Bastien has depicted a group of gunners struggling to release one of their guns from the mud. The focus on the gun, rather than on the soldiers, underlines the importance of this weapon to success on the battlefield. The terrible shelling and constant rain reduced the Passchendaele battlefield to a sea of mud. Here, a group of artillery soldiers struggle to free a mired wagon.
<bdi><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Alfred_Bastien" class="extiw" title="w:en:Alfred Bastien"><span title="painter (1873-1955)">Alfred Bastien</span></a>
</bdi>
1917 <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q59590437#P571" title="Edit this at Wikidata"><img alt="Edit this at Wikidata" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/10px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png" decoding="async" width="10" height="10" style="vertical-align: text-top" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/15px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png 1.5x, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg/20px-OOjs_UI_icon_edit-ltr-progressive.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="20" data-file-height="20"></a>
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