Current Information:

Age-34

13, Arundel Road, Kingsland

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.

The Battle of Langemarck

This took place between 16th-18th August, 1917 and was the second general attack of 3rd Ypres. Although it did not rain during the two days of the battle itself there had been plenty of it in the preceding days and in many places the battlefield was a quagmire. On the left of the attack in the north-west of the Ypres salient there was considerable success,  especially for the French Army which attacked on the left of the British, but the attack on the Gheluvelt Plateau, due east of Ypres, met determined German resistance and the early gains were soon reversed.

The records show that Charles Day and three other members of the 2/11th London battalion of 175 Brigade, 58th (2/1st London) Division was killed in action on 16th August, 1917, the first day of the Battle of Langemarck, and that he is commemorated on the Menin Gate memorial to the missing in Ypres. However, there is a problem with this information. On this date 58th Division were in the Arras sector of the Western front and they did not move north to Ypres until the end of the month. So it is either a case of the wrong date or the wrong unit and the likelihood is that he was attached, temporarily or otherwise, to one of the battalions of the 56th (1st London) Division, who were in the thick of the fighting on that date. The battalion diary throws no light on the matter.