Current Information:

Born-Marylebone

Voormezeele Enclosures1&2, 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.

After having been involved in the opening phase of Third Ypres,  the 12th Royal Fusiliers battalion of 17 Brigade, 24th Division spent the next two weeks either in camps behind the line or in reserve and support positions. On19th August they moved into the trenches in the Mt. Sorrel sector of the Ypres salient with the Battalion HQ in the Canada Street tunnels. Joseph Warwick was killed here of 23rd August but the battalion diary provides no further information regarding his death.