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The Prime Minister yesterday recalled the futility and tragedy of the Battle of Passchendaele and the courage of the many New Zealand soldiers who died there.
She was speaking at an Anzac ceremony in Flanders, Belgium, marking the 90th anniversary of the World War I battle which, she said, was New Zealand's worst military disaster in terms of lives lost in a single day.
"During battles on October 4 and 12, 1917, more than 1300 young New Zealanders were killed and many more injured," she said.
"On October 12 alone more than 800 New Zealanders were killed."
Passchendaele was a byword for disaster, she said.
"Our soldiers were bombarded by their own guns on the start line. The planned artillery barrage failed to provide the necessary support. Uncut wire barred the way forward. Enemy machine gunners cut a swathe through our ranks."
But it was also a byword for courage in adversity.
"It speaks of people bravely doing their duty as their comrades around them were being cut down, of desperate efforts to advance under a merciless hail of machinegun bullets, of stretcher bearers struggling to extricate the wounded lying in the quagmire."
Five sets of brothers fell during the two attacks. One family, the Newloves of Takaka, lost three sons.
None of the Newloves had a named grave, and Helen Clark said they might be among the more than 300 unknown New Zealand soldiers buried in the Tyne Cot Cemetery.
Helen Clark also talked of the survivors, saying that in 1999 Bright Williams of Hastings, who was then aged 101, had an operation to remove the last shards of metal from his thigh - the remains of three machinegun bullets that struck him down. .
"Sadly, Mr Williams' death in 2003 cut our last link with the men of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force - and with Passchendaele."
- NZPA
