The 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was one of the major battles of World War I, in which units from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa engaged the Imperial German Army. Fighting for control of the village of Passchendaele near the town of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium; the plan was to drive a hole in the German lines, advance to the Belgian coast, and capture the German submarine bases there. The intention was to create a decisive corridor in a crucial area of the front, and to take pressure off the French forces.

Passchendaele has become synonymous with the utter misery of fighting in thick, heavy mud. Most of the battle took place on largely reclaimed marshland, swampy even without rain. Extremely heavy bombardment by the British tore up the surface of the land and heavy rains from August onward produced an impassable terrain of deep mud, where an unknown number of soldiers drowned.

The Germans were well entrenched behind their lines and the initial bombardment had had little effect. After three months of fierce fighting the Canadian Corps finally succeeded in taking Passchendaele on November 6, 1917. During this period the allied forces had sustained almost half a million casualties and the Germans just over a quarter of a million. The Allies had captured a mere five miles of new front at a cost of 140,000 lives—a ratio of roughly two soldiers dead per inch of ground gained.

The Battle of Verdun was one of the most critical battles on the Western Front. It was fought between the German and French armies from February 21 to December 18, 1916 around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France. Twenty major forts and forty smaller forts around Verdun had historically protected the eastern border of France.

The attack on Verdun was part of a plan by the German Chief of General Staff, von Falkenhayn to launch a massive attack on a narrow stretch of land that had great historic sentiment for the French. He believed that they simply could not allow these forts to fall, as the national humiliation would have been too great. Falkenhayn believed that the French would fight to the last man to retain control of this area and would lose so many men that the battle would change the course of the war.

A 21-hour artillery bombardment all along the eight-mile front began the battle. The French tried desperately to defend the area because it was a key fortified frontier zone, but the outer ring of French defenses had been destroyed and were taken with very little opposition.

After the Germans captured Douamont, the largest fort in the area, the French began a counter attack which checked the German advance. The Germans then turned their attention to the west bank of the river Meuse, focusing their attack on Hill 295 (Le Mort Homme), six miles northwest of Verdun. The French defended it fiercely, but Hill 295 eventually fell on May 29.

On June 23 the Germans attacked the heights which commanded the Verdun and Meuse bridges. They were repeatedly repulsed—with both sides losing hundreds of thousands of men. Exhaustion combined with the increased demands for extra men for the Russian Brusilov offensive and the Somme offensive finally halted the German advance.

On October 24 the French launched a counter attack and the Germans finally began to withdraw. The French recaptured Douamont and Vaux and by December had regained almost all the positions lost ten months earlier. The Battle of Verdunwas fought at a cost of close to 600,000 casualties and its name has become a lasting symbol of suffering.

After many postponements, the attacks eventually began July 1, 1916. At 0730 hours after a weeklong artillery bombardment, Zero Hour officially started, launching the now infamous “Big Push” attack across the Somme River under the command of Sir Douglas Haig. With the French Army being hard-pressed to the south at Verdun the British intended to break through the German defenses in a matter of hours.

The High Command gave orders to the troops to keep uniform lines and to march towards the enemy across No Man’s Land. This, coupled with the failure of the artillery bombardment to dislodge much of the German wire, or to destroy their machine-gun posts, led to one of the bloodiest battles in military history.

When the attack began the Germans dragged themselves out of their dugouts, manned their posts and destroyed the oncoming waves of British infantry.

After the first day, with a gain of only 1.5-km, the British had suffered 57,470 casualties. Despite this, Haig pressed on with the attack until November 19, 1916. For the meager gains, total losses on both sides numbered 419,654 with German casualties estimated at between 450,000 and 680,000. When the offensive was eventually called off the British were still three miles short of Bapaume and Serre, which had been part of their first-day objectives.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was a short military offensive by the Canadian Corps against the German Sixth Army along the Western Front in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France, from Apri 9 to April 12, 1917. The attack on Vimy Ridge was part of the opening phase in the wider scaled Battle of Arras, which served as a distraction attack for the Nivelle Offensive which was taking place about eighty kilometers to the south.

The urgent goal of the Canadian Corps was to take control of the German-held high ground that dominated the Plains of Douai to permit the southern flank of the Arras offensive to advance without being fired upon in a vulnerable position.

The success of the Canadian Corps in capturing the ridge and surrounding area is largely attributed to a mixture of technical and tactical innovations, powerful artillery preparation and meticulous planning. Noted as the first occasion, on which all four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force attacked as a composite formation, the battle quickly became a national symbol of achievement and sacrifice.

The former battleground is now home to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.