Iain MacKenzie

This article was written by the Society’s late former President, Iain MacKenzie whose father fought at Passchendaele.

Iain’s text has much in common with Lode Notredame’s article entitled “The Passchendaele Offensive” but Iain’s text looks at Passchendaele in the context of all of WW1, including how the war began and how politics were involved. The perspectives are similar but the detail differs a little. Both are essential reading to get a full picture of Passchendaele and its place in the Western Front theatre.

Origins of the First World War (1914-1918)

The assassination of Archduke Frans Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by the “Black Hand”, a Serbian nationalist society, set in train a mindless series of events that culminated in the world’s first global war. One thing led to another so quickly that within two months of the assassination the first world war was underway.

Austria-Hungary issued a strong ultimatum to Serbia. If it had been accepted it would have nullified Serbian sovereignty, so the Serbians rejected this ultimatum on 28 July 1914 and Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia the same day. Austro-Hungarian troops joined by soldiers from their provinces of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia invaded Serbia which was conquered in little more than a month. There the matter should have ended - a little skirmish settled.

Russia however, although not bound by any formal treaty, announced the mobilisation of its vast army to come to the defence of Serbia.

Germany was allied to Austria-Hungary by treaty and, after the latter declared war and attacked Serbia, regarded the Russian mobilisation as an act of war and declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914. France was bound by treaty to Russia and found itself at war against Germany and, by extension, against Austria-Hungary.

Germany mobilised its forces to attack France and, in order to reach Paris by the shortest route, invaded neutral Belgium on 3 August 1914.

Britain found herself obligated to defend Belgium and also had a treaty agreement to come to the defence of France. Britain therefore declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 and, like France, was also by extension at war with Austria-Hungary.

With Britain’s entry into the war, her colonies and dominions were also at war and so offered military and financial assistance. Thus Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and New Zealand came into the war.

The Turkish Ottoman Empire signed a pact with Germany in August 1914 and a front was established at Gallipoli.

Japan honoured a military agreement with Britain and declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914.

Italy declared a policy of neutrality but in May 1915 joined the conflict on the side of the Allies.

The United States of America declared a policy of absolute neutrality which lasted until 1917 when Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare and the “Zimmermann telegram” sought an alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States if the US were to declare war on Germany.

New Zealand’s first act of war, 1914

And so the young British colony of New Zealand was engaged in a world war far from its own shores. Its first act of the war was to send an expeditionary force to seize and occupy German Samoa in August 1914.

Gallipoli (1915)

After training in Egypt, New Zealand’s first major involvement of the great war was at Gallipoli in 1915 where they fought as a brigade with the Australians (the ANZACs). The chaotic landings at Gallipoli have been well documented and although Gallipoli saw many courageous New Zealand actions and brief successes (Chunuk Bair), Turkey successfully repelled the British, French, and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The Ottoman Forces were not defeated until 1918.

More than 2,700 New Zealanders died at Gallipoli. The battles with the Ottoman Turks continued on different fronts and the New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade fought in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Jordan. After Gallipoli however the main force of New Zealanders were formed into an Infantry Division and sent to the Western Front in Europe where they performed as a Colonial Division of the British Expeditionary Force.

The Western Front (1914-1918)

The German invasion of Belgium on 4 August 1914 - as the quickest way to Paris - was brought to a halt in September and the Western Front became a static battle arena with a line of trenches stretching from Switzerland to the Belgian coast. On one side of the Front the British and their allies, on the other the Germans and theirs. Massive armies locked together with their enemies in a landscape which was to become unbelievably bleak and desolated.

In four years of fighting more than ten million soldiers lost their lives. The battle lines barely moved for most of the war as the opposing sides’ artillery pounded each other again and again and again. It was a war of attrition and the loser would be the one who first ran out of ammunition, equipment and men.

By June 1917 German submarines were sinking one out of every four merchant ships headed for Britain. Admiral Jellicoe, the British First Sea Lord, warned that if nothing was done to stop this, Britain would not have enough supplies to go on fighting. The British Expeditionary Force was under the control of British General Sir Douglas Haig. History has criticised the performance of the Generals involved in the first world war and certainly Sir Douglas Haig has to take his share of that criticism. He was under enormous pressure however to change the stalemate. His strategy to do so was a planned breakthrough on the Ypres front accompanied by an attack by the Royal Navy on the U-Boat bases in the German-occupied Belgian ports of Oostende and Zeebrugge.

The task of breaking through the Ypres front was entrusted to General Hubert Gough and the major problem was how to break through the defensive positions which the Germans had taken up on the West Flanders Ridge – a line of low hills between forty to sixty metres in height. A key to the breakthrough plan was taking the village of Passchendaele sitting atop the Bellevue Ridge.

This proved to be the most difficult part of the plan to achieve - and in achieving it the sacrifices made by New Zealand soldiers on 12 October 1917 made this the blackest day in New Zealand’s history. The Germans were eventually driven back in a series of successful offensives in 1918 and by that time it was the Germans who had run out of resources. A cease fire was agreed on 11 November 1918 (Armistice Day) by which time more than 12,500 New Zealanders had died on the Western Front out of a total of 18,188 for the entire war.

The Battle of the Somme (1916)

The Battle of the Somme was actually a series of battles over five months which itself resulted in more than a million and a half casualties. More than 2,000 New Zealanders were killed at the Somme and New Zealand’s Unknown Soldier - who now lies at the National War Memorial in Wellington - is one of those soldiers. With more than 7,500 casualties the Somme was New Zealand’s most costly battle ever.

Flanders and the Battle of Passchendaele (1917)

Throughout history many wars have been fought on Flanders Fields. Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars spring to mind but Germany’s invasion of Belgium on 4 August 1914 brought the First World War to Belgium and brought with it an unimaginable scale of carnage to that country.

Just as the Battle of the Somme was a series of battles over a five month period, the battle for Passchendaele was a series of battles fought between July and November 1917 – La Basseville, Pilckem Ridge, Langemarck, Menin Road, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde and Poelcapelle – all leading up to the disastrous First Battle of Passchendaele on 12 October 1917 – New Zealand’s greatest ever military disaster.

Two conditions are essential when troops are advancing into enemy territory and neither was present at Passchendaele. One is that the front line must be straight, the other is that troops must be on firm terrain.

A critical part of the front as it approached Passchendaele was not a straight line. There was in the line a curve because of enemy positions on the West Flanders Ridge. This curve had to be taken out before the advance on Passchendaele could take place. A group of engineers tunnelled under the German lines and laid twenty one high explosive mines. At 3.10pm on the 7th of June 1917, these mines exploded simultaneously along the curve. There had never before been such a powerful man-made explosion. It was heard across the Channel in London. It was in fact so powerful that it caused an earthquake.

The line was straightened out. The Germans abandoned their positions. The Allies advanced and by 7am the New Zealanders had taken Messines and had suffered relatively few casualties in what was generally regarded as one of the greatest military successes of the entire war. The Germans however began to bombard the newly captured areas with increasing ferocity and, by the time the New Zealand Division was relieved two days later, 700 had been killed and another 3,000 wounded. The territorial success gained at Messines was not followed up quickly enough however because the troops north of the New Zealanders were not ready to move forward. This gave the Germans time to reorganise themselves into their three line defensive format.

On 12 July the Germans used mustard gas which caused untold suffering on both men and horses. The New Zealanders had taken 1,000 horses with them to Flanders and there are many stories told of how well they were looked after. Many of the soldiers were country boys who grew up with horses - they knew them, groomed and fed them before they fed themselves. Of the one thousand horses which went to Flanders, only four survived.

At the end of July the New Zealand 1st Brigade was involved in battles at La Basseville, a few kilometres south-west of Messines where the main objective was to create a decoy from the preparations taking place near Passchendaele.

The New Zealanders were then engaged in the Passchendaele Offensive itself. In extraordinarily muddy conditions the Australians were sent up the Broodseinde Ridge whilst the New Zealanders objective was to take Gravenstafel Spur, the first of two small rises leading to the Passchendaele Ridge. On the 4th October at the Battle of Broodseinde the New Zealanders took Gravenstafel and opened up the way to Passchendaele. The victory at Broodseinde was one of the New Zealanders greatest war successes. The artillery of the allies had decimated the first two lines of the German three level defensive system but it was the spirit, determination and aggressiveness of the New Zealanders which broke through the third level. A bloody series of bayonet fights left the area littered with German dead.

While the First Auckland and Third Otago regiments attacked on the left and the First Wellington and Third Auckland on the right, the Second and Third Wellington together with the Second Auckland and Third Canterbury pushed through the middle and penetrated the Germans third line of defence. All the German pillboxes were captured one by one - an accomplishment which could have been achieved only by acts of individual bravery.

The New Zealanders and others gained a kilometre in territory at Gravenstafel which was a huge success in WW1 terms and they took a thousand prisoners. They lost 320 lives however, including Dave Gallaher, the captain of the 1905 original All Blacks and a Sergeant in the 2nd Battalion of the Auckland Regiment. He had lowered his age in order to get to fight.

At Poelcapelle on 9 October several high ranking British officers wanted to halt the Flanders offensive due to the deteriorating conditions as the winter approached, but Field Marshal Haig would have none of that. The victories at Messines and Gravenstafel had led him to believe that the impasse could be broken and a breakthrough on the Western Front possible - just another push at Passchendaele would do it. On 10 October Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig is quoted as saying “The enemy is now much weakened in morale and lacks the desire to fight”. This was to be proved a tragic delusional statement to support the key element of his plan to take Passchendaele – a quiet village sitting on the top of a ridge called Bellevue Heights.

As the winter approached, one of the essentials which had to be in place for advancing into enemy territory had been taken care of - the front line had been straightened out, but what about the other requirement – to be on firm terrain?

The autumn of 1917 had been the wettest in Belgium for 70 years and the flat landscape around Passchendaele had been churned into a porridge of thick, deep mud. The British Artillery had pounded the German positions with 4.2 million shells in the two weeks before the Battle of Passchendaele and had completely destroyed the drainage system around the village. Every tree, house, church and street had been blown to pieces so that the entire terrain between Ypres and Zonnebeke had been turned into a desolate, cratered landscape which sucked men, machines and horses into a vacuum of mud. The bombardments had been so destructive that they made the advance of troops impossible, yet at the same time they had not been precise enough to take out the German defensive system of concrete bunkers.

”Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted” is a piece of solid military wisdom and yet reconnaissance on the battle terrain at Passchendaele could only have revealed the mud and rain- filled shell craters. The war debris and uncut barbed wire sloped towards the German machine gun posts stretching all the way along the Bellevue Spur, the second small ridge leading to the Passchendaele Ridge. Then it began to rain with a vengeance and a human tragedy of epic proportions was inevitable. The mud had meant that the New Zealand artillery could not be properly positioned and so the barrages were weak and ineffective, some shells dropping short and causing deaths and injuries to its own soldiers. The German pillboxes at the top of Bellevue Spur were left undamaged.

The New Zealand Commander General Andrew Russell complained that “The mud is a worse enemy than the Germans” but Field Marshal Haig was adamant. One almost senses his desire for success, regardless of the cost of New Zealand lives.

The order was given to attack the Bellevue Spur at 5.25am, before daybreak on 12 October. So began the most tragic day in New Zealand’s history.

The New Zealanders advanced toward the ridge in a drizzle which turned into driving rain. As they tried to get through the uncut barbed wire, many up to their hips in mud, they were exposed to raking German machine gun fire from both the front and the flanks. Most were then pinned down in the rain-filled shell craters and those who tried to get through the barbed wire were killed instantly. 846 young New Zealanders were killed in the first four hours of the Battle.

This information was conveyed to Command. It is difficult to believe that their response at 3pm was to order another push on Bellevue Heights. This was mercifully postponed and eventually cancelled but by the end of the day the total number of casualties - the dead, the wounded and the missing - was 2,700. It took two and a half days work in atrocious conditions to clear the battlefield of the dead (those that could be found) and the injured. The total death toll, taking into account those who later died of injuries, was more than one thousand. It was New Zealand’s darkest day.

What was left of the New Zealand Division retreated. Passchendaele was eventually taken by Canadian forces on 6 November after two further battles. The village itself had been completely destroyed, totally razed to the ground.

By the time the New Zealand Division was finally withdrawn from Flanders in February 1918, three Victoria Crosses had been awarded for bravery, but they had suffered more than 18,000 casualties including some 5,000 deaths.

So what does the chronicle of history conclude about the Western Front and the gallant New Zealand involvement at Passchendaele? Well, after more than three months of fighting, the allies had advanced eight kilometres and lost more than 250,000 soldiers. The German losses were similar. But those 500,000 lives were all for nothing because in March 1918 the Generals abandoned every inch of territory gained to cover a new German offensive towards Ypres.

Nevertheless, the importance of the Battle of Passchendaele is that in a strategical sense it contributed to the reasons which brought World War 1 to an end. Because the Germans were kept busy in the north for so long, they were unable to attack the defenceless French to the south. They were also unable to support the Belgian ports of Oostende and Zeebrugge where German U-boats were based. Perhaps most importantly, since German industry could not replace so much lost equipment, the war of attrition ended.

New Zealand’s contribution to the First World War

New Zealand sent 100,000 soldiers to the First World War – from its then population of 1.15 million, about 8.7%. This was a huge contribution from a small country in the fight for freedom from German domination in Europe. But the consequences for the country were that more than 2,700 soldiers were to die at Gallipoli in 1915, then 2,000 at the Battle of the Somme in France in 1916, then 5,000 were killed in Flanders in a series of battles leading to the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. All in all, of the total 18,188 men who died in this war, 12,500 New Zealanders died on the Western Front. The magnitude of that death toll is put in perspective when it is realised that more soldiers were killed in this war than the total of the Boer War, World War Two and Vietnam combined.

New Zealanders’ perception of the First World War

The President of the Returned Services Association, when talking about New Zealanders’ knowledge of such historical events as Gallipoli, the Western Front and Passchendaele, was quoted in the media as saying that when they think about our military history, they instinctively think about Gallipoli which they see as our greatest military disaster. He said “this seems immersed in our belief, but historically it is not accurate”.

Now, if our perception of our own history is not accurate, then there is work to be done to change this. That is an important role for the Passchendaele Society. For many of us, WW1 means Gallipoli, and what happened after that at the Western Front and Passchendaele became the forgotten war.

Back home in 1915 New Zealanders had to absorb the shocking news of 2,700 deaths at Gallipoli, but as the war moved into Europe and the Western Front, with the death toll mounting throughout 1916, 1917 and 1918 to its final count of 18,188, New Zealanders had become war weary. By the time the war ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, there was untold grief in almost every family in the country.

People however simply had to get on with their lives. They were encouraged to do so by governments which did not give them the opportunity to commemorate the battles of the Western Front and Passchendaele in a similar way to what had been done with Gallipoli.

As a nation we have commemorated the Gallipoli landings on 25 April 1915 every year since 1916 – but we did not commemorate as a nation the battles on the Western Front such as Passchendaele. These played a much more significant role in the context of the war and contributed significantly in bringing about its end - which we have commemorated since 1919 together with our First World War allies on armistice day.

So while Gallipoli has over the past 100+ years become a major shrine and a place of pilgrimage, the Western Front and Passchendaele have been allowed to slip from our national consciousness. It is not surprising therefore that our perception of history is not accurate.

We should most particularly remember the Battle of Passchendaele – a huge tragedy, as that battle more than most symbolises the futility and cost of war. As a ‘City of Peace’, Ypres is a city of remembrance, never forgetting the tremendous human cost of WWI soldiers and civilians alike. Each and every night at 8pm the traffic passing through the Menin Gate is stopped and the Last Post sounds in memory of those who lost their lives on the Ypres Salient.

The story of Passchendaele is not an uplifting one, but it must be told. We must tell the story of New Zealand’s worst ever military disaster. We must tell the story of a complete massacre. We must tell the story of a battle that never should have happened - but it did, and we must tell the story of the disastrous consequences of this horrendous battle for New Zealand and New Zealanders.

We are obliged never to forget the New Zealanders who lie in Flanders Fields, their sacrifice and those of others in the Great War who helped preserve the rights and freedoms we now take for granted.

We will remember them.