A Storm in Flanders

"A Storm in Flanders is historian Winston Groom's history of the four-year battle for Ypres. As the engagement degenerated into relentless attrition, the salient became a gigantic corpse factory where hundreds of thousands of men - including Americans - died for gains that were measured in mere yards. To break the stalemate, the high commands on both sides over the years debuted and refined some of history's most terrifying weapons and tactics: poison gas, flamethrowers, tanks, stupendous underground mines, air strikes, and the unspeakable misery of trench warfare. The Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele, ranks among the most infamous in the history of warfare, where the horror of fighting in mud sometimes waist-deep reduced even the high command to tears. The stalemate lasted until the fourth battle, when the Germans finally came within sight of the Eiffel Tower in an all-or-nothing attack and were miraculously beaten back by an Allied army on its very last legs.".