Susan Buckland: Known only by headstones

COMMENT

I know of a young woman who has organised a group of her contemporaries, all in their early 20s, to accompany her to Gallipoli. There, on the other side of the world, they will attend the Anzac commemoration next month.

It is good that each succeeding generation has kept alive the Anzac memory, of those who fought and died in that now distant war. April 25, 1915, has been described as a defining moment in our history, the moment when New Zealand came of age.

On that day, beside their Australian mates, a large force of our young men, many barely out of their teens, landed on the beaches of Gallipoli. Then, in the face of blistering fire, they scaled almost impossible cliffs to get to an entrenched enemy on the heights.

The Anzac battle was the beginning of hardships and sacrifice that so many other New Zealanders became involved in during fearful battles in France.

Of the many thousands of New Zealanders who joined Britain and its allies during World War I, 18,700 died in action or of war wounds. Only Scotland lost a greater proportion of its country's men. Here, few were untouched by the loss of family or friends.

On a visit to the Somme in northwest France, I found the grave of a family friend at Beaulencourt among rows and rows of headstones, silent witnesses to the futility of war. His name and rank were clearly marked, but many buried at Beaulencourt and in each of the more than 200 cemeteries in the Somme have headstones with no names, just the poignant commemoration "Known only unto God".

There are the thousands of young men like my mother's 21-year-old cousin John Cooper, killed in action in Belgium, and her uncle Tom Cooper, whose bodies were never found. Carved on the huge memorial gate near Ypres, their names are listed endlessly, one by one.

New Zealanders arrived in Europe to become part of the siege warfare that was World War I. For years, Armies faced one another at not much more than shouting distance and strung across kilometres of trenches from the coast of Belgium across the whole of France.

It became a war of machine guns, bayonets, barbed wire, deep mud, shelling by artillery and close combat, when one side or the other tried to move forward and for nearly four years never succeeded in doing so except for an occasional three or four miles of muddy, shell-pocked fields.

The attacks involved casualties that had to be counted not in thousands or even in the tens of thousands. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, of whom 20,000 died.

In the nearby town of Peronne, where Anzac Day is commemorated every year, I visited the Great War museum. The governor, Jean-Pierre Vienot, is keen to add New Zealand memorabilia. I let him know about the New Zealand Government's guide titled "From the uttermost ends of the earth" that includes places of New Zealand interest on the Western front.

The Commonwealth war cemeteries and memorials are within short distances of each other and the flowers that soften their brooding silence are absent from the German cemeteries.

The New Zealand memorial overlooks the village of Fleurs, captured by the New Zealand Division after 23 days of fighting at a cost of 7000 casualties and 1560 dead.

For families in New Zealand it will be a matter of solace and pride that there will be French people standing beside New Zealanders once again this year to commemorate Anzac Day, to the memory of the men who came from the uttermost ends of the earth.