Flanders 1917

Events of Interest
Special Exhibitions
'Brave Little Belgium'
The Final Offensive in 1918
Memorial Museum Passchendaele
'Man, Culture, War'
Multicultural aspects of WW1
In Flanders Fields Museum

Available throughout the year
New Zealand guided walks and tours:
Contact & Booking details here
Messines: "In the Footsteps of the New Zealanders" guided battlefield walks
Zonnebeke: Guided Passchendaele battlefield tours
Zonnebeke: Guided "Dave Gallaher" theme walk
Guided tours of the Ypres Salient
Congratulations to Harry Patch

Mr Harry Patch, the only living survivor of the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, turned 110 on Tuesday, June 17. Born on June 17, 1898, in Combe Down, Somerset, he served with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry as a Lewis gunner assistant until September 22, 1917, when a light shell known as a Whizz Bang killed three members of his section and wounded him. Mr Patch has published an autobiography, "The Last Tommy", in recent years and has also been the subject of a poem by the UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.
Mr Patch is seen above congratulating the Memorial Museum Passchendaele after the public voted it best museum in Flanders during Belgium's museum awards in April this year. A few weeks later the Government of Flanders added the museum to its list of recognisded museums. The museum is owned by Zonnebeke Council, which includes the village of Passchendaele in its largely rural district. Zonnebeke and Waimakariri in Canterbury, New Zealand, were twinned last year.
There is one older living UK serviceman from World War One - Mr Henry Allingham who turned 112 on June 6. Mr Allingham, also believed to be Europe's oldest man, served with the Royal Naval Air Service and became one of the first members of the RAF.
News & Updates
June 13th 2008
TYNE COT VISITOR NUMBERS GROW

March 21st 2008
ANZAC DAY 2008 - PROGRAMME

October 16th 2007
PM SIGNS SHARED MEMORIES ACCORD WITH FLANDERS
People

Sister Elise Margaret Kemp, born in Wellington in 1881, is believed to be the only New Zealand born nurse killed by action on the Western Front. She was killed on October 20, 1917, when an aircraft bombed the casualty clearing station in Flanders she was temporarily attached to.
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Autini Pitara Kaipara was one of New Zealand rugby's most outstanding five-eighths of the 1910s and was nick-named the "india rubber man". He became a second lieutenant in the Maori (Pioneer) Battalion and was killed in action near Messines at the age of 30 on August 4, 1917.
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NZ Memorial from the frontline of June 7 1917

The Battle of Messines Ridge was one of the very few outright Allied successes on the Western Front. Launched with the detonation of 19 massive mines at 3.10 am on June 7, 1917, it saw rapid advances along the limited front by the New Zealanders, Australians, British and, for the first and only time, the 36th Ulster Division fighting alongside the 16th Southern Ireland Division.
Read about the New Zealand Division attack on the town of Messines here
Read about the Irish at Messines Ridge here
The New Zealanders at Messines and Passchendaele
A lone bugler on the Cross of
Sacrifice at Tyne Cot for theNew
Zealand Dawn Service of October
12. It is believed to be the first Dawn
Service at the Cemetery.
Photo Di Mackey; Courtesy NZDF
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 the land. 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.
The high cost of La Basseville

     Now a private home, Le Cafe au Rooster
was the site where Leslie Andrew undertook
       one of the actions for which he was
               awarded the Victoria Cross
Following the successful attack on Messines in June 1917, the Germans launched a number of counter-attacks only to lose more ground. They then retreated behind the river Lys. To the north of Messines, in the wider area of Ypres, full-scale preparations for the Third Battle of Ypres, including what was to become known as the First Battle of Passchendaele, were under way.
On July 27 at 2 am the New Zealand Division launched an attack on the tiny village of La Basseville, just a few kilometres down the hill to the south-west of Messines. This attack was planned as a support action for the massive attack that took place in the Ypres sector and marked the start of Third Ypres.
There were three major aims. The first was to make Germans believe that the Allied Forces were planning an attack towards Lille by establishing forward posts near the river and giving the impression they were going to build bridges. The second was to capture and(...)
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Messines - The Town
With a population of less than 1,000 and an area of just 900 hectares, the small town of Messines in West Flanders, close to the French border, is not only the smallest council region in Belgium, it is also an "honorary city". It is twinned with Featherston, the small Wairarapa town which was home to one of New Zealand's largest World War One training camps.
Messines in French and Mesen in Flemish (Dutch), the town can trace its city status back beyond the French Revolution.
The New Zealand Governor-General visits Messines
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Place names
The place names on this site are those that have become familiar to New Zealanders and which are often seen in street names and other material in New Zealand. In Flanders, however, those names are not to be seen on signs etc. The Flemish names are applied. Messines is Mesen; Passchendaele is Passendale; Ypres is Ieper.