Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele 

The New Zealanders at Mesines and Passchendaele

The battles of Messines and Passchendaele are two of the most iconic moments in New Zealand history. Messines was a great victory - but at no small cost. Four months later, just the other side of Ypres, Passchendaele became the country's most tragic day. It remains so.

In a few short hours, in driving rain, strong cold winds and deep mud, left vulnerable by an ineffective artillery barrage and blocked by 13-metres of barbed wire, New Zealand suffered a casualty toll of more than 60% of those who took part in the attack  - a total of 3,296 casualties of whom 1,190 died. Even with over 3,000 extra men brought in from support battalions it took more than two days to clear the New Zealand wounded from the battlefield as the war went on.

Flanders 1917 touched virtually every family the length and breadth of a land with a population of just over one million and which sent 10% of that population to war. It left a legacy that exists to this day.

This site offers a brief outline of Flanders in 1917 - of Messines and Passchendaele, their histories and their people; of the New Zealanders, the soldiers, the four New Zealand related VCs in Flanders; and of the projects and commemorative events that began at Messines on Thursday June 7 - the day, 90 years ago, that the New Zealand Division captured the town.