Current Information:

Age-24

42, Brondesbury Park

Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belgium

Third Battle of Ypres

This was a campaign fought between July and November 1917 and is often referred to as the Battle of Passchendaele, a village to the north-east of Ypres which was finally captured in November. It was an attempt by the British to break out of the Ypres salient and capture the higher ground to the south and the east, from which the enemy had been able to dominate the salient. It began well but two important factors weighed against them. First was the weather. The summer of 1917 turned out to be one of the wettest on record and soon the battlefield was reduced to a morass of mud which made progress very difficult, if not impossible in places. The second was the defensive arrangements of concrete blockhouses and machine gun posts providing inter-locking fire that the Germans had constructed and which were extremely difficult and costly to counter. For four months this epic struggle continued by the end of which the salient had been greatly expanded in size but the vital break out had not been achieved.

14th Division were undergoing training at the start of Third Ypres but on 14th August they moved to Ypres to play their part in the battle. Just after dawn on 22nd August, the 6th Cornwall Light Infantry and 6th Somerset Light Infantry battalions of 43 Brigade, attacked with Inverness Copse and Fitzclarence Farm as their objectives but in the face of strong enemy opposition they did not get far and had no option but to dig in. On the following day, 23rd August, the attack was resumed, with the 6th Yorkshire Light Infantry battalion moving up from reserve in support, but a strong counter-attack by the enemy caused forward movement to grind to a halt and the rest of the day was spent consolidating their position as best as possible. Enemy pressure continued throughout 24th August when they attacked with flammenwerfers (flame throwers) and grenades and as their positions were now untenable there was a withdrawal to the original starting line. One of the casualties sustained by 6th Yorkshire Light Infantry on this day was Abraham Slowe who died from wounds on 25th August.