Hedd Wyn - Death at Passchendaele

Death At Passchendaele

The attack began on 31 July 1917 at 3:50 a.m. Heavy rain turned the battlefield into a swamp. The 15th Battalion captured Pilckem Ridge and then advanced towards the "Iron Cross" stronghold, coming under heavy artillery and machinegun fire. In a 1975 interview conducted by St Fagans National History Museum, Simon Jones, a veteran of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, recalled,

"We started over Canal Bank at Ypres, and he was killed half way across Pilckem. I've heard many say that they were with Hedd Wyn and this and that, well I was with him... I saw him fall and I can say that it was a nosecap shell in his stomach that killed him. You could tell that... He was going in front of me, and I saw him fall on his knees and grab two fistfuls of dirt... He was dying, of course... There were stretcher bearers coming up behind us, you see. There was nothing - well, you'd be breaking the rules if you went to help someone who was injured when you were in an attack."

Soon after being wounded, Hedd Wyn was carried to a first-aid post. Still conscious, he asked the doctor “Do you think I will live?” It was clear, however, that he had little chance of surviving. Private Ellis Evans died at about 11:00 a.m. Also among the 31,000 Allied fatalities on that day was the Irish war poet, Francis Ledwidge, who was "blown to bits" while sipping tea in a shell hole.