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Age-29

3, Seymour Road, Lower Edmonton

20, Cedars Road, Lower Edmonton

Born-Dalston

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.

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, 41st Division attacked astride the the Yser-Comines canal with 122 Brigade to the south of it and 123 Brigade to the north, and advanced 500-1000 yards east of Battle Wood. The 23rd Middlesex, 11th Royal West Surrey (Queens) and 10th Royal West Kent battalions were all used by 123 Brigade. 23rd Middlesex attacked from a line between the canal and the Ypres-Comines railway with their first objective being the Red Line running from Hollebeke to the Klein-Zillebeke road. It was a difficult task . Their advance was into a bottle neck and the left of the battalion would have to cross the 25 feet high railway embankment known to be honeycombed with dug-outs and machine-gun nests. Setting off in four waves at 3.50am 23rd Middlesex were immediately in trouble. The ground was waterlogged and the advance had to take place along the exposed railway embankment.  Nevertheless within four minutes the Red Line had been taken. The Blue Line was the next objective and lay another 300-400 yards further on.  If anything the ground conditions worsened and the pitch black of the night made progress slow and as a result they lost touch with their protective barrage.  Here the third and fourth waves came under heavy machine-gun fire from the embankment and from a small hill 500 yards on the left flank.  Despite these difficulties a party of around fifty were digging in on the Blue Line within half an hour while others were doing likewise on the Red Line. Two enemy dug-outs on the embankment between the Red and Blue Lines were still holding out until they were bombed into surrendering and then became the battalion HQ.  By 6am the Blue Line had been cleared of the enemy and here ‘A’ and ‘D’ Companies remained, under shell and sniper fire, for the next 24 hours. 23rd Middlesex suffered many casualties during the hard fighting on 31st July, one of them being George Boisson.