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Born-London

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.

After their involvement in the opening stages of Third Ypres, 38th Division were relieved from the line and moved to the rear areas for rest, reorganisation and training. On 18th August, the 11th South Wales Borderers battalion of 115 Brigade, returned to the front when they took up reserve positions on the Canal Bank at Ypres from where they provided working and carrying parties. On 23rd August they relieved the 13th Welsh in the front line and as they made their way forward in the evening they ran into a very heavy and intense enemy artillery bombardment and it is likely that it was this, that caused the death of Archie Brown and others.