Current Information:

Age-29

Childs Hill

Abbeville Communal Cemetery, France

At the outbreak of war in 1914 there were two machine guns to each battalion which was far from adequate and substantially fewer than the German Army. The need for more of these weapons and the specialised training they required led to the establishment of the Machine Gun Corps in the autumn of 1915 with each infantry brigade being furnished with their own machine gun company, usually taking the same number as the brigade. These companies were equipped with the new Vickers machine gun whilst the individual infantry battalions were supplied with the lighter, hand-held Lewis guns. Machine Gun Battalions were formed in the Divisions in the early months of 1918, by bringing together the four MGC Companies into a single command structure with the Battalions taking the number of their Division.

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 Biggs died from wounds on 12th September, 1917, after having been sent to a base hospital at Abbeville, but as yet there is no information as to when and where he was wounded. The 53rd Company of the Machine Gun Corps were part of 53 Brigade, 18th Division, which saw actioin during Third Ypres