🇨🇦 LEST WE FORGET 🇨🇦 PASSCHENDAELE — OCTOBER 5, 1917 On this day in 1917, a decision was made that would send the entire Canadian Corps into one of the most infamous battlefields of the First World War. On October 5, British commander Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig decided to employ all four divisions of the Canadian Corps in the Ypres Salient. Their destination would ultimately be Passchendaele. The Canadians arrived in a battlefield devastated by months of fighting and rain. Shellfire had shattered the drainage system, turning much of the ground into a landscape of water-filled craters and deep mud. Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie had serious reservations about committing his men there, but the Canadians were ordered into the campaign. Their offensive began on October 26. Through a series of attacks on October 26 and 30 and November 6 and 10, Canadian troops fought their way toward and through Passchendaele. The village itself was captured on November 6, and the final Canadian attack on November 10 secured the crest of Passchendaele Ridge. More than 4,000 Canadian soldiers died in the fighting and almost 12,000 were wounded. And amid all of that destruction came this remarkable photograph. Taken at Passchendaele in November 1917, it shows a wounded Canadian soldier and a wounded German soldier lying beside one another in the mud. One is helping the other light a cigarette. Two wounded men, enemies on the battlefield, sharing a small human moment in one of the most brutal landscapes of the First World War. More than a century later, the photograph remains a powerful reminder of the human beings who endured Passchendaele. We remember them. 🇨🇦 📷 Canada, Department of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-003683