Haig's attempt to break through the German lines in Flanders and reach the Belgian coast. Preliminary bombardment destroyed the drainage system, turning the battlefield into a liquid mud swamp. Men and horses drowned in shell craters. The Canadians finally captured the ruined village of Passchendaele after three months, gaining five miles at a cost of 325,000 British casualties.
The battle's mud became the defining image of the war's horror. It shook faith in Haig's command. The village's name became synonymous with futile sacrifice. Yet the pressure it placed on German forces contributed to their eventual exhaustion.
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In the largest British military operation since Suez, over 20,000 troops with armoured bulldozers moved in before dawn to demolish the barricades and reoccupy the republican and loyalist 'no-go' areas — including 'Free Derry' — that paramilitaries had controlled. The IRA largely melted away rather than fight, and the Army retook the streets with relatively little bloodshed.
Motorman ended the era of the no-go areas and reasserted state control of the streets, forcing the IRA to shift toward a longer, clandestine campaign of bombing and ambush rather than holding territory.
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