Lest We Forget.
I heard a story on the Tv yesterday about a quartermaster who left his regiment the day before the battle began to bring up supplies from the rear. He returned on the evening of the first day and was unable to locate his men. Eventually, he found his way to a command post and asked an officer where his unit was to be found. The reply he received was ‘It no longer exists’. Almost the entire unit had been killed on the first morning of the battle.
For the last three years or so, I have been post occasional extracts from my WW1 concise history book Lest We Forget, published by Endeavour Press of London.
July 31st marks the centennial of yet another of the landmark actions of the First World War, namely the dreadful Third Battle of Passchendaele.
Passchendaele is another of one of the epic battles that shook the western front between the British and Allied soldiers against the Germans. It all took place on the low ridges to the south and east of Ypres, in the Belgian region of Flanders between July and November 1917.
British High Command hoped to take the vital railway junctions at Rosslare, only 5 miles away but it was an objective that would go unmet until 1918. Though the Battle of Passchendaele is a distinct event in itself, it was just part of the wider and endless conflict in…
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