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TNCP c3
From the sky we pick out the straightness of the canal and the competing, facing Front Lines. From the point of view of an Observation Plane, as it comes lower, we pick out – just, a partially smashed...
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TNCP c9
A couple of Tommies, no rank, stand on sentry duty at the entrance to a dugout. The sound of this boy calling for help upsets them. “Father!” “I can’t stand that racket.” “Who is it?” The soldier...
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George Wannop was killed the next time he went in
They Called it Passchendaele September 1916 Passchendale was a quagmire Not like trenches. There was no communication. And you could only walk about in the dark. (Ypres is at sea level. As the...
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Haig was a phoney
The officers were tripe, hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. I had no faith in them whatsoever. Absolutely hopeless. I’ve learnt about Haig, that he got himself into Oxford University by the back door, went...
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International Corner – Lice & Rats – November 1917
Our rest spot was International Corner, some seven or eight miles back from Passchendeale. I played football once at right-back against the trench mortar battery. It was during the winter and the...
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You’ve got a Blighty One – October 1917
We had another casualty, a Birmingham lad who was in charge of that gun. The engineers would rig up a bit of a dug out on a dry spot and make a bit of shelter with corrugated sheeting. They’d been...
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The only thing that lived out there were rats and they had a feast of it –...
Mother! Mother! On the way in I came across these guardsmen, eight or nine, lying in a shell-hole as though they were asleep. (They were Gough’s XIV Corps. Guards. From the 38 Division commanded by...
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Henry Gartendfeld & Dick Piper R.I.P OCT 1917
Gartenfeld’s head was split right down the middle as if he’d been hit with an axe. They’d dragged him out round the side. (Henry Godliph Gartenfeld died on the 22nd October 1917) Dick must have been...
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Passchendaele: unseen panoramas of the Third Battle of Ypres
Jack Wilson, a Machine Gunner, served in Third Ypres going in against the French line north east of Ypres up to Houthulst Forrest. These panoramas and maps allow me, with his memoir, to track his...
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Third Ypres and the Battle for Poelcapelle October 1917: A Machine Gunner’s...
Fig 1 Sketch of the movements of Corporal John Arthur Wilson, MCG, October 1917. My grandfather drew a version of this in biro when in his 97th year; his eye-sight was very poor. I redrew it as you...
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A Pilot shot down in No Man’s Land – November 1917
Fig. 1 A plane shot down on the edge of Houthulst Forest. (This action takes place north of Poelcappelle as the British approach Houthulst Forest. The attack began at 5.35am. It is Monday 22nd...
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In my grandfather’s footsteps
Egypt House (Far Right) was a three compartment German Pill Box. In late December 1917 my grandfather was a machine gunner here and on the edge of Houthulst Forest. I walked between Poperinge and...
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The pill-boxes had names
(The text below is a verbatim transcript from an interview conducted with John A Wilson MM in his 96th year in 1992. He was a machine gunner in 104th Brigade serving on the Somme and at Passchendaele....
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A Blighty One
(The action described here took place in later October 1917, possibly around 26th. Egypt House, Nobles Farm and Colombo House are the pill boxes Jack was in. The ‘beck’ is most likely the Broembeck....
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Two days to live, seven days to die
At the end of October 1917, 96 years ago to the day, my grandfather, then 21, and Jack Walsh the ‘carrier’ on a Vicker’s Machine Gun were sent in to relieve two fellow company machine gunners: Dick...
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