A SUPERB ‘PASSCHENDAELE’ CASUALTY MILITARY CROSS, WAR & VICTORY MEDALS.
To: A/Captain. FRANK MERCER BENTLEY. 3rd/ 5th Bn LANCASHIRE FUSILIERS.
197th Infantry Brigade, 66th Division.
KILLED IN ACTION AT PASSCHENDAELE 13TH OCTOBER 1918.
Citation for M.C. (For the attack on Passchendaele Ridge during the Third battle of Ypres)
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in organizing groups of men of all units and pushing them forward to the attack. He got well in advance of the final objective, (which was the capture of Passchendaele village) but had to withdraw, being unsupported on the flanks. He was wounded early in the attack in the leg, but remained at duty until able to walk. (Near Ypres, 9th October 1917)
History
Frank Mercer Bentley was born in Bury Lancashire on 4th September 1881and lived at Thornhill, Rochdale. He was a pupil of Bury Grammar School which he left in 1894. The family then moved to St Annes-on Sea and lived at “York House” York Road, South Promenade. And during the same year he entered ‘ROSSALL’ Private School, Fleetwood. He left Rossall School in 1899 (aged 18) and being a director of The Bury Times the school register states his last occupation as a Newspaper Proprietor (His father was a Journalist).
This fine Military Cross group to an original officer of the 3/5th Lancashire Fusiliers is all the more important as it was Captain Bentley and his men who were undoubtedly the first soldiers to enter the notorious village of Passchendaele itself. The bodies of his men who were killed in the assault were found when Passchendaele was finally captured on 6th November 1917 (28 days later).
About The Battle
Conditions on the battlefield at Passchendaele during the period defy descrition. This now flat and green farmland was then nothing more than an indescribable sea of mud and waterlogged shell holes. No trenches existed here as the water table was only a matter of a foot few or two below the surface of the ground and any diggings immediately flooded. Where the farms are today, rows of German concrete pill boxes stood and it is easy to see how so many British troops were simply mown down to die and to drown in this landscape of desolation. During the Battle of Passchendaele Ridge 31st July to 6th November 1917 , and advance of about 5 miles was achieved, but had been paid for by the lives of 244,897 British casualties alone.
Here we quote from an extract written by a soldier who was there describing the situation.
“We fell into mud and writhed out like wasps crawling from rotten plumbs…. The dead and wounded were piled on each other’s backs … The second wave, coming up behind, were knocked over in their tracks and lay I heaving mounds”… Those unable to crawl into the slopping shell holes were doomed. ‘They had to lie where they were until a stray bullet found them or they were blown to pieces. Their heartrending cries pierced the incessant din of explosions’
After recovering from his wounds Captain Bentley joined the 1st/5th Lancashire Fusiliers.
and was later killed in action while serving with it on 13th October 1918. On the 13th October 1918 , just 28 days before the Armistice and while engaged in heavy fighting at outposts on the West Bank of the River Selle at Briastre Frank Bentley was Killed in Action by German shell fire.
Comes with a massive file of excellent and in depth research maps and pictures.
£-SOLD-