Current Information:

Age-23

31, Hewitt Road, Harringay

Duhallow ADS 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.

58th Division arrived at Ypres during the last week of August, 1917 and on 3rd September, 2/9th London of 175 Brigade moved into dug outs on the Yser canal bank before moving into the front line in the northern part of the salient, in front of St Julien, two days later. According to records, including those of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission,  George Gunnell lost his life on 3rd September, a day on which, according to the battalion diary, 2/9th London were cleaning up their billets.