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The 36th had been kept back from the original assault so that it could be used at a later date. But in the area north-east of Ypres and near the village St. Julien the division there was so badly battered and its soldiers so tired that it was decided to withdraw them and replace them much earlier than expected with the Ulster Division. This was accomplished in the rain and mud of the night of 2nd August and completed by the early hours of the next morning. There they existed for another fourteen days where all were soaked by the continual rain and suffered from a lack of food, of heating, and of drinkable water. Lying in trenches which were little more than watery scratches scooped out of the morass and feebly protected by sandbags filled with mud, the soldiers endured perpetual shelling and small arms fire. It was out of these conditions that, with the 16th (Irish) Division on its right, they were ordered to make an attack on 16th August in what has become known as the Battle of Langemarck.
The Ulster Division was to advance about two and a quarter miles to reach its objective - an imaginary "Red Line". At 4.45 a.m. the men left their trenches but: pounded by high-explosive, shrapnel, and gas shells; ravaged pitilessly by machine-gun fire from impregnable concrete pill boxes protected by barbed wire entanglements; saturated by the rain; lost in a featureless landscape; and encumbered by the clinging mud: only a little ground on the left was gained, and by nightfall most of those still alive were back where they had started. That any progress at all was made is a tribute to the bravery and determination of the men, for the ambitious plan, conceived in the comfort of a distant headquarters, defied reality and was fatally flawed. In the dreadful conditions of the battlefield the British artillery's preliminary barrage and its subsequent "creeping" covering fire, which went far ahead of the attackers, were ineffective; and a few supporting tanks, bogged down in the impassable mire, never appeared. Furthermore, a weary division which had already sustained some 2,000 casualties due to enemy action during the previous two weeks, should never have been ordered to attack in the face of such overwhelmingly adverse odds.
For the capture of a few worthless yards of mud the attack resulted in 58 officers and 1278 men being gassed or wounded. During its sixteen days in the line, from 2nd to 18th August, the Division suffered the total loss of 144 officers and 3,441 men either killed, wounded or missing.
The 16th (Irish) Division suffered grievously also, and together the two division suffered about 7,800 casualties - amounting to perhaps 50% of their original numbers. However, the efforts and sacrifices of the men were not enough for 5th Army's Commanding General; for Haig confided to his diary that Gough, 'was not pleased with the action of the Irish divisions .... They seemed to have gone forward but failed to keep what they had won .... The men are Irish and apparently did not like the enemy's shelling.'
The pitiful tragedy of "Third Ypres" continued its bloody course until, on 4th November, the battle ended when the Canadians captured the muddy mound which had once been the village of Passchendaele - a name now associated irrevocably with the battle and which, perhaps, recalls more poignantly the sorrows of the men who fought there.
After Langemarck the Division was withdrawn to rest and to receive reinforcements. It did not, however, ever have the same character again for most of its original men had been lost in the everyday hazards of war, and in the Battles of The Somme, Messines, and Passchendaele. Many of the recruits which filled the empty ranks were from diverse other parts of the British Isles - often young conscripts aged about nineteen or twenty. Nevertheless, the division still had a significant part to play in many of the remaining battles and campaigns of the War such as: The Battle of Cambrai in November, 1917; the German Spring Offensive of 1918, and its advance through Belgium during the War's final hundred days.
Everywhere it fought it acquitted itself with courage and fortitude and by 11th November, 1918, nine Victoria Crosses and a multitude of other gallantry medals had been awarded to the doughty men of the 36th (Ulster ) Division.
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