Monday 2 October 2017

Sixty Fourth Day of the Third Battle of Ypres



Tuesday 2nd October 1917

The outlook here has been relatively quiet today, with no attacks, just the usual registering of guns, sniping and random barrages from trench mortars and the like. It has been the first day with rain in about two weeks though it has been remarkably hot - 76 degrees!(1)

I am not sure of the temperature in Palestine but we have heard news from the 1st/5th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment, near Gaza. Early yesterday Second Lieutenant Pinchin took out a patrol of four men and did a ground reconnaissance of the ground between Hereford Ridge and Umbrella Hill. Then Second Lieutenant K M Watt went out with three men to select sniping posts for day use but the patrol failed to return. Second Lieutenant R E Otter took out a patrol of fourteen other ranks for the purpose of gaining any information possible about Second Lieutenant  Watt but no traces of the patrol were found(2).

Sources: X550/6/8

(1) about 24.5°C
(2) Second Lieutenant Watt was evidently killed, his body being recovered later as he is buried in Gaza War Cemetery. One of the members of his patrol was probably Private Edward W Jordan who was killed on 1st October and is commemorated on the Jerusalem Memorial, having no known grave. This suggests that the other two men from the patrol were captured. 

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