ashdown

ASHDOWN, THOMAS WYKES.

This page is to Commemorate Thomas Wykes Ashdown, who I have been researching. He does not come from Dover.

Died of Wounds: Passchendaele.

ASHDOWNE, THOMAS WYKES. 427646. Private. Canadian Infantry (Central Ontario Regiment) 3rd Bn. Died of wounds: Flanders. 06/11/1917. Age 25. Son of I. Wykes Ashdowne and Sarah Ann Ashdowne, of 38, Garden Suburb, Weston Favell, Northants. England. Born at Rushden, Northhamptonshire. England. Cemetery: Poelcapelle British Cemetery. Ref: XX. E. 18.

Thomas`s British War and Victory Medals.

Thomas Wykes Ashdowne. Born: Rushden, Northamptonshire, England July 14, 1892. Enlisted: September 20, 1915 at Camp Hughes Manitoba, 46th Battalion CEF. Age. 23 years, 2 months. NoK: Mrs. S. Wykes Ashdowne. Address of NoK: Little Houghton, Northants, Eng. Trade: Farmer.Complexion: Ruddy. Eyes: Grey 20/20. Hair: Brown. Height, 5ft. 6in. Religion: C of E.

Passchendaele cost over half a million lives over its 3 months. The Germans lost about 250,000 lives and the British 300,000 of whom 36,500 were Australian. 90,000 British or Australian bodies were never identified, 42,000 were never recovered; these had been blown to bits or had drowned in the dreadful morass.
Many of the drowned were exhausted or wounded men who had slipped or fallen off the duckboards and were unable to escape the filthy, foul-smelling glutinous mud, sinking deeper to their deaths as they struggled. The name of Passchendaele has been synonymous with all that is loathsome in war, it symbolises the futility and stupidity of war. Siegfried Sassoon wrote:

I died in Hell
(they called it Passchendaele) my wound was slight
and I was hobbling back; and then a shell
burst slick upon the duckboards; so I fell
into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.

Passchendaele 1917 was one of the biggest battles of the Great War. In 100 days of heavy fighting 245,000 British, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and South Africans were put out of action for a progress of only five miles.
In Passchendaele, the back walls of Tyne Cot Cemetery contain the names of 35,000 missing from 16 August 1917 onwards. The Menin Gate commemorates another 55,000 soldiers missing before that date. About half of them have a grave with the inscription 'A Soldier of the Great War'. Others are still buried somewhere in Flanders Fields.....

Witness accounts
One of those in the German trenches at Passchendaele was Gerhard Gurtler, a theology student from Breslau. He was killed on 14 August. Four days earlier, he wrote home:
August 10, 1917 Nothing is so trying as a continuous, terrific barrage such as we experienced in this battle, especially the intense English fire during my second night at the front.... Darkness alternates with light as bright as day. The earth trembles and shakes like a jelly.... And those men who are still in the front line hear nothing but the drum-fire, the groaning of wounded comrades, the screaming of fallen horses, the wild beating of their own hearts, hour after hour, night after night. Even during the short respite granted them their exhausted brains are haunted in the weird stillness by recollections of unlimited suffering. They have no way of escape, nothing is left them but ghastly memories and resigned anticipation.... 'Haven't you got a bullet for me, Comrades?' cried a Corporal who had one leg torn off and one arm shattered by a shell - and we could do nothing for him.... The battle-field is really nothing but one vast cemetery.
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It was no better on the other side of the line. For the British, Passchendaele amounted to the horror of warfare in a morass, in a surreal world where men and animals simply vanished in pools of mud. Just getting to the front was a horrendous experience: horses and men slipped off roads and disappeared before they could be rescued. The dead were put to use as stepping stones, only to slip out of sight. This is the landscape of Passchendaele on 27 August, as noted in the diary of one young British officer, Edward Campion Vaughan:
From the darkness on all sides came the groans and wails of wounded men; faint, long, sobbing moans of agony, and despairing shrieks. It was too horribly obvious that dozens of men with serious wounds must have crawled for safety into new shell-holes, and now the water was rising about them and, powerless to move, they were slowly drowning. Horrible visions came to me with those cries - of Woods and Kent, Edge and Taylor, lying maimed out there trusting that their pals would find them, and now dying terribly, alone amongst the dead in the inky darkness. And we could do nothing to help them; Dunham was crying quietly beside me, and all the men were affected by the piteous cries...