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Voormezeele Enclosure3, 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 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 2nd August, 1917, after their involvement in the fighting on the first day of Third Ypres on 31st July at Wytschaete, the 4th Middlesex battalion of 63 Brigade, 37th Division, moved back to Dranoutre where they underwent a period of training. On 9th August they moved forward to reserve positions at Beaver Corner from where they provided working parties and then, on 16th August, they moved further forward into support positions. They remained here until 21st August, continuing to provide working parties for various tasks. Herbert Field was killed on 19th August but there is no indication in the battalion diary noir elsewhere as to the circumstances of his death.