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Born-Wandsworth

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 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.

At 3.50am on 31st July,1917, 23 and 24 Brigades of 8th Division attacked out of the centre of the Ypres salient with the Ypres-Roulers railway on their left and once they had reached their objectives, 25 Brigade moved up to continue the attack. Their objective was the Green Line which started at the junction of the railway and the Ypres-Zonnebeke road and ran south to the Westhoek-Zonnebeke road. At 10.18am the 2nd Lincolnshire battalion attacked on the right, 1st Royal Irish Rifles in the centre and 2nd Rifle Brigade on the left with 2nd Royal Berkshire in support. Starting out from Westhoek ridge they had advanced a few hundred yards when their line was checked by heavy machine-gun fire from Glencorse and Nonne Boschen Woods that forced them back to their starting line and despite their best efforts during the rest of the day, they were unable to make further progress. One of the many casualties suffered by 25 Brigade during the course of this operation was Alfred Halford of 2nd Rifle Brigade who was killed on 1st August, before the battalion was relieved.