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Age-19

23, Rosemont Avenue, North Finchley

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 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 4 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.

Battle of Pilckem Ridge (31st July-2nd August)

This was the opening attack of Third Ypres and began at 3.50am on 31st July when British and French troops launched their offensive to break out of the Ypres salient. The day had mixed results. To the north the Pilckem Ridge was captured but there was less success further south along the Gheluvelt Ridge, where a combination of stiff German resistance and low cloud which hindered observation meant that only the first objectives were captured. Further attempts to push on were stopped in their tracks by specialist German counter attack divisions and resulted in a 70% casualty rate among the British troops. Then in the afternoon, the rain came and under the weight of shells falling on it, the battlefield soon became a quagmire. Over the next two days, suffering the most appalling conditions in the mud and the rain, the troops had to fight off numerous German counter attacks.

On 31st July, 8th Division attacked from a position due east of Ypres, south of the Ypres-Roulers railway. On the left 23 Brigade advanced towards the village of Westhoek with 2nd West Yorkshire and 2nd Devon in front. Without meeting too much opposition these two battalions soon captured the Blue line at which time 2nd Middlesex and 2nd Scottish Rifles passed through them and continued the advance to the next objective, the Black line which ran across Westhoek Ridge. This too was captured but by now German resistance was stiffening and the situation was made worse when an enemy plane flew above them and dropped a white flare which was followed by very heavy and accurate artillery fire on their positions. German machine-gun fire interrupted their attempts to consolidate and forced them back to more sheltered positions on the west side of the ridge. 2nd Middlesex remained here until relieved on the following day, successfully fighting off any enemy counter attacks but suffering more and more casualties in the process. One of these was Erric Gordon-Jones who lost his life on 1st August.