Free Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War by Bill Lamin Page A

true. I later found out that Harry did not have any leave in the summer
of 1917.
    Harry’s thirtieth-birthday card from Connie and Willie, August 1917.
    In the entire ninety-six days from 10 June to 15 September, the 9th Battalion, the York and Lancaster Regiment spent sixty-seven days ‘housekeeping’ and training, fourteen days
moving – either marching or by lorry, four days allocated as rest days, and only ten days in the line or in direct support. In addition, on several nights some men of the battalion, including
Harry, were allocated to working parties and sent forward to the front line, and sometimes into no man’s land, to improve the defences or to patrol. These were unpleasant and dangerous jobs,
as Harry mentions in his letter to Kate of 14 July.
    We cannot learn too much from the two letters written in this period. Harry spent a few days in the line. He spent some time in reserve and some far behind the lines. He was sent forward to work
on the trenches. These are bald facts – his letters, being so infrequent, are not helpful in fleshing out his story. Yet, reading the letters in conjunction with the war diary entries, it has
proved possible to get some sort of picture of his experiences.
    Meanwhile, as Harry and his battalion were tramping around Western Flanders, the war continued. Specifically, in the Ypres sector it continued with a battle that ranks with the Somme as a byword
for the horrors of the fighting on the Western Front: Passchendaele...
    Throughout August and September 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres, usually referred to as Passchendaele, was in full flow. The main offensives in August took place to the east and north-east of
the city of Ypres. The focus of the attack – or rather, series of attacks – was along a line that can be traced running eastwards through the modern locations of Pilkem, Langemark,
Poelkappelle and Passendale. For the time being, however, Harry’s battalion was spared. During this period, the 9th York and Lancasters were with the rest of Second Army in the sector to the
south of the city, and therefore not engaged in the major offensives.
    July had been a fine month. The good weather meant that preparations for the next phase, the next assault in Haig’s plan, were able to continue. On the 16th an intense bombardment of the
enemy lines to the north of Ypres started up. The shelling focused on a small rise known as Pilckem (Pilkem) Ridge, about three miles (5km) north of Ypres. In the next two weeks, the British guns
fired over 4 million shells. (To get an idea of the scale of the bombardment, that works out at an almost unimaginable average of more than three shells every second for fourteen days and
nights.)
    The aim, of course, was to destroy the German defences in preparation for the assault. Yet once again the deep, well-prepared, strongly built and well-stocked dugouts effectively protected most
of the defenders. Worse for the attackers, the Germans had developed the use of mutually supporting, machine-gun equipped pillboxes. The bombardment proved unable to destroy them, any more than it
could destroy barbed-wire entanglements.
    All was set for the offensive to begin on 31 July, and at 3.50 that morning the attack on Pilckem Ridge duly got under way. The weather had changed dramatically since Messines, however. From the
start, fortune certainly did not favour the Allied attackers. Dawn on the 31st brought torrential rain that continued without respite for the next four days. The rain was to play a major role in
the campaign, for what lay ahead, although no one yet knew it, was the wettest August-to-November period in that part of Flanders on record. The delay after Messines, from two weeks to seven, was
to prove critical.
    A significant by-product of the intense shelling and the rain – indeed, a significant factor in the battle – was the mud. (When I wrote earlier that the battle was in ‘full
flow’, I used the wrong words. This