It was a lesson hard-learned within the mud and blood of Flanders: How 1000’s of lives may be thrown away for nothing. However now, greater than 100 years later, horror scenes that echo one of many First World Conflict’s bloodiest battles are as soon as once more enjoying out on European soil.
Vladimir Putin is pouring Russian troops into the maw of Ukrainian machine-guns within the city of Bakhmut, with troops charging throughout a muddy hell-scape pock-marked with shell holes and strewn with the corpses of their very own comrades, beneath the wail of artillery fireplace and into Kyiv’s trenches.
It’s hauntingly harking back to The Battle of Passchendaele, when in 1917 Allied troops have been pressured to battle the Germans in mud generally chest deep, slogging uphill for 4 months beneath withering fireplace at a lack of virtually 300,000 males, solely to cede it again the next yr with out firing a shot.
For a lot of, that battle symbolises greater than every other the futility of the First World Conflict – and so it might show in Bakhmut, as analysts argue the strategic worth of the town is already far outweighed by the variety of lives Russia has spent attempting to take it.
Right here, MailOnline check out each battlefields and what historical past can train us in regards to the horrifying circumstances that troopers are going through at the moment…
Ukrainian troopers maintain the frontline in a partially-flooded trench close to the city of Bakhmut, within the east of the nation, amid splintered items of tree which were destroyed by Russian artillery fireplace
British troopers bearing a wounded man on a stretcher make their manner by means of sucking mud in the course of the Battle of Passchendaele, greater than 100 years earlier than comparable scenes would return to Europe
A Ukrainian solider wounded by shell fireplace is handled in a hospital close to the frontlines in Bakhmut. A few of the heaviest losses on either side are being sustained round Bakhmut, a lot of them from artillery weapons as either side bombard the opposite closely an an attritional battle for management of the world
A wounded German soldier is seen in the course of the First World Conflict, which pioneered using massed artillery barrages as a method to weaken and break enemy defensive traces earlier than an assault – and left troopers dwelling with the horrifying wounds that items of shrapnel may cause
Bakhmut has seen heavy preventing for the reason that summer time, when it grew to become the frontline of defence towards Russian forces that had just lately captured the close by cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk – now soil churned up by months of artillery fireplace, tank tracks and troopers’ boots has turned to a slurry
The Battle of Passchendaele was the third main battle fought close to the Belgian metropolis of Ypres, with the previous years of warfare having churned up soil which then turned to a quagmire with the arrival of late summer time and early autumn rains
What was as soon as a forest in Bakhmut is pictured as little greater than a set of sticks after months of heavy bombardment shredded the bushes – leaving attacking and defending troopers with valuable little pure cowl – and making motion exterior of trenches and shell-holes significantly lethal
As Passchendaele started, Allied forces used some 3,000 weapons to hurl 4.5million shells at German defences – aiming to be taught the teachings of the Somme when the preliminary barrage proved too tender to interrupt the enemy traces. The end result was scenes like this, which at the moment are being echoed in Ukraine greater than a century later
Ukrainian troopers load a wounded comrade on to a stretcher close to Bakhmut. Whereas actual losses within the battle should not being disclosed by both facet, each acknowledge they’ve been ‘heavy’. It’s thought they may very well be shedding upwards of 100 troopers every per day
Passchendaele was not the First World Conflict’s bloodiest battle – that distinction goes to The Somme – however it nonetheless concerned an enormous quantity of casualties: Roughly 270,000 for the Allies and 225,000 for the Germans, which in the end proved in useless when all floor gained in the course of the offensive was given up the next yr and not using a shot being fired
Troops from the so-called Donetsk Folks’s Republic – a Russian proxy in Ukraine’s east – load a self-propelled howitzer someplace close to the frontlines in Bakhmut, the principle focus of the preventing. America estimates that Russia is firing some 20,000 artillery shells per day in the intervening time – sooner than it could actually produce its commonplace 152mm rounds
Howitzer gun caught within the mud close to Passchendaele, October, 1917: Passchendaele noticed heavy use of artillery by either side, with British success ultimately coming when generals modified ways to have troops advance fully beneath cowl of the weapons – in a lot the identical manner that Russia superior throughout Donbas in the summertime to achieve Bakhmut
New graves are seen at a cemetery close to Bakhmut: Consultants and analysts consider the battle for this metropolis has change into totemic for Russia – the propaganda worth of capturing it far outweighs the already-considerable human value the Kremlin’s commanders have expended within the effort
Graves on Passchendaele ridge, Belgium: The battle got here to epitomise the futility of the First World Conflict. It took 4 months of arduous preventing and virtually half 1,000,000 lives to take the ridge, however the next yr it was ceded again to Germany and not using a battle to shorten the defensive position