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Age-27

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.

The Battle of Poelcapelle – 9th October, 1917

During late September and early October, 1917, the British had had three successes at Ypres namely the Battles of Menin Road Ridge, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde By using ‘bite and hold’ tactics, and having limited objectives, backed by a well directed artillery bombardment, they had pushed the line forward on all three occasions and were now hoping to repeat that success on 9th October. But this time things did not go as planned. The dry weather that had assisted the earlier operations came to an abrupt halt on 7th October when once again the skies opened and 25mm of rain fell in two days. The ground turned to mud and this affected all the preparations but most importantly, those of the artillery. Moving the guns into position was extremely difficult and once there it proved almost impossible to provide them with the stable platforms needed for accuracy and the shells that were fired often disappeared into the mud without exploding. The attack failed. Some gains were initially made but nearly all of these were subsequently lost when the Germans launched a series of counter attacks.

On 9th October, 1917, 7th Division, which had only recently arrived at Ypres, attacked from a position east of Polygon Wood. 2nd Warwickshire and 2nd Honourable Artillery Company (an infantry unit despite its name), both of 22 Brigade, went over the top at 5.20am and after some heavy fighting 2nd Honourable Artillery Company managed to capture the village of Reutel and then went on to clear some of the cemetery to the east of the village. This limited success on Second Army front, where there was little else to cheer about, came at a price. 2nd Honourable Artillery Company sustained many casualties, one of them being Percy Blissett.