The Weather At War - Mud-The Great Leveller DVD

In January 1863 during the American Civil War Unionist General Burnside attempted to retake the town of Fredericksburg committing 75 000 troops to the task. His endeavour would go down in history not as a military triumph but as a debacle known as the three day 'Mud March'. Heavy rains turned the surrounding area into a sticky bog and after nearly 72 hours of effort they'd only managed to bury themselves knee-deep in mud. At the battle of Passchendaele in July 1917 a sea of mud could be clearly seen before the fighting began. The battlefield had been turned into a... quagmire due to the unrelenting shelling and then made worse by the destruction of the Flemish drainage system. Yet still the troops were committed to battle in conditions that it has been said were more suited to naval warfare. Unceasing rain turned the trenches that had become home to the men of both sides during the Great War into rivers of stinking clinging freezing rat-infested mud subjecting them to a new enemy - trench foot. A similar fate befell Hitler's army as he invaded Russia some 25 years later in Operation Barbarossa. The infamous rasputitsa the great thaw following the Russian winter brought his troops to an abrupt halt as men horses and machines were unable to wade through the marshy terrain. [show more]

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