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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 18th August, 14th Division relieved 56th Division and at 4.45am on 22nd August, the 6th Cornwall Light Infantry and 6th Somerset Light Infantry battalions of 43 Brigade led an attack against Inverness Copse and Fitzclarence Farm. 6th Somerset followed the barrage through the copse taking 130 prisoners, but 6th Cornwall were held up on the plateau to the north by machine-gun fire from Fitzclarence Farm and the L shaped farm 200 yards north of it. A counter attack drove 6th Somerset back to a line half way through the wood where they managed to hold on after beating off three further counter attacks. 6th Somerset remained in these exposed forward positions until relieved on the following night. There were a number of casualties for both battalions in this less than successful operation, one of whom was Frank Andrews of 6th Somerset who was killed on 22nd August.