Current Information:

117, White Horse Street, Shadwell

Wimereux Communal Cemetery, France

In 1914 the British army had no trench mortars but as the war progressed and became bogged down in the stalemate of trench warfare, the need for such a weapon, became more and more apparent. Fired from the front line they were able to deal with individual targets such as machine gun nests or sniper posts and thereby assisting the infantry going into the attack. But they were not always welcome. Many an infantryman would complain bitterly about trench mortar sections that would join them in the front line trenches, fire a salvo of mortars and then disappear back, leaving the occupants to face the inevitable enemy retaliation.

Many different models were tried until in mid 1915 the three inch Stokes mortar became standard issue and each division had three Medium Batteries attached, which had the same number as the division. There were also Light Mortars attached to Brigades and bearing the Brigade’s number. When an attack went in it was the job of the men of the Trench Mortar Batteries to accompany the infantry forward and resume their fire from captured positions. It was dangerous work.

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.

Matthias Treweek died from wounds on 19th August, 1917, after having been sent to a base hospital on the coast, but as yet there is no information as to when and where he was wounded.

36th Division, of which 36 Trench Mortar Battery were a part, saw action during the Third Battle of Ypres.