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Age-27

12, Lanhill Road, Maida Hill

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, 1917, 2/8th London of 174 Brigade found themselves in the front line trenches in the Alberta sector, north of St Julien where they remained until relieved during the night of 8/9th September when they moved back into support positions on the Canal Bank. From here on 9th September, No.14 platoon of D Company undertook a raid on enemy posts opposite. Zero hour was set for 9.30pm but as they made their way forward to a hedge from where the raid would be launched they were spotted and at  9.20pm the enemy sent up flares and opened fire. The raiding party of 32 immediately attacked but were held up 30 yards short of their objective by wire entanglements and ever increasing machine-gun fire and were forced back to their starting positions. They suffered 14 casualties during the operation, including Harold Goodwin who was killed.