Current Information:

Age-26

7, Second Avenue, Edmonton

Born-Woodford, Essex

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.

On 31st July, 1917, the opening day of Third Ypres, 55 Brigade of 18th Division were in reserve and the 8th East Surrey battalion spent the day at New Dickebusch Camp. During the night of 2nd-3rd August, 18th Division relieved 30th Division in the new front line and on 4th August 8th East Surrey moved into the support line where they spent the next five days in the wet and under persistent shell fire. During the night of 8/9th August the enemy put down a very heavy barrage on Sanctuary Wood, Jam Trench and Crab Crawl as a result of which D Company suffered a number of casualties, one of whom was Arthur Belsey.