A battlefield of imperishable memory ? The 1917 Belgium campaigns in Australian collective memory

The dreaded Ypres salient was the favourite battle ground of the devil and his minions , wrote one Anzac years after the First World War had ended. Surely few Australians who experienced the 1917 offensives in Belgian Flanders would disagree. At the battle of Messines and the third battle of Ypres, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) initially helped the British achieve several limited victories in the infamous salient. However, the Anzacs involvement in the fighting around Ypres eventually ended in muddy defeat, not far from the ruined village of Passchendaele. By the end of these offensives... Mehr ...