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Age-24

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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 7th August, 29th Division relieved the Guards Division astride the Ypres-Staden railway, south-west of Langemarck and 16th Middlesex of 86 Brigade moved up to Saules Farm, behind the front line and on 9th August into the front line itself, west of the Steenbeck stream with Battalion HQ at Fourche Farm. By now the rain and mud had turned the battlefield into a quagmire making progress very slow and the enemy was doing all he could with his artillery and counter attacks by the infantry to dislodge and disrupt the British. Despite this on the night of 10th/11th August, three platoons of 16th Middlesex and three platoons of 1st Lancashire Fusiliers established outposts on the eastern side of the Steenbeck and then at 4.20am, protected by a pocket barrage, they attacked Passerelle Farm and after two attempts the farm was captured along with two machine-guns and a howitzer. This small victory did not come without a cost and 16th Middlesex suffered a number of casualties, one of whom was Stephen Martin.