First Name: | Charles | Last Name: | MORRISH | |
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Date of Death: | 27/08/1917 | Lived/Born In: | Maida Vale | |
Rank: | Rifleman | Unit: | London8 | |
Memorial Site: | ||||
Current Information:Age-37 58, Barnsdale Road, Maida Vale Lijssenthoek Military 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. The 8th London battalion of 140 Brigade, 47th Division were undergoing training in St Martin-au-Laert, near St Omer during the middle of August, 1917 but moved to Ypres on 24th August and then into the front line on Bellewarde Ridge two days later where they stayed until the end of the month. During these five days in the trenches they sustained over thirty casualties, mostly from shell fire, one of whom was Charles Morrish who died from wounds on 27th August. |
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