On this day...Death of Cecil Frank Highley

Cecil Frank Highley was born in Willesden, London in November 1886. He is shown as a Telegraph Designer in the census of 1901. In 1909 he married Ethel Minnie James in Wandsworth Registry Office and in 1914 enlisted at Finsbury Barracks, joining the Royal Fusiliers 11th Battalion.

Cecil was killed in action on 23rd October 1917 aged 30, and his name is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial near Ypres in Belgium.

Courtesy of International War Graves Photography Project #46770518 (Find A Grave)

Tyne Cot Cemetery
GaryBlakeley, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The London WW1 Memorial 1914-1918 is a website dedicated to all the Londoners lost in action during the First World War. The entry for Cecil Highley is shown below:

Third Battle of Ypres
This was a campaign fought between July and November 1917 and is often referred to as the Battle of Passchendaele, a village to the north-east of Ypres which was finally captured in November. It was an attempt by the British to break out of the Ypres salient and capture the higher ground to the south and the east from which the enemy had been able to dominate the salient. It began well but two important factors weighed against them. First was the weather. The summer of 1917 turned out to be one of the the wettest on record and soon the battlefield was reduced to a morass of mud which made progress very difficult, if not impossible in places. The second was the defensive arrangements of concrete blockhouses and machine gun posts providing inter-locking fire that the Germans had constructed and which were extremely difficult and costly to counter. For 4 months this epic struggle continued by the end of which the salient had been greatly expanded in size but the vital break out had not been achieved.

18th Division had come into the line near Poelcapelle on 10th October, 1917, and had taken part in the First Battle of Passchendaele two days later. This had not been a success. 54 Brigade had been in reserve then but on 16th October they moved into the front line and 11th Royal Fusiliers occupied Cane Trench, remaining there until relieved on 18th October when they moved back to Canal Dugouts. On 22nd October, 53 Brigade, who had relieved 54 Brigade launched a successful attack from these positions and captured the Brewery east of Poelcapelle as well as the other enemy strongholds of Noble’s Farm, Meunier House and Tracas Farm. 11th Royal Fusiliers then moved up to these new positions and held them for two days in the face of considerable German resistance. They were subjected to constant artillery fire and as there had been little time to consolidate, they were also vulnerable to snipers. By the time they were relieved on 24th October they had suffered nearly 100 casualties. One of these was Cecil Highley who was killed on 23rd October.