SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: The Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 lasted five months and claimed 300,000 allied casualties. DAVID MORGAN recounts the tragic story of one of them, Captain Henry Willders-Lewis, from Croydon, who died on the first day of the battle, on his 21st birthday
The Roll of Honour which hangs on the wall in Croydon Minster contains the names of men from the parish who died in the Great War.
Killed in battle: Henry Willders-Lewis
One of those casualties was a young man who was killed on his 21st birthday, Henry Willders-Lewis.
His mother, Nora Willders-Lewis, had already been widowed. She lived at Penshurst, 57 Waddon Park Avenue, just up the road from the church. Having lost her husband Henry, a partner in the auctioneer firm of Hince and Lewis based at Cannon Street, she now had to face life without Henry, her only child.
Henry Willders-Lewis was just a couple of years out of College House School, later known as Croydon High School for Boys.
The headmaster for many years was Robert Hawes. He remembered Willders-Lewis as a “good all-rounder” and “a brilliant young cricketer and footballer”.
After school, Henry Willders-Lewis attended university in London. He completed his degree in 1914 and, after Britain declared war on Germany in the first week of August that year, he signed up for the the Universities and Public School Battalion, the 16th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, raised by Lieutenant-Colonel J J Mackay.
First, they attended a training camp at Kempton Park racecourse, before moving to Warlingham in December. The following summer, they were moved to the Clipstone Camp in Nottinghamshire, before their final training programme which was based at Perham Down in Wiltshire. Willders-Lewis and his unit sailed for France on November 17, 1915, disembarking at Boulogne.
King’s commission: cadet Willders-Lewis was made an officer in September 1916
In September 1916, Willders-Lewis was commissioned and was transferred as a second lieutenant to the 10th Royal West Surrey Regiment (The Queens).
Promotions followed, with him being made captain in 1917, in command of A Company.
The surviving regimental diary outlined what Captain Willders-Lewis and the soldiers under his command endured through that summer.
At the beginning of July, they were in billets and tents in the training area round Meteren in eastern France, close to the Belgian border. The regiment carried on with general training together with some specific practice for an attack on enemy positions. The unit was reinforced in the middle of the month by more than 150 new recruits.
B and C Companies were ordered up to Ridge Wood on July 17 to assist the 32nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers in supplying working parties. The next day, the remaining companies moved to Westoutre, a few miles southwest of Ypres.
From July 19 to 24, these soldiers – including Willders-Lewis’s company – were training for an attack. The regimental diary recorded that during this period of training, seven men of other ranks (not officers) were killed and six were wounded.
West Surreys: the regimental diary provides a candid, and stark, version of events on that first day of battle
On July 25, all four companies in the regiment moved to De Zon Camp, where final preparations for an attack were made.
On July 30, the battalion was moved to Voormezeele, just outside Ypres, to their assembly positions, before being moved to the front line the following day as part of the 123rd Infantry Brigade. They were accommodated in the Bluff Tunnels.
These tunnels were dug in an area to the east of the Ypres-Comines Canal. There were used for a whole range of purposes, including sleeping quarters and the storage of equipment. There were many listening and fighting tunnels at different depths, that probed deep under the no man’s land between the trenches of either side.
For Captain Willders-Lewis, this would be the first test of his leadership in battle. He would have read and re-read the orders, so he will have known all the details. He had to do this, because he had not been able to look over the area of attack with field glasses.
The battalion was tasked with capturing and holding an area of ground on the spur of a hill signified as “Green Line”. All companies were to begin by advancing to the “Red Line”.
It was the middle of summer, so it took an early start for action at dawn. At 3.10am, B and C companies were to move off and mop up any enemy positions between the Red Line and the Blue Line. At 4.30am, Willders-Lewis’s A company and D company were to pass through the area gained by B and C companies, before going forward to capture the spur of the hill.
Things went badly from the beginning.
Only one guide was provided for the entire battalion, despite no officers having previously reconnoitred the ground over which they were to fight. In the difficult and even desperate terrain, even the guide got lost.
This meant that the leading company did not arrive at the Red Line until 4.30am, thus making the timings of the operation impossible to achieve.
And the Germans were ready and waiting for the attack. Machine guns opened fire, while the rear of the British column was shelled heavily by artillery. A company was badly affected. Willders-Lewis was wounded and then killed. Men fell all around him and the company became disorganised. Only 50 men reached Battle Wood, their intended goal, under Lieutenant Parkes.
The regimental diary sums up the debacle in these words:
“The attack on Green Line which should have been carried out by 123rd Inf Bde, and was afterwards allotted to 124th Inf Bde , was not a real success owing to the fact that one guide was provided and he lost his way and to three machine guns which had apparently been overlooked by the Intelligence Corps and the heavy artillery.”
It was estimated that on July 31, the German artillery batteries fired off the equivalent of 27 ammunition trains-worth of shells, almost four times what was considered a heavy day’s firing during the Battle of the Somme the year before.
Some parts of the British attack fared worse than the Royal West Surreys. On the edge of another part of the Bluff Tunnels, artillery fire together with machine gun bursts prevented the troops from getting out from their cover because wounded men fell back clogging the exits, only allowing one or two soldiers to push past at a time.
Grave reports: the form which confirmed the identity of Willders-Lewis for the war cemetery. Notice how others whose bodies were recovered from the battle are listed as ‘Unknown’
The failed attack cost the life of one of the regiment’s most capable officers when Willders-Lewis fell. His commanding officer described him as “absolutely fearless and a splendid example of bravery and coolness”.
After he heard the news of Willders-Lewis’ death, his former headteacher said, “He was one of the most promising of our Old Boys. He was a member of our Old Boys’ cricket and football teams and took an active part in the Croydon High School Old Boys’ Association, recently subscribing five guineas to the Old Boys’ Memorial Scheme.
“His death in action brings our Old Boys’ losses in this war to 27 to date.”
Willders-Lewis was buried in a Commonwealth War Grave at the Perth Cemetery, China Wall, near Ypres. This cemetery, containing 2,798 war graves, was so named because of the large number of 2nd Scottish Rifles soldiers buried there. Their regiment was raised in Perth.
The China Wall referred to the name of the communication trench which ran nearby, the Great Wall of China.
A corner of France that is forever England: Willders-Lewis’ gravestone in the war cemetery
It was in this cemetery that 27 identified bodies of soldiers from the Royal West Surreys were laid to rest.
The day Willders-Lewis was killed, July 31, 1917, was the first of the Third Battle of Ypres.
Subsequent weeks of rain, with the countryside already pitted with shell holes from the constant artillery barrages, created the worst conditions imaginable, in which troops were locked in a conflict. The battle would finally end on November 10, when British and Canadian forces finally captured one of their objectives, the ruined village of Passcehndaele, a name which has come to symbolise the slaughter in the mud that took place during World War I.
The five-month offensive advanced the Allied line by just five miles, while the British and allies suffered losses of around 300,000 casualties. It was one of the costliest battles of the war.
Willders-Lewis was just one on that interminable list of the dead which appeared in the newspapers. His mother did her very best to keep his name alive, corresponding with the Imperial War Museum and providing them with his photo and other details which could then be shared.
How would that cricketer, a member of Surrey County Cricket Club, have fared if he had been spared?
Rest in Peace, Captain.
David Morgan, pictured right during one of his guided tours, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Wandle Park postcard begins trace of a Pitlake family’s history
- The Town Hall hero of the Great War who ran Croydon’s baths
- Cranmer and Croydon’s part in the Book of Common Prayer
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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Great research, David, and beautifully told. The name Ypres has special meaning for me as my father, Charles Gillman, fought in what was known as the Fifth Battle of Ypres, having previously fought against the Turks in Palestine. My father was in the Civil Service Rifles and, fortunately for me, the fifth battle was far less intense than the third, as it took place in October 1918, when the Allies were close to victory.
I looked up Willders-Lewis in the five Croydon street directories I have, and found Mrs Hillders-Lewis at 57 Waddon Park Avenue in the 1907, 1932, 1934 and 1939 directories. (recorded as Mrs H C Hillders-Lewis in 1939, which were probably her late husband Henry’s initials, who seems to have died before Henry (junior) was 11 (?). Their son and subject of the article/research, (another) Henry must have been born in 1896, if he died in 1917 on his 21st birthday. In my earliest directory, from 1892, there are no Willders-Lewis’s at all in Croydon and Waddon Park Ave hadn’t been built then.
One of my grandfathers (born in 1895) fought for the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in WWI and was invalided out of the war at Passchendaele in 1917. He survived the war and worked in Birmingham and London, dying soon after retirement in 1961.