Current Information:

Age-19

50, Albert Embankment, Vauxhall

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 10-11th October, 1917, 14th Division relieved 5th Division between the Menin road and Polygon Wood. In anticipation of this 8th King’s Royal Rifle Corps of 41 Brigade, moved on 10th October to Bedford House and that evening took over the line 600 yards east of Inverness Copse near Polderhoek. On 11th October, the British artillery unleashed a concentrated barrage on the German position at 5am and then again at 5.10pm. On both occasions the enemy guns responded in kind and the poor infantry, stuck in their muddy shell holes, took the brunt of it. 8th King’s Royal Rifle Corps had eleven men killed and another fourteen wounded as a result of this concentrated shelling. One of those killed was Charles Winsford.