What would later be designated The Third Battle of Ypres, opened on 31st July 1917 and over the next fourteen weeks, eight separate battles were fought.  Not that that meant very much to the men entrusted with securing the German-held heights that had dominated the Ypres salient for more than two years.  For them it was a case of going where they were ordered, advancing over a pock-marked land of sucking, poisonous mud and surviving, latterly at least, in a front line comprised not of neatly dug trenches but water-filled shell-holes.  The village of Passchendaele was where the battle finally ground to a halt on November 10th and it is the name Passchendaele, above all others, that has come to represent the full horror of the First World War.

 

Chailey men would play their part over the coming weeks and Nurse Oliver’s pages would have added to them, the signatures and simple words of men who had survived the terrible battles that were raging.  Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s plan was not simply to remove the Germans from Passchendaele Ridge but to effect a strategic breakthrough.  Assisted by an amphibious landing and assault along the coast, he aimed to push the Germans out of Belgium, removing at a stroke the U-boat menace from the Channel ports.

 

It had all begun well enough.  The capture of Messines Ridge to the south, in June 1917 had established a new line by the time the battle ended on the 14th, but not before General Plumer’s Second Army had sustained nearly 25,000 casualties.  Of the Germans’ 23,000 casualties, 10,000 of these were missing, the majority blown to smithereens by 19 massive mines, each averaging around 48,000 lbs or 21 tons of ammonal explosive, which had blown the ridge apart in the prelude to the assault by Allied troops.

 

Attention now switched to the north and Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army which was to spearhead the offensive out of Ypres.  A massive artillery bombardment was unleashed by the 5th Army gunners on 16th July, and by the time the attack was launched on the 31st, over four million shells had been fired by the 2,299 British guns (the equivalent of one gun to every five yards of  attack frontage) facing the German lines.

 

The bombardment was only two days old however when 19 year old Second Lieutenant Richard Deane of the Royal Field Artillery became the first Chailey casualty when he was accidentally killed.  Lancashire born, educated at Marlborough College but living in Sussex, his grieving parents would learn that he had been found dead in hs dug-out with a single bullet wound to the head.  Suicide was hinted at but never proven.

 

Sergeant H Hunter of The Coldstream Guards and Chailey man, Private Frederick Woodhams of the 13th Royal Sussex were wounded in the battle itself.  Hunter’s entry in Nurse Oliver’s album adopted a moral tone.

 

It is unclear when he was actually wounded but the Guards Division had been in action from the very start, attacking with the French on their left at 3:50am and securing all their objectives bar one by 10:00am.

 

The 13th Royal Sussex formed part of the 116th Brigade of the 39th Division and that division too had had spectacular success on the first day, sweeping through enemy held positions, capturing St Julien and crossing the River Steenbeek.   Again, it is unclear now, when it was that Private Woodhams was actually wounded.  Perhaps it was when his Brigade was attempting to secure their second and third line objectives and the fighting had  deteriorated into heavy small scale actions around such well known landmarks as Mousetrap Farm.  Nineteen year old 2nd Lieutenant Denis Hewitt, in the same brigade with the 14th Hampshires had won a posthumous VC in that action but for Woodhams, who had been overseas for under two months, there was no such award, just a nice Blighty wound to send him back to Chailey.

 

Private Joseph French was killed in action a couple of days later but not in the fighting around Ypres.  He was in his mid thirties when he had been posted as part of a draft to the 1st Essex Regiment which was fighting on Gallipoli.  The battalion had been there since April and would remain until January 1916 but whether it was sickness or a wound which had brought him to Hickwells may never be known and it certainly isn’t clear from the brief entry he left in Nurse Oliver’s album of an Essex Regiment cap badge and the address of the 3rd battalion at Harwich.   In due course he would be posted again, this time to the 9th Essex, a New Army battalion forming part of the 12th (Eastern) Division, and it was whilst serving with the 9th Essex that he had been killed when the Germans had attacked positions that the Division was holding around Monchy Le Preux near Arras on the 2nd of August.  In actual fact the brunt of the attack had not fallen on the 9th Essex at all; but Joseph, a Londoner from the heart of the City in Bishopsgate, was one of four 9th Essex men who were killed or died of wounds the following day.

 

If the early successes of some of the divisions at Ypres gave the attacking troops heart that the new offensive would be short lived, they were soon to be disabused of their optimism. Although casualties for the fifth and second armies amounted to only around 9,000 officers and men for the four days of fighting up to the 3rd August, it wasn’t just German shells that had fallen on the attacking troops.  On the afternoon of July 31st the heavens had opened with a torrential downpour and had then continued fro the next three days.  The early stages of the attack had been made across largely dry ground but now the churned earth became a horrible glutinous porridge that would only become worse over the ensuing weeks and months of fighting.

 

In fact no further attack took place until 10th August with the capture of the village of Westhoek and there was more heavy rain. Nearly 5mm fell on Saturday the 11th and 18mm the following Tuesday.  More and more divisions were being brought in to keep the line occupied and to prepare for fresh assaults but when the next one came on August 16th at Langemarck, the allied attackers gained little advantage and by the end of the month the casualties had risen to over 68,000 officers and men with around 7,500 of these classified as ‘missing’.  The Official History which reported these figures many years later went on:

 

“The casualties alone do not give the full picture of the situation; for, apart from actual losses, the discomfort of the living conditions in the forward areas and the strain of fighting with indifferent success had overwrought and discouraged all ranks more than any other operation fought by British troops in the War, so that, although the health of the troops id not suffer, discontent was general… the memory of this August fighting, with its heavy showers, rain-filled craters and slippery mud, was so deeply impressed on the combatants… that it has remained the image and symbol of the whole battle…”

 

Sixty four years after the event, Lieutenant John Tucker, of the 2nd Devonshire Regiment (8th Division), confirmed that view.

 

“I was appointed acting captain because somebody had to command the company. I think he really wasn’t ill, I think he was scared stiff and frightened and went sick.  It was very difficult to tell where you were because there were half a dozen of you in one shell hole and two or three in another and so on.  Your company was spread out in these blooming shell holes and they were half full of water.  It was absolute slosh and mud.  Terrible.  I can’t remember the geography of the place very well but as far as I was concerned I was scared stiff each time and all I was thinking about at Passchendaele was trying to look after my men and keep them in some kind of formation and encourage them.  But it’s hopeless on these things.  You’ve got to give instructions, you’ve got to be careful that you tell them why you’re doing it and where you’re going and what you’re hoping to do.  And then it’s pandemonium and you just have to hope you can get where you can.”

 

Plans were made for a fresh assault.  The Second Army would maintain is pressure on the Gheluvelt plateau until its eastern edge was occupied, while the Fifth Army on the left would capture the Zonnebeke-Gravenstafel sector of the Ypres Ridge.  Artillery would be used to massive effect it was hoped: 1,295 guns in support of Plumer’s Second Army alone, more than double the allotment used for the same frontage for the offensive of July 31st and firing three and a half million rounds over seven days.  The enemy would be blasted out of their waterlogged burrows and fortified farm houses and bunkers.

 

Following up behind would come the infantry, not in massed waves as deployed in previous engagements but led by one or two lines of skirmishers at five paces intervals; an advanced guard allowing freedom of movement to groups in the rear which would concentrate their efforts on enemy strong points and fortified shell-holes.

 

The attack was launched on the 20th September and the next five days saw attack and counter attack by the German defenders.  Nevertheless, by the end of the operations on the 25th the Germans had been driven from the major part of their key position on the Gheluvelt plateau and had suffered heavy losses.  The Second and Fifth armies for their part had suffered losses of over 20,000 officers and men killed, wounded or missing but the attack was adjudged such a success that Haig, the Commander in Chief was encouraged to continue.  Reverting to the plan agreed with General Plumer on the 15th the main attack would be carried the I ANZAC corps and would continue the march across the Gheluvelt plateau to include Polygon Wood and the southern part of Zonnebeke village.

 

 

Charles Bristow’s family also received a package when their son was killed.  It contained an identity disc, wallet, photos, cards and eleven German shoulder straps.  That was all.  Serving with the 57^th Battalion AIF, Charles had been killed the day after Frederick Heasman on 27^th September 1917.  Nearly two years had passed since he had written to his mother from his hospital bed in Malta after being injured and buried by a shell blast and although he had been deemed fit enough to rejoin the colours, it had been a long and slow recovery.  In and out of various hospitals abroad and in England, his surviving medical history notes report in February 1917 that the patient has “Giddiness when walking – headaches – pain in eyes.”  There was also the physical evidence of his injury; “Extensive scar over aft paristal with apparent loss of bone.  Operation for removal of shrapnel.”  It wasn’t until March 1917 that he had proceeded overseas to France, rejoining his battalion the following month. 

 

Now though, as the latest Flanders’ offensive devoured men with an insatiable appetite, two families in Chailey mourned sons who had travelled thousands of miles to fight.  Charles Bristow had emigrated in 1913, settling in Greenhills, Western Australia.  In a village the size of Chailey it is inconceivable that he would not have known of the Heasman brothers.  The same age as Frederick and a year older than Gilbert, they might even have played together as boys.  Now, in death, Frederick and Charles were commemorated together in the Chailey Parish Magazine Roll of Honour and in time, both their names would be added to the War Memorial.

 

A second “C Bristow” would also be etched into the base of the memorial that would stand on Chailey Green and he too had been killed in action in September 1917.  On the 3rd September, Charles Bristow, wounded at Loos whilst serving with the 2nd Royal Sussex, returned to England, patched up and packed back off overseas, was killed whilst serving with the 9th Royal Sussex.  Born in Chailey but married and living at Westcliffe on Sea when war was declared he had been fighting abroad since 1914.  Now, on the eve of the third anniversary of the war, his luck had run out.

 

The two Australian divisions which had spearheaded the attack, had sustained over 5,000 casualties on September 26th and other divisions had also lost heavily. 

 

The 59th (2nd North Midland) Division had been formed from second line Territorials in early 1915 and after the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916 it had been sent to Ireland en masse to restore order there.  Now though, it too was in action across a two thousand yard sector, advancing under an effective barrage.  Sergeant Wilf Wortley of the 2/5th Leicestershire Regiment was there.

 

“We got transferred from the Somme which was the hardest part really and got sent up to Passchendaele.  We marched half the way and the other half we rode in lorries.  When they got to the half way mark, them that had rode the first half of it had to march instead.

 

“At Passchendaele Ridge we were subjected to box barrage and creeping barrage.  With the box barrage you’d start on the outside of an area and gradually work your way inwards until the area was covered. You saturate it.  The creeping barrage was used when you were attacking and kept just ahead of the troops and as near to the enemy as possible.  As the gunfire lifted and came onto the enemy so you’d come with it.  But you also lost a lot of men from your own shellfire, either too previous or too late.”

 

The Official History, commenting on the progress of the 59th Division states:

 

“The care and time spent in the preliminary training was well repaid; for the enemy strong points were overcome at once, and the final objective was reached behind the barrage but with few casualties.”

 

Nevertheless, the division still lost over 1,000 men killed, wounded or missing on the first day and Sapper Arthur Bee of 470th Field Company, Royal Engineers and Private A G Whipp of the 2/7th Nottinghamshire and Derby Regiment (The Sherwood Foresters) were two of them.  Both would later swap tales of the advance while they were recuperating at Beechlands, and the relief at having escaped the carnage of the Flanders battlefield is evident in the entries they left in Nurse Oliver’s album.

 

Both men would recover from their wounds and survive the war, being discharged from the army in March 1919.

 

Casualties for the British and Australian divisions involved in the 26th September action amounted to over 15,000 men and whilst many of those who were wounded were able to make their way back to casualty clearing stations unaided, there were others who were entirely at the mercy of their comrades and the battalion stretcher bearers. 

 

Rifleman Frederick Percy Leech was a stretcher bearer with the 21st Kings Royal Corps (41st Division) and he had been kept busy when his division had been involved in the battle of Menin Road Ridge between the 20th and 25th September.  

 

“We’d follow the troops over and as soon as they shout out “stretcher bearer”, off you’d go, bind them up best you could, get them on the stretcher and get them down.  Then you’d come back again.  It was all we did, pick them up and put them on the stretcher.  I tell you, the puttees came in so handy [to tie them on to the stretcher] because they wouldn’t keep still and they fetched you over clean as a whistle. Well if you hurt yourself you were beat weren’t you?

 

“And as soon as you got down there and told the doctor where they were wounded, off you went again.  Often you couldn’t get in to tell him so you just left them outside on the round and went back again.  As soon as you got back again you’d have another one, pick him off the ground and take him back again and that’s all you did until you came out of the line.

 

“But the conditions were terrible. Shell holes and mud, dead horses and dead mules and stink.  And we were covered in mud.  I always wonder however we got out of it. …”

 

Chailey also lost another of its sons in the action around Polygon Wood.  Gunner John C Miller of  210th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, died of wounds on September 29th.  The Chailey Parish Magazine had noted him serving since July 1916 and then there were six months from January 1918 when it had simply listed him as ‘missing’.  Then in July it had added his name to the ever growing Roll of Honour.