Historian David Shackleton reveals the identities of five South Westmorland men who died in the Battle of Broodseinde, which began in October 1917

During the three months-long Battle of Passchendaele during World War One, six battalions of the Border Regiment were involved in varying degrees, some on more than one occasion.

In the course of this battle 70 men from South Westmorland were killed or died of their wounds. Thirty seven of them were from the Border Regiment.

The Battle Nomenclature Committee names eight separate battles collectively known as the 3rd Battle of Ypres and gives October 4, 1917, as the beginning of the Battle of Broodseinde.

The 6th Border Battalion took part in this battle, their second visit to the notorious Salient. Although their orders were to be in support of the other battalions in their Brigade, they suffered 174 casualties during their four days' stint. including 38 men killed. Of these, five were from South Westmorland.

They were:

l Thomas Ellwood, of Oak Bank, Skelsmergh, who worked at Croppers

l Albert Garth, of Field Cottage, Milnthorpe, who worked at Dobson’s comb mill

l Three Kendalians: Thomas Hine, of Wildman Street; Frank Silver, of Greenhows Yard and James Wilson, the father of eight children, of Abbott Hall Square. Hine was a stonemason, Silver worked as a draper for Brunskills at Kendal, and Wilson was employed at Sedgwick gunpowder factory.

Thomas Ellwood and Thomas Hine now lie in Dozinghem Military Cemetery. The others have no known grave and their names, along with 35,000 other soldiers, are inscribed on the Memorial to the Missing at Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium.

Most of them died in the desolate muddy morass between August and November 1917.

Rightly recognised as one of the major battles of World War One, the 3rd Battle of Ypres, called by Lloyd George, The Battle of the Mud, cost the combatants, on both sides, 4,300 casualties per day - a total of 450,000 men, killed or wounded.