Passchendaele 29 October 1917. Frank Hurley.
Australian War Memorial A.N. E01220
Private William Norman Fursman
9th Service Battalion, Devonshire Regiment
Died of Wounds
Place of Birth: Liskeard, Cornwall
Date of Death: 8 November 1917
Buried: Liskeard (Lanchard) Cemetery, Cornwall
Awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal
Private William Norman Fursman (some records show him as Norman William Fursman), age 23.
The only army record of this man shows he was born in Teignmouth, however, he was the son of William and Clara Fursman, 7 Windsor Cottages, Barn Street, Liskeard and was born in Liskeard in 1894.
There is possibly confusion with William Fursman who was born in Plymouth and who served in WW1 but who survived.
Devonshire Regiment
cap badge
William was serving with 9th Service Battalion, Devonshire Regiment, service number 45740, when he died of wounds on 8 November 1917.
Buried Liskeard (Lanchard) Cemetery, Cornwall.
The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele)
This was one of the bloodiest campaigns fought on the Western Front.
It was made up of a series of battles and attacks between 31 July to 10 November 1917.
It started to rain heavily during the afternoon of the first day of the battle.
The rain then continued, quickly turning the war-torn landscape into a quagmire, thousands of men and animals drowned in the mud.
I died in hell, They called it Passchendaele.
Soldier poet Siegfried Sassoon
Hundreds of thousands of men died on both sides.
The bodies of more than 35,000 men from the battle were never found, they were lost in the mud.
