This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday :
Eksternest / Westhoek in Zonnebeke
The last postcard I bought in 2011 was of ‘ Eksternest’ but it has a story to tell, many.
On the 9th of August 1915,early that Monday morning there was an enormous air activity above the Ieper sector.
Oberleutnant zur See Alfred Ritscher and his Beobachter Leutnant Heinrich Maas were send up the air. Somewhere above Polygone wood he took the a Brit under fire. Oddly enough, the British double-decker remained intact, but lost altitude. after an almost perfect landing somewhere around Eksternest it overtook. There was no movement from the tilted plane, from German infantrymen all the more. On their return to Moorsele, they were already aware of their exploits. Strangely enough, neither of the German pilots ever made a claim to this victory themselves. The British pilot, Captain Robert Pike, was hit in the head and probably killed instantly. He was buried in a nearby German cemetery. Captain Robert Maxwell Pike, Flight Commander N° 5 RFC Squadron, was a 29 year old Irishman, born at Kilwork, Tullow, County Carlow. His grave was never recovered, probably destroyed by the heavy shelling. His name is chiseled in the memorial to the missing British Air Force personnel in Arras.
But it is also the area where the 7thbn AIF was in 1917 the war diary tells us the following : 3th of Oktober 1917 batallion in trenches at westhoek ridge, preparing to moveing into assembly position at night in readyness for attack on ennemy at 6 am on the 4th. About midnight lt. Lovett reports our assembly tapes not lais out, so he had missed our party in the dark. Lt. Pollack being killed before midnight by an ennemy shell.
Sources :
Card from my postcard collection
Henshaw Trevor: The Sky their Battlefield, Grub Street, Londen, 1995
airwar19141918