Digging in German archives is not always easy, loads of material is still not digitized , but I found a file of a German cemetery that was once located in Torhout. flipped a few pages , found several unknown Belgian soldiers that were buried there. On one page there was the name Wellings plus a date of death. A british soldier.
A quick search in the CWGC database reveled that it was Thomas Wellings and that his body was moved in the 20’s into larch wood railway cutting cemetery I.A.17 , what is in the Ieper area.
The Gerrman paperwork in the POW files of the red cross confused me, they mention 4/Cheshire, and actually he was part of the 16th battalion .
I found a ‘Todes nachweis’, what revealed he died at 3.10 am in the morning on the 13th of November 1917 in the field hospital in Torhout. His wounds were described on an other paper and it made sense that his first name was not known, I assume he was unconscious from the moment he was taken prisoner until he died. He had a head injury, chest, soft tissue injury of both legs and forearms, brain injury,
When did he end up a POW was the next thing I wanted to know?
There is a book called ‘ the third Ypres Passchendale the day by day account by Chris McCarthy’ That gave me what division his regiment was part of and when and were they were fighting. The action of 22nd of October 1917 South of Houthulst wood.
At last the war diary gave me a wealth of information. The night was bitterly cold and there were heavy showers after midnight.
That the tea and rum provided by the brigade did not reach Vee bend , where Bn. HQ were based must have been dreadful.
The Germans kept a steady barrage of firing intensively at midnight, at 2 am and again from 4 am onwards.
By 5 am casualties occurred.
At Zero hour ( 5,35 am) the battalion advanced against the objective following the barrage closely . Though the barrage only went forward at the rate of 100 yards every 8 minutes, because of the state of the ground, many shell holes containing at least a foot of water. With great difficulty the regiment was keeping up with the barrage. German prisoners were taken towards HQ ( Vee bend) at 6.50
Then during consolidating the area of Marechal Fm , SE of the wood at U6a.55.55 they tried to consolidate a bunker at U6.a55.70 and eventually the Germans did evacuate it .
Any further advance was held up.
Colombo house was reached and the MG company there had a Vickers gun up to that point, 6 Germans were killed and a machine gun was captured. About 50 yards in front of Colombo house the 16th Cheshires were consolidating.
A Vickers gun was send to Marechal farm, only, two of the men taking it up there were hit by snipers and the barrel casing of the gun was punctured.
The situation stayed unchanged until 4,30 pm, The Germans counterattacked and broke through the left flank of the 16th Cheshires.. the men eventually had to withdraw, End of this attack resulted into 9 officers and 327 men on the casualty list .
ThomasWellings was one of them, badly wounded. When and where exactly we will never know.
Thomas was born at Macclesfield, in 1897 his parents had a pork butchery. He had seen action at Gallipoli with the 19th before he was send to Flanders. Just 21 years old
The map shows where the 16th cheshire part of the 105th brigade were attacking,
by noon the front line ran from Marechal to Aden house, Egypt house was a group of small bunkers
Sources ; Red Cross WW1 POW records, cwgc dept of honour
https://www.mcscouts.org.uk/thomas-wellings-2
https://archives.passchendaele.be/…/13cfa0ab33af0a9ccdf…
https://culturepics.org/on-this-day/?year=&month=11&day=13&source=lives
invenio R80/1616
Het onbarmhartige bos by Eddy lambrecht chapter 8