Ypres and Passchendaele. Three battles in four years in essentially the same place. First use of poison gas on the Western front in the first one. In the last one 140,000 men died for five miles of ground that was given back shortly afterward. It was a proving ground for industrial level slaughter. No wonder it looked like that.
How those soldiers stood it is beyond belief,shelling for days at a time.
Basil Liddel Hart wrote of an incident when the British staff officers came to the edge of the Passchendaele battlefield -- after the battle was over, mind -- general Charteris burst into tears saying, "We sent men to fight in that?"
I think about that utterly pointless war, and the only thing that comes to mind is, "those filthy, murdering bastards."