Current Information:

Age-22

Enlisted-Kennington

Wimereux Communal Cemetery, France

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.

John Donovan died from wounds on 22nd August, 1917,after having been sent to a base hospital on the coast, but as yet there is no information as to when and where he was wounded. The 22nd London battalion was part of 142 Brigade, 47th Division, that had arrived in Ypres in the middle of the month but did not go into the front line there until 25th August.