Current Information:

Attached from the Army Service Corps

Born-Lambeth

Dozinghem 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 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.

Battle of Pilckem Ridge (31st July-2nd August)

This was the opening attack of Third Ypres and began at 3.50am on 31st July when British and French troops launched their offensive to break out of the Ypres salient. The day had mixed results. To the north the Pilckem Ridge was captured but there was less success further south along the Gheluvelt Ridge, where a combination of stiff German resistance and low cloud, which hindered observation, meant that only the first objectives were captured. Further attempts to push on were stopped in their tracks by specialist German counter attack divisions and resulted in a 70% casualty rate among the British troops. Then in the afternoon, the rain came and under the weight of shells falling on it, the battlefield soon became a quagmire. Over the next two days, suffering the most appalling conditions in the mud and the rain, the troops had to fight off numerous German counter attacks.

The Field Ambulances provided by the Royal Army Medical Corps were mobile medical units whose function was to provide stretcher bearers to collect the wounded and to give emergency aid before sending them back to Casualty Clearing Stations and then Base Hospitals. Working close to the front line they were often victims themselves of enemy fire, especially the stretcher bearers.

2/1st Highland Field Ambulance was part of 51st Division which, at 3.50am on 31st July, 1917, attacked in a north-easterly direction out of the salient towards Poelcappelle. They met strong resistance from a row of pillboxes and other enemy strong points but eventually reached the Steenbeek, a small steam running parallel to their  front. William Player died from wounds on 1st August.