Timeline Tuesday 31 July 1917

Events on Tuesday 31 July 1917 3

• 1917 – 2008 J. D. Salinger American novelist Salinger wrote The Catcher in the Rye, capturing teenage alienation and postwar disillusionment.
• 1917 Passchendaele The mud of Flanders Fields The Third Battle of Ypres becomes a byword for the futility of trench warfare; the poppies of Flanders Fields become the enduring symbol of remembrance.
• 1917 Passchendaele Ypres, Belgium The Third Battle of Ypres was fought through the wettest autumn in decades, on ground whose drainage the shelling had destroyed. Men and horses drowned in the mud. Around half a million casualties for five miles.