davidjohnbolton: Tribute to Charles Bell

Second Battle of Ypres 1915

Last Friday I went with a friend of mine to vist the war museums around Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium. My own great-grandfather had been killed there in 1915. Our family never knew the details of what happened, as his body was never found. His name, Charles Bell, is on the Menin Gate memorial.

Here follows some of the photos we took that day. I also did a little bit of research and have been able to piece the story together, still ragged, but with more information than we ever had before.

Here is a photo of the Cloth Hall, Ypres.

While visiting the Passchendale museum (where some of the worst fighting took place 1917) I read a book on the Second Battle of Ypres (1915). I saw that Charles died on 25 April 1915 and according to the records the only real fighting taking place then was the (sub-)battle of Saint Julien, a village NE of Ypres, which lasted from 24 April - 4 May 1915. It was an attempt to recapture the village of Saint Julien taken the previous day by the Germans, who for the first time in the war had used chlorine gas. It killed many Canadians who had been defending the village.

Charles Bell was part of the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers, who made up part of the 27 Division, manning the front line more or less east of Ypres and south of St. Julien. On the 25 April they made the counter-attack. All eye-witness reports I read in the book spoke of the "air being filled with machine gun fire - bullets flying everywhere". They didn't manage to retake the village but pushed the front line closer to it. Charles himself fell, apparently (so my family was told) shot in the stomach - probably by machine gun fire. Due to the hell of the situation, no-one was able to rescue him. He lay there for several hours, and bled to death - on Flanders' Fields. Due to the utter destruction caused, his body was never recovered. But Charles, we have your name. And your memory lives on in me. I will never forget.