Australian soldiers walking along a duckboard through muddy terrain, October 22, 1917.

 Australian soldiers walking along a duckboard through muddy terrain, October 22, 1917.

This photograph, colourised by @coloursofyesterday, was taken today 105 years ago near Zonnebeke, the battlefield on which the Third Battle of Ypres raged on in September and October 1917.

It was precisely in early October 1917 that the heavens began opening up in Flanders, turning the battlefield into a wet, sluggish, and muddy quagmire. 

More than 3 years of war and constant shelling had destroyed the drainage system in the area, leading to severe transportation problems for trucks, horses, artillery and the soldiers themselves.

Private Linus T.J. Ryan from New Zealand remarked: "Picture an expanse of black mud as far as the eye can reach. 

Shell craters everywhere! There is not a square yard of the Ypres Salient upon which a shell has not fallen...Not a leaf, not a blade of grass but everywhere the debris of war, human and inanimate.”

British Bombardier J.W. Palmer: "It was mud, mud, everywhere: mud in the trenches, mud in front of the trenches, mud behind the trenches. Every shell-hole was a sea of filthy oozing mud."

When attacking during the Third Battle of Ypres the Allied soldiers struggled with advancing through the muddy battlefield and many of the artillery shells intended to cover their advance were buried in the mud, with their explosions concealed.

British Gunner Alfred Stratton expressed the struggle for the Allied Infantry attacking in these conditions: 

"There was a flat muddy bog in front of our trenches (...) as our shell-fire had not reached theses concrete shelters or the barbed wire entanglements, what chance had our Infantry to get out of that mud and climb that bare hill against machine gun fire? It was just pure murder."

Private Linus T.J. Ryan: "Our feet were so swollen and painful that we had to cut our boots off, and not one of us could raise our voices above the merest whisper. 

Our uniform was concealed by a solid casing of mud to our armpits. Bloodshot eyes shone from haggard faces, so that we could hardly recognise ourselves."

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