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Lyn Macdonald

They Called It Passchendaele: The Story of the Third Battle of Ypres and of the Men Who Fought in It Paperback – October 4, 1990

by Lyn Macdonald (Author)

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Language

English
Publisher

Pan Macmillan
Publication date

October 4, 1990
Dimensions

5.51 x 0.59 x 8.46 inches
ISBN-10

0333529715
ISBN-13

978-0333529713
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pan Macmillan (October 4, 1990)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0333529715
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0333529713
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.51 x 0.59 x 8.46 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,189,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #174 in Belgian History

Customer Reviews:
129 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

129 global ratings

5 star		81%
4 star		15%
3 star		2%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Amazon Customer

Fantastic Read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2022

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Absolutely fantastic read. Certainly one of Lyn’s best works. Couldn’t put it down. She brought to real-life terror of The Third Battle of Ypres to life with the personal first-hand accounts by the men and women who were there.

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Paul Rickey

It was what I expected.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 26, 2022

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I have read her books before, so I wasn't disappointed.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 9, 2014

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War is bad, no matter what. But, some wars, like Korea, like the War in the Pacific in WWII are really horrible. Paschendale is the epitome of bad war- nasty, brutal, inhuman, hell on earth. You will turn the pages with dread on this one. But, you will turn the pages.

One person found this helpful

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Daniel L. Hursh

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 18, 2016

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Excellent review of the campaign. The wastage of war wil never cease to amaze me.

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Aussie Reader

Get a copy if you can!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 6, 1998

Lynn MacDonald is one of my all time favourite World War One authors. I have read all of her books, '1914', '1915', 'Somme' and this volume covering Passchendaele. She has the ability to bring to life the voices of those involved in this terrible, terrible conflict. This was one of the worst battles fought during a war known for its carnage. She tells the story through the letters, reports and accounts of those involved and she tells it very well. I found this book and her account of the Somme very hard to put down and I have no hesitation in recommending this title to anyone who has a love for military history or a good story.

29 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

An excellent commentary on this famous battle

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 24, 2000

I found this paperback version (ex Penguin Books in the UK) an excellent commentary on one of the most famous battles of WW1. Using the soldiers who fought it to tell their own story of this slaughter brings to us today, the experiences of the fighting in the 'war to end all wars'. More poignant by the fact that I live in Passchendaele St in a suburb of Melbourne Australia. Now I know why this street was named.

13 people found this helpful

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Hugo Rodrigues

Features nothing in the way of an actual account of the battle

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 9, 2014

"They Called It Passchendaele" is a prime example of everything that's wrong with books about WW1 these days. The British cottage industries catering to the needs of battlefield tourists and amateur genealogists fill up most of the published output about this conflict (and thus we get battlefield guides, British unit histories and compilations of first-hand accounts), leaving little room for titles addressed at a wider reading public and/or with a broader, less Anglocentric perspective.

Chances are I'd have no problem with this book if it wasn't marketed as being, at least in part, a narrative history of the battle (see the book's subtitle), which it clearly isn't. It's a compilation of eyewitness accounts, which however interesting or poignant nearly always convey a fairly narrow perspective of events (limited to one's particular segment of trench so to speak), without much if any information about the forces involved, their weaponry and tactics, and featuring only a sketchy, disjointed account of the military operations during the battle whose only purpose is to give a context for the first hand accounts selected by the author.

Operational narrative (with varying levels of detail) is the default mode of presentation for military history written about nearly all conflicts, but WW1 is not just an exception to that rule but a war for which straightforward narrative with a focus on military operations is very difficult to find, apart from the cumbersome, often unreliable and sometimes outright mendacious official histories. "They Called It Passchendaele" is typical of most WW1 histories in that it in no way presents a thorough account of the battle it is supposed to cover. No lists of the forces involved, no maps showing their deployment and axis of advance, no information about the equipment used by the armies in conflict.

To make matters worse, the first third of the book is taken up not with the account of the Third Battle of Ypres (commonly known as Passchendaele) itself, but with the prior Battle of Messines, and with the leadup to the British and French initial offensive on 31 of July of 1917.

The handful of maps presented are basic sketches, which merely indicate the approximate area of the battlefield the authors of the first-hand accounts compiled in this book fought on.

The book is almost entirely Anglocentric in its coverage; a sizeable French contingent took part in the early stages of the battle, suffering several thousands of casualties, but you'll find little mention of it in this book. And it's much the same with the German forces.

Conclusion: if you're looking for a compilation of first-hand accounts from English speaking participants in this battle, this is the book for you. If you happen to be looking for any other information about the Third Battle of Ypres/Battle of Passchendaele, it's completely useless.

8 people found this helpful

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Robert Tostevin

Great Book with >600 Personal Accounts from Servicemen & Women who were actually there!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 18, 2017

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Lynn McDonald is one of the pioneers of a certain style of writing historical narratives - one where personal accounts are crafted into an explanatory historical narrative.

In my opinion, she does this brilliantly and seamlessly blends fascinating personal accounts from servicemen who were there, many of whom she interviewed herself, with a well crafted explanatory historical narrative. The result is a very readable & highly enjoyable book.

In the author's foreword you get an idea of this style when she says :
"If this book reads like a novel, or even at times like a horror story, please do not blame me. It is all true, or rather it is compiled from more than 600 true stories and eyewitness accounts of men and women who were there in the blood-bath of Ypres."

In addition to the personal experiences she provides some very good maps showing you where each of the participants were at any one point in the action she is describing. She takes a number of these personal accounts from different parts of the battlefield and uses them to describe how the battle proceeded over the ground covered by the advance.

The words and testimonies she shares illustrate the absolute horror of this campaign as shown in some of these extracts :
Private W. Morgan, No. 24819, 10/ 11th Btn., Highland Light Infantry
"By the time I got back, the battalion was away up towards the next objective. As I went on, over the place I’d left them, over the ground where I knew they must have crossed to get to the third line, there was nothing but dead bodies lying all around. There were shells exploding everywhere and bullets flying around as if the devil himself was at the guns, and when I got up to the front there was this terrible fighting. I could see troops in front of me crawling and jumping up and crawling again and dodging into shell-holes. Away ahead, it was all smoke and explosions and bullets flying out of Lewis guns like streams of fire all around these buildings they were attacking. I couldn’t see anybody belonging to my lot at all. Eventually I managed to make my way forward a bit and I found Sergeant McCormack with Lieutenant Burns. We were really held up at this place but the bombers were at it, attacking it from the flanks. There were boys there with buckets of bombs, and one lad in particular I saw crawl up to the wall and reach up and chuck bombs in at the window of the gun emplacement. They were all going at it, hammer and tongs. They were still going at it when it started to rain. They were still going at it an hour later, and by that time we were practically up to our knees in water. Lieutenant Burns said to me, ‘You’d better get a message back, Morgan, and let them know what’s happening. We must have reinforcements.’ We were standing in this wet shell-hole and he was just handing me the message when the machine-gun bullet got him. He fell right over on to me and we both went right down into the water. I managed to pull him a bit up the side of this crater and laid him down and knelt down beside him. His eyes were open and he looked straight up at me and he said, ‘I’m all right, Mum.’ And then he died. He was younger than me. I was twenty. Sergeant McCormack crawled across, and looked at him. Then he looked at me. ‘Get back with the message, Morgan,’ he said."

W. Lockey, No. 71938, 1st Btn., Notts & Derbyshire Regiment (The Sherwood Foresters)
"It was a terrible sight, really awe-inspiring, to see the barrage playing on the German front lines before we went over. It was an inferno. Just a solid line of fire and sparks and rockets lighting up the sky. When the barrage began to lift we went over like one man towards what had once been the German front line. It didn’t exist. There was not a bit of wire, hardly a trench left, that hadn’t been blown to smithereens by our barrage ... The chap on my right had his head blown off, as neat as if it had been done with a chopper. I saw his trunk stumbling on for two or three paces and then collapsing in a heap. My pal, Tom Altham, went down too, badly wounded, and Sergeant-Major Dunn got a shell all to himself.

Rifleman G. E. Winterbourne, No. 551237, 1st Btn., Queen’s Westminster Rifles
"In a lull in the shelling we heard cries, and there was a poor chap about fifty or sixty yards away. He was absolutely up to his arms in it, and he’d been there for four days and nights –ever since the last attack –and he was still alive, clinging on to the root of a tree in the side of this shell-hole full of liquid mud ... All we could do was leave a man behind to look after him. It was another twenty-four hours before he was rescued."

5 people found this helpful

PRS

... battle so I wanted to read more and understand better what it was like

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 4, 2015

Verified Purchase

My grandfather was killed in this battle so I wanted to read more and understand better what it was like. An excellent but sad and depressing description of how men fought on both sides. How men did what they did under the circumstances under which they were required to fight is almost incomprehensible and looking back with hindsight I have to ask why when there were better tactics available. The middle rank officers came out of this book better than I expected, the more senior not as stupid as they have been presented but seemingly lacking the necessary insight to seek alternatives. Would we fight this way today? Easy to say no, but then looking at what is occurring in Syria and Iraq as I write, I am less sure.

Also having read the shortened version of the Kaiser Willhem 2's biography I can better understand why that war was almost inevitable as seemingly the Prussian Military staff sought a war certain as they were that they would win and would become the dominant political, military and economic power in Europe..

2 people found this helpful

PeterB - MK

A shocking and informative read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

A very well written and researched account of a major WW1 battle. For me very moving as my Fathers eldest brother was listed as killed at Passchendaele on 2 August 1917. A family trip to Ypres was made on 1 August 2017 for a Last Post ceremony on 2 August 2017 in his honour. His name is inscribed on the Menin Gate.
Reading the book gives an idea of the shocking waste of life that occurred during WW1 and the apparent lack of concern by politicians and Generals who sent thousands to pointless deaths.

One person found this helpful

Maurice Salter

Battle of Passchendaele

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 23, 2018

Verified Purchase

If any one wants to read abook or learn about the battle of Passchendaele, then I would recommend you read this one. It's well written & contains wonderful eye witness accounts from the men that were there, I have read 3 books on Passchendaele now & this was the most informative book so far. A really good read buy & learn.

3 people found this helpful

M. Empson

Wonderful, moving

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

A moving history of the Third Battle of Ypres through the words of those who participated. Bought it ahead of a trip to Passchendaele to look at the battlefields and it put the whole journey in a different context. Wonderful, moving. Let us hope that we can make sure that no one ever has to suffer again like this.

One person found this helpful

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They Called It Passchendaele: The Story of the Third Battle of Ypres and of the Men Who Fought in It Paperback – October 4, 1990

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