WATCHET has paid its respects to a young man from the town who died on the very first day of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The 100th anniversary of the battle was commemorated on Monday, July 31, and the Watchet Remembrance Project Group has written to the Free Press to pay its respects to Corporal James Lyddon and those who died in the infamous World War One battle.

“This is the same battle that Harry Patch fought in and was one of the most horrendous of battles to be in,” the group’s archivist Sara Summers said.

“The weather was awful and the whole battlefield turned into a quagmire, leaving many men as sitting ducks or at worst drowning in mud.

“The trenches were collapsing and men were laying dead, unable to be recovered.”

Corporal James Lyddon 35854, 104th Siege Battery, is ‘Remembered with Honour’ in the Belgian Battery Corner Cemetery.

He was one of a group of gunners and bombardiers who died in a battery assault on the first day. These groups were in formation, with one group per area, with Howitzer guns sending barrage after barrage to the German lines to push on with the offensive.

James, of Gladstone Terrace, whose name is remembered on the town memorial, was the son of a local milkman, dairyman and ice cream shop owner from 1939. The shop is now Chives in Swain Street.