43604. Private James Edward Joseph Rivenell

11th. (Service) (Donegal & Fermanagh) Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The Battalion was formed in September 1914 in Ireland, joining the 109th. Brigade, 36th. (Ulster Division), 5th. Army. Formerly 8383. Private, 3rd./8th. (City of London) Battalion (Post Office Rifles) London Regiment. Born in Fulham, Middlesex. Enlisted in London. Killed in Action on Thursday 16th. August 1917, aged 19, on the first day of The Battle of Langemarck, which was the second of the series of engagements during The Third Battle of Ypres. Lost Without Trace. No Known Grave. Known unto God. Commemorated on Panels 70-72 of The Tyne Cot Memorial to The Missing, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. James was the only Serviceman with the surname “Rivenell” to have Fallen during The Great War. His Memorial Plaque was incorrectly cast as “James Joseph Edward Rivenell” at the time of manufacture. A staggering total of 90 of James’s Comrades from the Battalion also Fell on this day, including:

14481. Sergeant James Parke M.M.

together with the following 6 Officers:

Second Lieutenant Thomas Carlile

Second Lieutenant William Hunter Clements

Captain Samuel Fluke

Second Lieutenant Alexander Henry McCullagh

Lieutenant Colonel Audley Charles Pratt D.S.O.

Second Lieutenant William McEwan Henderson Stewart

The Battalion History notes:

“At Zero Hour on the 16th. August 1917, the 11th. Inniskillings, with the 14th. Irish Rifles on the right and the Gloucesters on the left, moved off in the first wave … No Stokes Mortars could be carried forward to assist the attack … the ground was too difficult … “bog” would be a better word … The Machine-Gun fire of the enemy was intense and accurate and the “Pill-Boxes” were found to be intact in most cases … it was impossible to pass through them … Advance was out of the question … That night the Division was relieved … It had failed in this attack … there was no loss of honour.”

IRELAND’S MEMORIAL RECORDS  1914-1918

RIVENELL, JAMES EDWARD JOSEPH. Reg. No. 43604. Rank, Private, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, 11th Batt.; killed in action, France, August 16, 1917; born Fulham, London. P. 236.

The Battle of Langemarck (16–18 August 1917)

On 16 August 1917, in a renewed thrust of the Allied offensive launched at the end of July in the Flanders region of Belgium—known as the Third Battle of Ypres, or simply as Passchendaele, for the village that saw the heaviest fighting—British troops capture the village of Langemarck from the Germans.

The ambitious, meticulously planned offensive, masterminded by the British commander in chief Sir Douglas Haig, began on July 31 with a British and French attack on German positions near the village of Passchendaele, located in Flanders in the much-contested Ypres Salient. After the initial assault met with less success than had been anticipated, heavy rains and thickening mud bogged down the Allied infantry and artillery and prevented them from renewing the offensive until the second week of August. On August 16, at Langemarck, to the west of Passchendaele, four days of fierce fighting resulted in a British victory; the gains were small, however, for the high number of casualties incurred.

Though a German counterattack recovered much of the ground gained at Langemarck, British forces retained the initiative in the region, aided by the use of tanks and by a diversionary attack by the French at Verdun, where more than 5,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner. By the end of September, the British were able to establish control over the ridge of land to the east of Ypres, and Haig pushed his commanders in the region to continue the attacks towards the Passchendaele ridge. As the offensive stretched into October, Allied troops reached near-exhaustion as the Germans reinforced their positions in the region with reserve troops released from the Eastern Front.

After Canadian and British troops finally captured Passchendaele on November 6, 1917, Haig called off the offensive, claiming victory for his men. In sum, a total of some 310,000 British casualties, as opposed to 260,000 on the German side, and a failure to create any substantial breakthrough on the Western Front, made the Third Battle of Ypres one of the most costly and controversial offensives of World War I.

Barry Jenkins