Current Information:

Born-Marylebone

Trois Arbres Cemetery, Steenwerck, France

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.

On 26th July, 1917, 13th Rifle Brigade of 111 Brigade, 37th Division, moved into the front line in the left sub sector of the brigade front on the forward slope of the Wytschaete-Messines Ridge, just to the south of Ypres with Battalion HQ at Torreken Farm. They spent three days in these positions before marching to camps at Lightning Farm and Beaver Hall near Kemmel Hill. On 1st August, in atrocious weather, they moved into the front line, east of Wytschaete where they remained until relieved on 7th August when they marched back to billets on Kemmel Hill. Thomas Sibley died from wounds on 8th August after having been wounded on the previous day.