| The Germans knew of the coming offensive and were well prepared, which included the secret weapon of mustard gas, delivered by shellfire. The Battle of Passchendaele cost half a million lives, Allied and German, over its three-month duration. On November 12, the Canadians took what was left of it at a cost of 16,000 casualties. As British poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon wrote: "I died in Hell; they called it Passchendaele; my wound was slight and I was hobbling back; and then a shell burst slick upon the buckboards; so I fell into the bottomless mud, and lost the light." PA-002165 |