KEY POINTS:
Before the bugle sounds at the 90th commemorations of the Battle of Passchendaele next month, a unique sound will be heard - traditional Maori instruments of love and war.
Rotorua musician Horomona Horo left this week for Belgium, where he will play taonga puoro (traditional instruments) at a dawn ceremony commemorating the bloodiest battle in New Zealand history.
The 29-year-old will play the pukaea, a trumpet-like instrument of war, and the koauau, a flute-like instrument of love, to remember the 2800 soldiers who were killed or wounded on October 12, 1917 on the Flemish battlefield.
A thousand-man haka is also to be performed.
The casualties on that single day at Passchendaele surpassed the 2721 lives lost in the eight-month campaign at Gallipoli two years earlier.
Mr Horo will play at two other dawn ceremonies commemorating battles fought by New Zealand and other Commonwealth soldiers in the bleak Passchendaele campaign.
Horo's instruments will ring out before the bugle player sounds the Last Post and after a minute of silence is held for fallen soldiers.
"It's a really humbling privilege to be able to be that first sound, and especially that sound coming all the way from New Zealand," he said.
