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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 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 4 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 5^th August, 1917, 20^th Division relieved 38th Division just to the south of the  Ypres-Staden railway. 59 Brigade took the front line some 200-400 yards short of the Steenbeek, a small stream, that ran parallel to their front. The 11^th King’s Royal Rifle Corps battalion was relieved from these positions on 11^th August and moved back to the Canal Bank but during the night of 14/15^th August, a company from the battalion set out to cross the Steenbeek and join up with a battalion from the Rifle Brigade at Au Bon Gite. They set off around midnight but in the pitch black darkness they were unable to reach the starting line and the operation was cancelled. Ernest Webb was killed on 14^th August but there are no further details concerning his death.