Passchendaele The Complete Panoramas Of The Third Battle Of Ypres

[J Banning]

Can anyone tell me if this book has the panoramas in a CD, please?

No Chris - there are no CDs with this book. The CDs were only available with 'The Battlefields of the First World War'. The new book, however, contains new panoramas from the German archives in Stuttgart and Munich that are fantastic. The one taken from the spire of Passchendaele Church is incredible in detail.

[Chris Henschke]

Thanks for that fast reply - I'll have to get it then!

[truthergw]

And can be ordered via this Forum for a bit of a discount and with free p&p . Looks like a no brainer. I'm sold.

Unfortunately, Paypal does not accept Egg cards. Everybody else does but they don't. So, much as I would love to spend my book money through the Forum, I can't. I check periodically and have today. No go.

[ianw]

Tom - Surely you know someone who can make the purchase on your behalf with another card.

[truthergw]

I will shortly purchase them through Amazon with my Egg card. I have bought everything from computers to groceries with it. They are on next month's budget. I would like to buy them through the forum, every little helps, as the supermarket ads say, but I am not going to play silly beggars to do so.

[squirrel]

On my budget for next month as well with Peter Simkins' Kitchener's Army.

[salientpoints]

Tom - Surely you know someone who can make the purchase on your behalf with another card.

Or you could buy it from somewhere else

[trenchtrotter]

How does one ordewr it via this forum please?

TT

[robbie]

what do you all think of it?

worth the money?

Robbie

[Halder]

what do you all think of it?

worth the money?

Robbie

Absolutely! I think it's the best of his triptych, beautifully produced. Combined with Jack Sheldon's book on Amazon as an offer for about £35, bargain!

[ianw]

Mine has just arrived and it really is very nice. At these opening discounts it is a real steal. Books seem to be like a lot of items now - often cheaper if you buy early, especially when the book is a good one not likely to be remaindered.

[trenchtrotter]

Just got my combo deal from Amazon. Took just three days to arrive and the books seem excellant....go for it Pals.

TT

PS first time I have used Amazon...where have I been?

[Procat]

The first book of the "series" which is currently out of print, http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/i...c=29569&hl=

Although still available here: http://www.awm.gov.au/ (go to Online shop and photo sales)

Doug

[johnreed]

Another one to my collection, I have just skimmed throught it, it on for the winters evenings.

John

[salientpoints]

Well folks in true form to previous announcements, yes here is the long awaited Ypres follow up to the massive "Battlefields of the First World War".

Following in the footsteps of the original book and Somme companion edition out now is the title timely published (for once!) to commemorate the Battle of Passchendaele.

Herewith the official blurb:

"Today, concertina'd into a single sombre entity known as Passchendaele, the British 1917 offensives in Belgian Flanders have entered the English language as the epitome of all that was both wretched and noble about the Great War.

Collectively known as the Third Battle of Ypres, the fighting raged from early June until mid-November, and revealed new depths of tragedy, heights of gallantry, astonishing stoicism, humour, loss, grief, and terrible human suffering. The remains of no less than 200,000 soldiers still lie unfound within the narrow boundaries of the battlefield of Passchendaele.

The German panoramas - many of which have not seen the light of day since the end of the war - match and often surpass the Imperial War Museum for both scale and quality. Like their British equivalents, they were taken at huge personal risk by specialist photographers. All the panoramas reveal what no other photographs can - the view beyond the trench parapet - and a great deal more. Also included are unpublished testimony, letters and memoirs from all the different regiments who served at Passchendaele, sourced from the regimental archives across the United Kingdom, Ireland and elsewhere; stunning mapping, plans and diagrams throughout; and equivalent aerial photographs."

Some interesting points;

250 Photographs, 2 double gatefolds and over 40 extraordinary panoramas - including newly discovered, unseen panoramas from the German archives

At a whopping 468pp it's certainly better value the The Somme edition, slightly more expensive at RRP £30 but well worth it. Have to say shame the Vimy edition didn't make 2007....

ISBN 9781845294229

Hopefully the original version will also be re-issued for 2008, can we /should we make a poll on the forum for this so the publisher might like to take note?

If anyone is intersted Peter Barton will be in Ypres at the end of July with Richard Van Emden signing copies of their books in the bookshops over 28/29th July. There is also the fantastic chance to win a set of both signed copies that are also signed by Harry Patch, Passchendaele veteran!

Cheers

Ryan

Took me ages to find this again (merged posts!) as the topic did not start about the book anymore so looked out of place, oh welll...

Anyway, hopefully this will grab your attention as there is a limited edition copy signed by Peter Barton and Harry Patch on 29th July 2007 onto Ebay.

This is a charity based auction with all profits going to Toc-H. I hope this also manages to raise a decent amount of money as Talbot House are pleased with the results so far!

Item number: 230160413027

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...em=230160413027

Good luck!

cheers,

Ryan

[salientpoints]

The current copy available on ebay that is signed by both Peter Barton and Harry Patch is currently cheaper than a normal copy! someone might get a bit of a bargain....

[truthergw]

I suspect there is more than one sniper lurking out there.

[Halder]

This is my review from the September issue of Navy News:

NO BATTLE casts a shadow over the British psyche more than the Third Battle of Ypres, more commonly known by the name of its final objective: Passchendaele.

The three-month slog in the mud cost the Empire a quarter of a million men in the summer and autumn of 1917.

But it cost Britain far more than ‘mere’ lives; it gave the ordinary Briton cynicism, mistrust, a reason to doubt authority.

Passchendaele cost the Tommy his soul. “For the first time the British Army lost its sense of optimism,” observed Times correspondent Sir Philip Gibbs, “and there was a sense of deadly depression among many officers and men.”

The battle’s 90th anniversary has, rightly, sparked a flurry of interest in the sacrifices made.

Peter Barton’s contribution – Passchendaele: Unseen Panoramas of the Third Battle of Ypres (Constable, £30 ISBN 978-1-84529-422-9) – is unique.

The author has spent nearly a decade ferreting around in the photographic archive of the Imperial War Museum, where, for the better part of 80 years, sprawling black and white panoramic images of the battlefield have lain forgotten.

Barton has already produced two books using these panoramas – photographs taken not for artistic purpose but so the generals of both sides could dictate, or rather try to dictate, the battle in Flanders fields.

Passchendaele is by far the most hauntingly magnificent of the trio with hundreds of images – and not merely panoramic vistas of the Belgian terrain.

There are trench maps, trench diagrams, cross-sections of trenches, sepia images of the battlefield, reconnaissance photographs, aerial images, sketches, diagrams which provide as complete a photographic record of the battle and battlefield as you could wish for.

Strangely, it’s not the images of soldiers struggling through the mud which give this book its power.

Far more haunting are the aerial photographs of the pockmarked terrain or a solitary tank struggling across the cratered moonscape.

Accompanying this comprehensive ‘exhibition’ is a narrative which draws upon scores of diaries, letters and personal accounts of the men who fought in the Ypres salient.

And if the British Army lost its sense of optimism at Passchendaele, it never forgot its duty.

“They were magnificent,” Lt Douglas Wimberley enthused as he watched stretcher bearers carrying the wounded from the battlefield in November.

“You would see them slowly picking their way down the duckboard tracks in the midst of an inferno.

“Then they would disappear altogether in a cloud of smoke as some big shell dropped close, and when it disappeared, on they came at their slow walk.”

Given press reaction to single lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq 90 years later, it is difficult to comprehend how today’s media machine would react to casualties at Ypres: in October 1917, the British Army suffered 110,000 casualties – 3,500 men a day killed or wounded.

Britain’s newspapers, censored by the Government, celebrated the “most important victory of the year”. The obituary columns told a different story.

The 63rd Division – the Royal Naval Division – suffered 3,000 casualties during six days of heated battle north-west of Passchendaele at the end of that month.

Sadly – and this is one of the few quibbles with Barton’s excellent volume – the Royal Naval Division is a rather peripheral formation in an account dominated by the armies of the Empire and her Dominion.

The foe too takes second place to the Tommy – reasons of space meant German accounts have largely been omitted.

And yet ‘Fritz’ is omnipresent, drawing condemnation and admiration in equal measure from the British soldier.

“The Fritzes must be fighting like the very demons of hell,” wrote Gunner Aubrey Wade during the first, failed, attempt to seize the village of Passchendaele in mid-October 1917.

The ‘demons of hell’ were ably assisted by all the demonic inventions of the military-industrial complex of the age: chemical warfare, tanks, heavy bombers.

In 1917, says the author, “we see the greatest ingenuity, deliberation, planning and colossal command and personal effort that made up the writhing serpent of a modern military machine at the beginning of the 20th Century.”

And yet, in the final analysis, Passchendaele rested on the shoulders of man, not machines – and sometimes his trusty steed.

“One of the most pitiful and heroic sights is to see the ammunition pack horses bringing up shells and charges,” wrote official photographer Capt Frank Hurley.

“The horses stumble through, sometimes falling into shell craters from which they have to be hauled.

“Oh, it is a wicked, agonising sight. Here and there lay dead, half-buried in mud, horses and broken wagons, all cogently telling some tragedy and horror, but one is immune to all these and passes by as unperturbed as though they were just pieces of rock.”

Officer and poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote the battle’s most famous – and oft quoted – epitaph. “I died in hell – they called it Passchendaele.”

The ordinary Tommy could be equally eloquent.

“They say we shall not go back to Ypres,” a colleague told Pte Arthur Lambert of the Honourable Artillery Company.

“I hope to God we never do,” the trooper responded. He had, he admitted, “never uttered a more fervent prayer”.

Many histories of this terrible battle are little more than scathing indictments of Douglas Haig and his generals, the much-maligned ‘donkeys’ of popular historiography.

Peter Barton passes little judgment on Passchendaele, its conduct, the rights and wrongs of the offensive.

Instead, he provides a compelling narrative. It is the voices of the men, not the author, which chastise the leaders.

In October 1917, Douglas Haig visited a headquarters at the front to give the men a pep talk ahead of the final assault on Passchendaele.

“Gentlemen, it has become apparent that Passchendaele must be taken,” he declared.

“Some day I hope to be able to tell you why this must be done, but in the meantime I ask you to take my word for it.”

For nine decades, Britons have been waiting for an answer. They will still be awaiting an answer in another nine decades. And never again has a soldier merely taken a general’s word for it.

[PBI]

Got Mine for £14.99 from Sussex Stationers...well Pleased.

[Halder]

There's a review posted here on page 44.