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William
Parlby was born in Mountnessing, Essex in 1884. He was married to Elsie Mary
and lived in Romford. When war broke out he enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers
(City of London) 3rd Battalion. His service number was 9852 and was a
private. |
He was killed in action 24th May 1915, on the Western Front, at the
Battle of Bellewaarde. His body was never recovered he was 29 years old. |
The Menin Gate is one of four memorials to the missing in Belgian
Flanders which cover the area known as the Ypres Salient. Broadly speaking, the
Salient stretched from Langemarck in the north to the northern edge in
Ploegsteert Wood in the south, but it varied in area and shape throughout the
war. The Salient was formed during the First Battle of Ypres in October and
November 1914, when a small British Expeditionary Force succeeded in securing
the town before the onset of winter, pushing the German forces back to the
Passchendaele Ridge. The Second Battle of Ypres began in April 1915 when the
Germans released poison gas into the Allied lines north of Ypres. This was the
first time gas had been used by either side and the violence of the attack
forced an Allied withdrawal and a shortening of the line of defence. There was
little more significant activity on this front until 1917, when in the Third
Battle of Ypres an offensive was mounted by Commonwealth forces to divert
German attention from a weakened French front further south. The initial
attempt in June to dislodge the Germans from the Messines Ridge was a complete
success, but the main assault north-eastward, which began at the end of July,
quickly became a dogged struggle against determined opposition and the rapidly
deteriorating weather. The campaign finally came to a close in November with
the capture of Passchendaele. The German offensive of March 1918 met with some
initial success, but was eventually checked and repulsed in a combined effort
by the Allies in September. The battles of the Ypres Salient claimed many lives
on both sides and it quickly became clear that the commemoration of members of
the Commonwealth forces with no known grave would have to be divided between
several different sites. The site of the Menin Gate was chosen because of the
hundreds of thousands of men who passed through it on their way to the
battlefields. It commemorates those of all Commonwealth nations (except New
Zealand) who died in the Salient, in the case of United Kingdom casualties
before 16 August 1917. |
William is remembered on Panel 6 and 8 on the Menin Gate |
His mother lived at 'Aylsham at Harold Wood in Essex, and at the
time of his death his wife was living Brook Cottages, High Road,
Shenfield. |