Passchendaele: Landscape of War - Karen Derycke

The Memorial Museum Passchedaele 1917's temporary exhibtion 'Passchendaele, Landscape of War' highlights the effect of the ruined landscape on the course of the Battle of Passchendaele. We show how both armies were forced to adapt their tactics, attack methods and logistics to take account of the landscape, and we examine the enormous impact, both physical and psychological, of the resulting moonscape on the ordinary soldier. During the Third Battle of Ypres the Allies' advance came to halt at the village of Passchendaele. What had been the German hinterland not became the epicentre of the battlefield. Villages, forest and farms were mostly razed to the ground as massed artillery obliterated the bucolic landscape.