The Second Battle of Ypres, fought between 22 April and 25 May 1915, marked one of the most harrowing chapters of the First World War on the Western Front. It was here that chlorine gas was first used on a mass scale, turning the Belgian countryside into a suffocating battleground as Allied forces desperately fought to hold the salient around Ypres against relentless German assaults.
For territorial battalions like the Monmouths, holding the line meant enduring relentless artillery bombardments, miserable weather, poison gas, and ferocious close-quarter engagements across exposed ridges and improvised trench systems. ► Read more...
The brutal cost of these defensive operations—especially during the catastrophe of 8 May is remembered in the valleys as "Monmouthshire's Black Day" and immortalized in the sacrifice of our local men. These include Pte. Frederick John Symons, Pte. Thomas Benjamin Havard, and Pte. Phillip Arthur Williams, all killed in action during the desperate defense of Frezenberg Ridge and Verlorenhoek on 8 May 1915 and commemorated on the Menin Gate; alongside Lance Corporal George Lovell killed in action on 13 May 1915, who rests in the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension.