Two Hours at Passchendaele - The Death of a Regiment (WW1 Documentary) 

Yes my dafought in.third battle Ypres I still have his glengarry "(the Gordons) He told me that some of the German soldiers were the nicest people one could meet .They a ll suffered together for what? 30 oooh killed and wounded in.a few days fighting for muddy ground _wow!

@@gordoncochrane6325Goes to show you the danger of a society of blind followers. Wars like this would never happen if people were willing to challenge toxic mantras made by warlords. The military likes to put things in the heads of soldiers like “never dispute an order” and BS like that. And that’s exactly why so many millions died. Imagine how many lives could have been saved if every soldier who didn’t want to be there set down their guns and told their commanders to go fight themselves if they want to take that ground so bad. I guarantee there would be no war, with no soldiers willing to blindly follow orders from warmongering generals. Next time a general tries to start a war, if every citizen/soldier refuses to take part, I guarantee there’s no war. You just said it yourself the German soldiers didn’t want to be there, the allied soldiers didn’t want to be there, so why did the war happen? Because of followers showing blind loyalty to war mongers, the minute you pick up a gun and agree to fight for those generals, you’re just as responsible for the war as the generals are. There’s never been a war without soldiers willing to fight. But we might also just be doomed to repeat war forever if one of the new theories being passed around is true, that about 90% of our species is followers and they even started to theorize that’s why only 1 of 2 million people have a genius IQ. It’s not typical in other animals for essentially 1:20 of every one of them to be genetically smarter and therefore more likely to lead except in species that also have a large “drone” % of their population (ants, bees, etc.) you also gotta think about shit like politicians and presidents, and emperors and kings before that and the slave trade in itself (Which is still going on in the form of sex slaves) and you gotta wonder if our species was instinctively meant for a small portion to try to control and use the rest as pawns

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Great story. Both hero’s. They were not the Nazi’s.

@@TrevorChurchill-yj5er My meternal grandfather was German and he fought in WW1, was a member of the NSDAP and SA, a Brownshirt. He was a prison camp guard in WW2 and was transferred for giving extra bread to Russian POWs and refusing to beat them as he said that was against Army regulations and the Hague Convention. They sent him to the Todt Organization as he was a fitter and turner and he helped build the Atlantic wall. After the war he tried to escape over the Alps with the escape route run by the Catholic monastries but Oma knocked him out with a frypan as she didn;t want to be left alone with 3 kids and the Russians and he missed the bus. They also hid a Jewish family in their garden shed in Berlin for 2 years as they had been helped by them during the Depression and Opa and the man were in WW1 together. He was a Nazi and no saint but still a decent bloke.

it litterally is the other side of the world, I wonder if he ever visited it again though

Was his eye reattached or did he lose it? It sounds like it could've been out back in since it was still functional but I'd assume it was removed due to the state of medicine at the time.

Isn’t New Zealand a shit-hole politically….

@@peggedyourdad9560I was totally wondering the same!

That is a classic response. We once had a jewish couple from Germany who had survived the holocaust come in to speak at our school. They said they came to New Zealand "because if we travelled any further, we'd be on our way back again".

My great grand uncle survived Passchendale but he was later killed in action third day of the Amiens.

Good strong Scottish name there.

RIP

God bless you. My great grandad was in the 4th Territorial Battalion KOYLI (Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry). They were there at Passchendaele too and had also been at the Somme. My goodness it was a hell hole. Ypres and Passchendaele were often referred to as the meat grinder because the campaigns there had consumed so many men.

My uncle was a U.S. Marine combat veteran of the veitnam war. He was my HERO!!!! He didnt like to talk about his war either. Its really unfortanate. As a kid, he was the most amazing man i ever met and knew. I wish he would have told me more. Ive had to do the reaserch mostly on my own. History books are real quick to tell us about generals and admerials, but the men that did all the fighting get largely forgoten. As a man that has undying admireration for men that sacraficed so much, i wish we had more stories like this video and like your story. God bless.

The New Zealand troops...960 killed. That from such a small population.

@@daveware4117 Here in Udon Thani, Thailand I knew a man named Bill Stromberg. Out of an intake of one hundred, he was one of only two that passed the course to become a Green Beret. He came from the Tank Corps, was over six foot tall and, although old at the time I knew him, you could see that he had been a very strong and thick set man in his prime. Bill was a sergeant in the Green Beret's, and led cut and slash missions generally into Vietnam and Laos where his platoon would identify targets and call-in air strikes. He was generally point man. I asked him why. He responded by telling me that in the jungle there are no features that you can fix on to gain a bearing where you are. He was the best at reading the compass, so that is why he was appointed point man. He additionally had a sharp eye and was an expert at identifying and taking out booby traps. On his first tour Bill got wounded in the hand. It was a flesh wound that soon healed up. In his second tour he and his platoon were walking down a straight road through the middle of a village, I think in Laos. As they entered the top end of the village, a man in a white T shirt crossed the road. After that all hell let loose, and they hit the deck and took cover as they came under multiple automatic gunfire. Bill got shot through his hand again! He also got shot up the ass, which he attributed to someone in his own platoon being overzealous!! But his worse wound was a bullet that passed into the top muscle of his right arm. He showed me this, and the path of the bullet could clearly be seen, and most of his upper arm muscle had gone. He was medevac'd out and spent the rest of the war in Japan. Three of his platoon were killed, and sixteen NVA were killed in that firefight. I tried to talk about missions, but Bill would have none of it. As he said, a great many of the missions he went on are still classified, even today. He could not talk about specific missions, but what he did say is that on many occasions his platoon did not know whether they were still in Vietnam or had crossed the border into Laos. What is more, he hated a lot of the gung-ho Vietnam shoot em' up films and said that none of them really encapsulated what the guys there did. Yes, there was fighting, but Bill noted that the US army helped people too. The only film that was almost realistic was the jungle scenes in the film Platoon. Bill said that this was very realistic, and how he remembered it being too. I respected Bill very much. Always a big but quiet sort of guy, he would only speak if what he had to say was worth saying. I liked that. He confirmed, having arrived at Udon Thani Airbase when he first entered the Vietnam War, that Udon Thani was the headquarters for Air America in SE Asia who were flying in the main C-123 Provider two engine aircraft up Vietnam, but mainly into Laos. This airport was additionally the loading point for aircraft carrying agent orange defoliating agent, the base for Spooky and Specter gunships, as well as Phantom jets (the 13th Panther Pack of the 479th TFW flying F4-D's - Robin Olds was at one time the base commander and regularly flew on missions becoming a fighter ace), and the place where Laotian pilots took off from to launch attacks on communist forces in Laos using T28 Trojan prop aircraft. It was a very busy airbase indeed. Bill was soon moved out of Thailand and into Vietnam. In downtown Udon at that time were some 76 go go bars! In addition, there was The Champagne Rooms (where the Air America gang hung out) and The Bamboo Bar where a great many other servicemen hung out. I am still trying to track these places down. I do not think that there is a single go go bar in Udon Thani today, although there are still places where you can pick up women. How times have changed.

My Grandfather was a Sapper in the Royal Canadian Army. He was in Ypres at least by April 1915. What you said at the end of your post, I feel the same way. He passed when I was 4.

Agreed!

@@BattleGuideVTlet everybody

They were in such a rush! Nothing like our wars/governments today

​​@@natecote1971 Not so sure that's true. Now, all they hafta do is push a button, and a drone drops a bomb on a school. War is hell, period. No matter the time or difference in circumstances.

My great grandfather, a maori from New Zealand, fought there. Part of the Pioneer Maori Battalion Te Hokowhitu Atu, The One Hundred and Forty of The God Of War, Tumatauenga.

Hell Fire Corner was on the Menin Road on the way to Hooge .... not en route to Passchendaele. Fabulous post non the less.

You sure have a profound memory as a child. I was significantly older when my father told me about Vietnam and I don’t remember in even remotely the same detail

@@3vimages471 Sorry, that was my mistake. Probably arrived at through many other conversations I heard as a young boy with the veterans. I have put this to rights in my commentary.

@@fraser311 My memory is vivid, and so it should be. Every Sunday I was towed along by my great grandfather for crisps and pop at the local bar. Here he met up with his friends, just about all of which were veterans of WW1. I met and talked with many of them on multiple occasions. I was only a young lad, but I was always tab hanging and listening in on their conversations. They discussed many aspects of the various campaigns that they had been involved with, likes and dislikes of the general staff, and much more. I soaked it all up. My great grandfather only talked to my father once about Passchendaele. But there were other things too. On Guy Fawkes night in UK we build bonfires and set off fireworks. Great grandad would hide away in his bedroom too scared to come out. One time he was found cowering and shaking frightened under the stairs and had to be escorted upstairs to his bedroom. My great grandmother knew some things, but generally talking about his experiences at Passchendaele was not allowed, especially in front of me and other members of the family. If he ever got close to talking about it at home, he would generally be told this, 'Shut up, we are not interested, and do not want to know about it.' You see the war was long over, but for these men it never left them. Some would talk and talk about it but never got it out of their system. Some simply refused to talk about it and considered it as a blank in their life. Others when questioned would become belligerent and annoyed, and so you had to be careful about what you said and to who. I asked great grandma why great grandad never attended the fireworks on Guy Fawkes night (November 5th). She told me that the fireworks reminded great grandad of the battlefield at night, especially rockets, screech owls, and roman candles. Rockets going up and exploding sound like star shells. Screech owls sound like whizz bangs, which were fragmentation shells that were launched over trenches where they exploded in the air throwing steel fragments downward. Roman candles shoot up coloured flares into the sky. On the battlefield at night the Germans would first throw up a star shell. If they saw any activity, they would next shoot up a green flare. That meant commencement of bombardment and the guys out in no man's land knew they had been sighted and the artillery shells would soon be on their way.

​@@MrMoggyman never met my gt grandfather who fought at Ypres, 31st July at Klein Zillebeke and 20th September at Tower Hamlets. My father recounts are similar to yours. It was dry zero hour 31st July, according to 20th DLI war diary, rain started later that day and didn't stop. Being waste deep in muddy water. He was a runner and got separated from his company and ended up fighting with the Royal West Kent's, the flank bn on the right at Pilkhem ridge, because he wasn't allowed to rejoin his company as they had been wiped out by gas, told to go back where he came. Hours of meticulous research allowed me the opportunity to put my father on the spot his grandfather fought at Klein Zillebeke in 2018.

Very welcome!

He must have lived in what was then East Prussia, now Śląnsk, mostly in Polish Silesia.

I found this to be very passionate and powerful. Too badd he never found out his efforts were successful.

Wilczek is polish surname so that soldier was a pole serving in german army. Poles were forced to serve in the armies of countries that partitioned Poland. My great grandfather also served in the german army. I still have his memoirs with a lot of photos of him posing in german uniform etc. He was fighting on western front. Later he fought in 20's for Poland in Silesian uprisings.

@@johnjephcote7636why do you assume that?

It is, indeed, a small world. My Paternal Great-Grandfather was KIA while serving with the Alberta 31st Bn. My Maternal Granduncle was also KIA at Passchendaele.

Rest in peace 🙏

Small world indeed, my great gtandfather's brother's cousin's son probably did something in WW1. Amazing coïncidence.

A few years ago my (now ex) girlfriend was researching her family tree. We discovered that her Great Uncle is buried in the Saint Omer war cemetery in France. He's buried 3 graves along from my Great Grandfather. They died within a a few days of each other.

Credit: Iron Maiden (Steve Harris/Adrian Smith)

I thought I was reading a poem from one of the war poets and I was stunned to see it is a song from Iron Maiden, this is an amazing piece of work and so descriptive that I teared up a little, I must listen to song now, incidentally the rock band Motorhead wrote a beautiful and sad WW1 song titled "1916", 😢😞

Thank for sharing, let's all try to avoid this bloody mess, share a beer instead

@@nigelhearne8368 if it interests you Sabaton made cover of 1916

The version of "The Green Fields of France" by the Dropkick Murphys also always brings tears to my eyes. Never forget.

Thanks Denise... and thank you for your care of the graves. Some of our team are also volunteers tending war graves.

Do I have to ask the CWGC permission for that or can you just pick one and get started?

@@jasonnicholasschwarz7788 check out the CWGC Eyes On Hands On Project for more details.

Did he die there?

@@hudson7354 Try reading the comment before posting.

@@jacketrussell so he died here ? The war was over in 1982 wasn’t it

@@hudson7354 Yes.......and he was 87. The doctors got it wrong. Duh.

Wow! Impressive to see at what lengths people are ready to go just to prove they know better than the doctors! 😊

My grandfather's elder brother died on the 28th September. He was a sergeant aged 21 years old. It shows how absolutely terrific the casualty rate was in the Great War when such a young man could hold a quite senior NCO rank at such an age. The book 'six weeks' describes the fate of young Subalterns being posted to the front ... Six Weeks being the life expectancy having taken up their appointment, it's too sorrowful to comprehend.

Hard to root for Brits but these guys were just poor kids. They werent the real world colonizers

​@ThatSB they were British and very proud of being so but like every other ordinary soul they were doing what they were told and had no choice at all. Colonisers are usually the higher echelons of society but the PBI'S (poor bloody infantry) always paid the price

Harry Patch was that guy.

Just a shame he never got to hear wether or not the letter showed :(

@@martinjacobsen2992 Yes you ar right. Animals die, friends die, finally we ourselves die; but never dies the memory of a noble man's deed!

Since religion and Christianity has been rejected by society there is very little grace of this caliber. That’s why all these feral nineties babies want to tear down monuments and statues erected to honor both sides as a way to provide healing and honoring sacrifice. Grace.

Josef Wilczek saw the right thing to do, to honor the last wish of a fellow soldier. The respect men had for one another, even in the worst of times is something we all need to be reminded of.

Yes Josef Wilczek, an honorable soldier and man in so many respects. In fact it was noted by my great grandfather that towards the end of WW1 the German soldiers started surrendering in droves. But rather than sit on their behinds and do nothing, they actually volunteered as medical orderlies to go out into the battlefield and bring in wounded soldiers. For this purpose their steel helmets were painted white or red so that they could be easily identified as none combatants. One can only respect and admire those German soldiers for that action which they were under no obligation whatsoever to undertake.

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Indeed... very poignant.

It really was a World War...

How old are you?

My grandfather and his twin brother were with the Canterbury regiment in 1917 , the shell that took my grandfather's legs Also killed his twin brother next to him

My Grandfather from Wellington was also there. He was a rifleman and survived the initial advances but became ill with Rheumatic Fever that he contracted in the mud of the trenches and was invalided out as it affected his heart. He never fully recovered but did live long enough for me to meet him when I was a child

Maybe he became obsessed with gardening in an attempt to create as much life as possible to undo the death he had seen.

I think that's probably true, he was a bit scary sometimes, had a stare that went through you

Men who lived through war tend not to talk about it. My granddad never spoke of it. Even though he was not a soldier, even a child at the time of the second world war. His older brothers got sent to Germany to work the factories and only half of them came back. Lived through the winter of 44 when all people had to eat was flower bulbs and leather belts. All I have now is pictures. There's one of him and a hundred other kids in a soup kitchen, just days after the Germans surrendered in the low countries. I respected his decision not to speak more of it, and still do now, but I do wish I knew more. He also loved his garden and especially the grapes. We still have that grapevine at his house, which I now live in. He was a kind man.

My grandfather was in the same regiment,Joseph Trombley he survived the war.

Thanks very much and glad you enjoyed it!

Usually a number of battalions make up a Regiment... in this instance there was only 1 fighting battalion in the Regiment.

Well done. Terrible loss of life.

My Great..great uncle Clarence? Goodall, my Great grandfathers brother was another Kiwi bloke taken by Paschendaele and the machination of industrial genocide. 😢

Hedge row trench cemetery in de palingbeek, the nicest piece of garden, a cementary they know is there, a piece of garden they know who lies there, but never recovered any whole bod, … If you know the story a cementary is is easy to see how it became, Tyne cot the field dressing where is all started at the centr bunker, whit a lot of names on a few stones, later wit the cleanup operations it became a central cementary you can see it by then they where layer down in rows. The mindblowing thing how many fel it’s not only tyne cot is a whole line cementary. Just take a mak and start tonmark. And you will see the frontline rising before you, Tyne cot is a small part of history…. It was a hell off a war…

Thank you for watching.

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Hi Nick, a pleasure, thanks for sharing his remakable memories and I hope we did his story justice in the video. All the best.

So many stories to tell... thanks for your kind words.

@@BattleGuideVTa local guide once told us that Paschendale was called “the hottest place on earth”. One intersection had screens set up to try and keep hostile fire away from their movements

@@jonnyqwst The road junction just outside of Ypres is still known as 'Hellfire Corner' to this day.

Thanks a lot 😊

Yes it does have a sort of sadness about it. I’m going again in December.

Looks like a field

Gettysburg in the US has that same feeling.

So after your grandmother's first husband died, his comrade (your grandfather) married her?

That is correct...they married in 1923.

@@JamesSullivan-hy4xg Okay.

Yes same happed with me. My Nans first husband was killed in 1915 and she married my GD his mate in 1918. Lest we forget.

During the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge (20 September 1917) I think, strictly speaking. One of the three great victories of the autumn.

Thanks for the kind words.

Thank you for the kind comment!

@@BattleGuideVTapart from showing french 75s artillery guns as used by Americans and American infantry climbing from their trenches, not knocking Americans but this was not their battle and I don’t think they fought on the western until October 1917

I also visited Ypres in 2016 to pay my respects. So very sad RIP

Thanks for the kind words.

Thank you.

Thanks for the kind words.

You're very welcome!

Thanks very much Jonny.

More to come!

Thanks for the kind words!

Thank you so much.

Thank you... very glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you for the kind words.

Thank you for the kind words.

What a brave man!

Thank you@@BattleGuideVT

Thanks!

Thank you for the kind comments.

Much appreciated!

Rich man's war, poor man's fight

Thankyou... an immense amount of work goes into their creation so we are glad they are appreciated so much!

Many thanks!

Thank you for the kind words.