Current Information:

Age-38

3 Ampton Street, Grays Inn Road

Dozinghem 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 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.

20th Division had not been directly involved in the opening offensive of 3rd Ypres (The Battle of Pilckem Ridge)  which was fought from 31st July, until 2nd August when gains had been made but at a tremendous cost in casualties. Nevertheless the campaign in the salient continued and the British Army prepared for their second offensive to start two weeks later. Fresh divisions were brought into the line one of which was 20th Division which on 6th August, relieved 38th Division in the north west sector of the salient, facing the village of Langemarck. But before the main offensive began on 16th August, 10th Rifle Brigade and 11th Rifle Brigade, both of 59 Brigade, were given the task of improving their position by establishing a new line across the Steenbeek, a small stream that ran in front of them. Their attack, which was launched at 4am on 14th August behind a well directed artillery barrage on the eastern side of the Steenbeek, was met by fairly heavy machine-gun fire . Despite this the attackers pushed forward, bringing with them bridging equipment with which to get across the stream. In the event these proved to be too short and the men had to wade across the Steenbeek, the bottom of which was extremely muddy and reduced progress to a crawl. Many casualties were suffered while doing this especially on the left where the machine-gun fire from a German stronghold named Au Bon Gite was intense. All efforts to subdue this murderous fire failed but nevertheless the men from the two battalions managed to establish a new line some 250 yards east of the stream. This they consolidated and defended against a number of counter attacks that continued into the next day. The attack had succeeded in its objectives but there was a heavy price paid in casualties, one of whom was Louis Shilton of 10th Rifle Brigade who died from wounds on 21st August after the battalion had been relieved and had moved back to a camp at Proven.