcription by CastingWords
46:54CastingWords