100 Kiwi stories from WWI: Family devastated by our bloodiest battle

Richard Burgess with his wife Bessie and their eight children. Sons George and William were casualties of Passchendaele.

No 37 Battle claims lives of two sons and leaves third an amputee

Leading into Ypres, the village of Passchendaele today is home to just 3000 people. In July 1917, the tiny town was the site of 500,000 casualties in an offensive of Anzac and other Allied troops against Germany.

The Third Battle of Ypres - one name for the conflict - became the worst disaster, in terms of lives lost, in New Zealand history.

It would take until February 1918 before the New Zealand Division withdrew from Passchendaele - after 18,000 Kiwi casualties, 5000 deaths and three Victoria Crosses.

Canadian troops gained Passchendaele in November 1917, Germans recaptured the village in April 1918 and the Allies regained it in September 1918.

Passchendaele devastated South Canterbury's Burgess family, killing two of four brothers and sending a third to his grave an amputee.

The Burgess saga began with the sudden death of mother Bessie Ferguson Burgess in March 1916. It was the middle of the war; Bessie's sons enlisted months after her death.

Labourer George Bruckshaw Burgess enlisted as a rifleman in July 1916, embarking in November 1916, when plans for the offensive in western Belgium were being laid by Britain's war leaders.

After eight months of Allied prevarication, II Anzac Corps finally got stuck into Ypres in the summer of 1917. Fighting at Passchendaele climaxed on October 4 with the assault on Gravenstafel Spur. A devastating defeat followed at Bellevue Spur on October 12, where 2800 Kiwi casualties occurred. Amid the carnage, George went missing. No record indicates that George, 28, was ever found. A court of inquiry on April 27, 1918 ruled he was killed in action.

His brother William John Burgess left two infant children and a wife when he embarked with the Canterbury Infantry Regiment three days before George's disappearance. William, too, went missing before being deemed a prisoner of war on September 29, 1918. He arrived in Leith a day before dying of diphtheria, half a world away from home.

A third brother, Edward Ernest Burgess, had a fate almost as bleak, but came away alive. Edward enlisted in December 1916, and was fighting in France with the New Zealand Riflemen in June 1917 when his foot was wounded, resulting in amputation. He was considered for a British War Medal, discharged in July 1918, and returned home to Staveley. Sadly, his military service record is stamped "died after discharge". No year of death is given.

Brother Thom - George's twin - embarked after Passchendaele was over, in March 1918. Thom rejoined his father Richard and four other siblings at their Staveley home in 1919. Thom died in 1973.

Nzhistory.net calls the Passchendaele conflict "a living nightmare". Memorials stand in place of the 5000 Kiwis whose bodies never returned home - including the Burgess brothers, who are commemorated at Ashburton War Memorial.