The Queen at Passchendaele

Soldiers from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries killed 90 years ago in one of the Great War's bloodiest battles were honoured today by the Queen. They called it Passchendaele; an unspeakable place so hellish, you wished you were in the slaughterhouse on the Somme or at Verdun. The enemy's bullets, shrapnel and shells in those place would have been a welcome respite from the mud pits of Passchendaele where the "most awful, the most bloody... the most hellish heavy rains fell, and made one great bog in which every crater was a deep pool...they were like lakes in some places, filled with slimy water and dead bodies."

The battles at Passchendaele were fought by the British Empire, which lost tens of thousands of soldiers between July and November 1917, many of whom simply drowned in the mud. It was the Canadian Corps and General Sir Arthur Currie who secured victory in the end at the cost of 16,000 Canadians.