Current Information:

133, Ormside Street, Old Kent Road

Artillery Wood Cemetery, Boesinghe, 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.

On 5th August, 1917, 20th Division relieved 38th Division who, on 31st July, had attacked in the northern part of the battlefield, just to the south of the Ypres-Staden railway. On 7th August, 11th King’s Royal Rifle Corps of 59 Brigade, 20^th Division moved up to the Canal Bank (Yser canal) and that evening took over the Black line which ran just to the east of the village of Pilckem. For the next four days 11th King’s Royal Rifle Corps provided working and carrying parties for various duties while all the time coming under German shell fire and having to deal with the awful conditions imposed on the battleground by the weather. Their casualties mounted up and included Ernest Warner who was killed on 11th August.