In the footsteps of NZ heroes

The final stories of brave New Zealand soldiers who died 100 years ago are there to be discovered by Kiwis today, hidden, lost or forgotten among European battlefields long since overgrown, farmed or memorialised.

Among the more than 12,500 New Zealanders who died on the World War I battlefields in Western Europe was Auckland man Captain Henry John Innes Walker. The 25-year-old’s last known words, ‘‘Come on lads,’’ were spoken as he advanced under heavy enemy fire while fighting for the British Army’s Royal Warwickshire Regiment in Belgium.

Walker died in the Flanders region on April 25, 1915, as Anzac forces were landing on the Gallipoli beaches in Turkey, where about 2700 New Zealanders would die in the war. His body was lost until a 2016 excavation of a battlefield site near the Belgian town of Ypres. Archaeologists found a medallion, whistle and binoculars with the body to help identify him.

Such finds continue to occur as the trenches and no man’s lands of the 1914-18 war are excavated among today’s poppydotted grassy slopes and farmhouses of Flanders, where thousands of travellers visit each year.

The quiet roads and village pubs in the Ypres area seem mostly travelled by small tour parties driving, cycling and riding about, exploring the sites, monuments and battle-scarred countryside.

The Tyne Cot Cemetery has 520 New Zealand graves, 322 for unidentified soldiers. A memorial commemorates 1176 New Zealanders who have no known grave.

On April 18, 2018, Walker’s descendants watched as he was buried with full military honours at the nearby New Irish Farm Cemetery. Among them was his great-nephew Allan Innes-Walker.

‘‘According to his men, Jack’s New Zealanders in Flanders is arguably the single greatest disaster in our military history, the 1917 first battle at Passchendaele, where some 843 New Zealand soldiers died in a day.

BART HEIRWEG/VISITFLANDERS A lingering mist at Tyne Cot Cemetery in Flanders Fields which has 520 New Zealand graves, 322 unidentified. There is a memorial commemorating 1176 New Zealanders who have no known grave.

ED SCRAGG/ STUFF Connor Sherry, left, with Zak Blackburn, laid a wreath for great-grandfather Charles Beddow at the Menin Gate after discovering on his trip to Flanders where he had died.

A remembrance service is held at the Menin Gate every day.

The Cloth Hall in Ypres, rebuilt after the war, now houses the Flanders Museum.

New Zealander Captain Henry John Innes Walker died on the battlefields of Flanders.