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Age-25

Born-Nunhead

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.

29th Division were in reserve at the start of Third Ypres on 31st July, 1917 and the 2nd Royal Fusiliers battalion of 86 Brigade were undergoing training in the Proven area. On 6th August they moved into support positions near Boesinghe and on the following day, 7th August, they took over the front line trenches there in the face of hostile shelling. They were relieved from these positions on 9th August and moved back to Dublin Camp for a period of rest and training. A number of men from the battalion, including Stanley Dawson, have their deaths recorded on 11th August when they were in this camp and when there were no casualties according to the battalion diary. The probable explanation for this is that these deaths occurred between 7th and 9th August but were not officially recorded until they were away from the front line and that an incorrect date was entered in error.