Current Information:

Age-37

12, Leinster Avenue, East Sheen

Belgian Battery Corner 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.

On 5th September, 1917, the 8th Border battalion of 75 Brigade, 25th Division moved from bivouacs at Chateau Segard near Dickebusch and took over trenches in front of Hooge. At 4am on 9th September the enemy put down a very heavy artillery barrage on these positions before attacking a Royal West Kent battalion to gthe right of 8th Border and capturing one of their posts in Glencorse Wood. This was recaptured in a counter attack but not before Harold Langworth had been killed by shell fire.