“The weather had been threatening throughout the day (31st July) and had rendered the work of the aeroplanes very difficult from the commencement of
the battle. During the afternoon, while the fighting was still in progress, rain fell, and fell steadily all night. Thereafter for four days the rain continued without cessation, and for several days after the weather remained stormy and unsettled. The lowlying clayey soil, torn by shells and sodden with rain, turned into a succession of vast muddy pools. The valleys of the choked and overflowing streams were speedily transformed into long stretches of bog, impassable except by a few well-defined tracks, which became marks for the enemy’s artillery. To leave these tracks was to risk death by drowning, and in the course of the subsequent fighting, on several occasions, both men and pack animals were lost in this way.... As had been the case in the Arras battle, this unavoidable delay in the development of our offensive was of the greatest service to the enemy. Valuable time was lost, the troops opposed to us were able to recover from the disorganisation produced by our first attack, and the enemy was given the opportunity to bring up reinforcements.”
The enemy view of the conditions is given by Ludendorff:
“Enormous masses of ammunition, such as the human mind had never imagined before the war, was hurled upon the bodies of men who passed a miserable existence scattered about in mud-filled shell-holes. The horror of the shell-hole area of Verdun was surpassed. It was no longer life at all. It was mere unspeakable suffering. And through this world of mud the attackers dragged themselves, slowly but steadily, and in dense masses. Caught in the advance zone by our hail of fire they often collapsed, and the lonely man in the shell-hole breathed again. Then the mass came on again. Rifle and machine gun jammed with the mud. Man fought against man,
and only too often the mass was successful.... And yet it must be admitted that certain units no longer triumphed over the demoralising effects of the defensive battle as they had done formerly.”
INVERNESS COPSE AND GLENCORSE WOOD, AUGUST 1917
Very naturally Ludendorff claims that statues in bronze should be erected to the German soldier for the suffering he experienced at Ypres. But his own picture of the attackers seems somehow to be worse than that of the defenders, if there are degrees of suffering.
On the 31st July the assault of the Fifth Army met with complete success on the left, where the crossing of the Steenbeke was secured. But on the right the II Corps was only partially successful. After overrunning the first system of defence about Hooge and Sanctuary Wood, divisions were met with tremendous opposition, and eventually checked at Inverness Copse and Glencorse Wood.