Current Information:

Born-London

Wieltje Farm 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.

Albert Hillyer was killed on 6th August, 1917 while serving with the 15th Royal Irish Rifles battalion. This was part of 107 Brigade, 36th Division, that  had been in reserve when Third Ypres began on 31st July and then, at the beginning of August, had moved forward to take over the old front line in the Wieltje area, where they came under considerable shell fire.