Ypres today is an international 'Town of Peace', but in 1914 the town,
and the Salient, the 35-mile bulge in the Western Front, of which it is
part, saw a 1500-day military campaign of mud and blood at the heart of
the First World War that turned it into the devil's nursery.
Distinguished biographer and historian of modern Europe Alan Palmer
tells the story of the war in Flanders as a conflict that has left a
deep social and political mark on the history of Europe.
Denying Germany possession of the historic town of Ypres and access to
the Channel coast was crucial to Britain's victory in 1918. But though
Flanders battlefields are the closest on the continent to English
shores, this was always much more than a narrowly British conflict.
Passchendaele, the Menin Road, Hill 60 and the Messines Ridge remain
names etched in folk memory. Militarily and tactically the four-year
long campaign was innovative and a grim testing ground with constantly
changing ideas of strategy and disputes between politicians and
generals. Alan Palmer details all its aspects in an illuminating history
of the place as much as the fighting man's experience.