Current Information:

Born-Paddington

Bois Guillaume Communal Cemetery, France

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.

24th Division took part in the initial attack of Third Ypres on 31st July, 1917, attacking on the southern end of the salient. On 2nd August, the 3rd Rifle Brigade battalion of 17 Brigade were relieved and moved back to Micmac Camp. During the rest of August the battalion had two more tours of the front line one of which ran from 19th-23rd August. Henry Masters died from wounds on 23rd August after having been sent to a base hospital near Rouen but it is not known on what exact date he was wounded.