Current Information:

Born-Wimbledon

Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belgium

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.

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.

Arthur Cox died from wounds on 21st August, 1917 while serving with 2/1st London Field Ambulance. This was part of 56th Division which saw action during Third Ypres.