Current Information:

Age-23

Somerton, Sheen Lane, East Sheen

43, Broseley Grove, Sydenham

Aeroplane Cemetery, Ypres

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.

The Special Companies of the Royal Engineers were an invention of the First World War and were established to develop and use the new weapon of gas. They came into operation in September, 1915, and were a response to the use of gas by the Germans at Ypres in April of that year. As the war continued, the use of gas by both sides grew enormously and the Special Companies were grouped together into Special Battalions and finally a Special Brigade was established to oversee the whole operation. At first the principle means of delivering gas was from cylinders but as the war progressed, gas shells, fired from 4 inch mortars became more common. However at the time of the Battle of the Somme it was gas from cylinders that was used by the British Army and was a mixture of chlorine and phosgene called ‘White Star’. The Special Companies also took charge of flame throwers when they arrived in France in June 1916.

Marshall Featherstone was killed on 2nd September, 1917, while serving with the 2nd Special Company of the Royal Engineers at Ypres. As yet there is no further information concerning his death.