The remains of a boot worn by a New Zealand soldier in World War I found at Mesen in Belgium. Photo/Supplied
The remains of a boot worn by a New Zealand soldier in World War I found at Mesen in Belgium. Photo/Supplied
A grisly discovery forms part of a new re-telling of the story of our other great WWI battlefield, writes Andrew Stone.
Six years ago Jeff McNeill found a foot.
It was nearly 100 years old so all he recovered were bones and bits of a boot. Besides the remains, which had lain undisturbed on a European battlefield, the ground gave up clues which convinced McNeill that the limb belonged to a New Zealand soldier who fought in the Battle of Messines, an immense World War I offensive in June 1917.
Forensic tests showed the foot came from a nearby skeleton unearthed a few days earlier during siteworks for a new wastewater plant in what is now the town of Mesen. War debris was buried in the clay with the bones - shrapnel, bullet fragments, liquid iodine in a phial used for wounds and several telltale clues, including two leather buttons with faint NZ Rifle Brigade bugle moulding and an NZRB shoulder badge.
From the skeleton, a Belgium pathologist concluded the foot belonged to a soldier, aged 20 to 24 and 166cm to 174cm tall.
Martin O'Connor, an expat New Zealander who guides tours on the Flanders battlefields and who was with McNeill when the soldier's remains were discovered, narrowed the soldier's identity down to eight possible names using a database created by Andy Macdonald, a UK-based New Zealand military historian. The best fit was an English migrant serving in the brigade the "Dinks", who left behind a wife and three young children.
He was given a formal military burial in February 2012.
A 45m-crater caused by an explosion under German positions at Messines, which killed about 10,000 soldiers and shook the ground for kilometres.
Like so many casualties on the Western Front, where more than 1000 New Zealanders lost their lives, his name is inscribed on the Messines Memorial to the Missing.
McNeill's discovery of the foot is part of a new account of the Battle of Messines. Due to be published next year, McNeill, who lectures at Massey University and moonlights as a historian, has drawn on war archives, soldiers' diaries and military records to fill what he considers to be a gap on the WWI history shelf.
The title is Lost Victory: 2nd Anzacs of the Messines 1917, a deliberate choice of words because he feels passionately that events on the Belgium ridgeline have been left in shade by WWI historians.
The assault on the strategically important ridge was one of the most successful operations on the Western Front.
A huge explosion at zero hour - 3.10am on June 7 - started the battle. Nineteen chambers 30 metres below the ground packed with explosives were detonated under German lines as gun batteries pounded the enemy. One soldier said: "It was like as if the lid of Hell had lifted off."
The New Zealand Division under General Guy Russell, part of the II Anzac Corps, advanced up the slope behind artillery fire, dealing to the enemy as they closed on the town before dawn.
Frontline German troops, already smashed by heavy bombardments before the offensive, were quickly subdued, although counter-attacks from enemy shellfire caused heavy Allied casualties. Russell himself was lucky to survive the offensive. On a visit to the front, a sniper's bullet penetrated his helmet, creasing his scalp.
The battle was over by June 14, though the following year German storm-troopers recovered what their soldiers lost in the middle of 1917.
Jeff McNeill examines a World War I barbed wire stake. Photo / Getty Images
"This was our great victory," McNeill says. "We seem to like disasters like Gallipoli and Passchendaele. But the men felt proud of Messines."
His research took him into Saxon and Bavarian military collections, where he had to translate the heavy black Gothic font called Fraktur to make sense of German strategy. McNeill found documents where officers were "diving for cover" after costly strategic mistakes became apparent.
From the material it was clear senior German commanders knew the British had tunnels under the ground their troops occupied. They even proposed to withdraw from the ridge, which afforded commanding views over the surrounding countryside. But officers in the field were determined to remain because they already had suffered heavy casualties and argued their countermining measures were effective.
"They stayed and got blown sky high," McNeill remarked.
A second costly error saw highly trained Bavarian counter-attack troops deployed to the frontline when weary Saxon units were withdrawn. The soldiers suffered heavy losses when the ridge exploded, and the 1st Guards Reserve Division who replaced them had no time to plan their counter-attack.
McNeill wonders if the outcome might have been altered had the Bavarian divisions been held back and attacked from the rear. In the end, Germany had about 24,000 casualties, about the same as the 12 British and colonial divisions ranged against them.
In his book, McNeill addresses a dark side of conflict - the bayonetting of German prisoners and wounded soldiers. Accounts of war crimes and bloodlust are absent from official New Zealand histories but can be found in letters and journals soldiers wrote.
The Australian war historian, Charles Bean, wrote how soldiers would "harpoon" enemy troops with their bayonets. Bean told readers it was pointless to "cry shame" about the practice, "unless he cries out about the whole system of war".
McNeill said one reference about the behaviour of some New Zealand troops was found in John A. Lee's wartime classic Civilian into Soldier. Lee, who was awarded the DCM for gallantry at Messines, has a scene where his character, John Guy, confronts an officer who refuses to get aid to wounded Germans.
The officer looks over the fearful "Huns" and touches his gun. Guy challenges the officer: "Like to shoot 'em on the nest, sir?"
McNeill says Lee's novel sums up the fact that war is "grim, nasty, brutal stuff where you're sticking bayonets into people's guts, you're knocking people's heads in and shooting their brains out. It's horrible.
"What I'm saying is let's see the whole package here, let's not desensitise and glorify this stuff."
The New Zealand troops were "not perfect by any stretch". At the same time "the Germans weren't angels either", and could pretend to surrender before catching advancing forces off-guard.
McNeill says war crimes raise wider issues of command and the consequences of such behaviour. "It's very clear in the military manual that you don't shoot prisoners or surrendering soldiers. Warfare is not about vengeance and it's a slippery slope when you start contravening the rules."
For McNeill, the Messines story has a personal dimension. His grandfather, Hugh, was a Dink who returned injured from the war having damaged his hand. The author never met the WWI soldier but found his service records.
The entry for injuries mentioned "GSW RH1", which meant Rifleman Hugh McNeill had a gunshot wound to the index finger of his right hand. He may have had other battle wounds, because McNeill recalls his father saying the war veteran dug chunks out metal out of his shoulder.
In his search to understand Messines, McNeill thought about his grandfather and his war. Like most of the civilian soldiers in the great battle, he was simply an ordinary man compelled to do extraordinary things.
