Current Information:

Age-36

49, Halton Road, Canonbury

Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belgium

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.

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.

On 31st July, 30th Division attacked from a position due east of Ypres, south of the Menin road and with the difficult task of advancing across the Gheluvelt plateau. 90 Brigade attacked with the 16th Manchester and 18th Manchester battalions who pushed into Sanctuary Wood and reached the Blue Line at which stage, 17th Manchester passed through to continue the attack. 16th Manchester followed behind but were held up by machine-gun fire from Stirling Castle and consolidated just short of the second objective. On the left the 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers lost direction in Sanctuary Wood and attacked Chateau Wood, thinking it to be Glencourse Wood.  A very heavy enemy artillery bombardment of Sanctuary and Chateau Woods began 5am which caused a complete breakdown in communications until mid morning and added further  to the brigade’s casualty list. Harry Wearing of 18th Manchester died from wounds on 31st July and he might have been wounded on an earlier date..