Garden opens in landscape of grief
Like the soldiers of WWI, a living memorial has sailed to the battlefields of Belgium. Andrew Stone reports
New Zealand garden set in a landscape of grief has been laid on a European battlefield in time for commemorations of the nation’s most shattering military defeat.
The poppy- shaped garden near the Belgium village of Passchendaele features 846 bronze inlays — each one a tribute to the New Zealand Division soldiers cut down by German fire in a few awful hours on October 12, 1917.
Designed by Auckland landscape architect Cathy Challinor, the garden i s one of a series of connecting memorials installed by countries who lost countless soldiers in the grim World War I battles on the Western Front.
A century after the Battle of Passchendaele, the scale of the tragedy still resonates. The single day’s death toll remains the worst in New Zealand’s post- settlement history. The military failure was so immense that in a few short hours 6 per cent of New Zealand’s total WWI casualties occurred.
Soldiers were sent to certain death across a saturated killing ground churned into a muddy morass by artillery shells and ceaseless rain.
Private Leonard Hart described the scene as “nothing but utter desolation, not a blade of grass or a tree”.
As the troops struggled towards Bellevue Spur and the ultimate objective of Passchendaele, thick barbed wire blocked their progress. German machine gun fire cut the men to ribbons.
Hart wrote: “Dozens got hung up in the wire and shot down before their surviving comrades’ eyes. It was now broad daylight and what was left of us realised that the day was lost. We accordingly lay down in shell holes or any cover we could get and waited. Any man who showed his head was immediately shot. They were marvellous shots those Huns. We had lost nearly 80 per cent of our strength and gained about 300 yards of ground in the attempt. This 300 yards was useless to us for the Germans still held and dominated the ridge.”
The pain inflicted by the defeat was so complete that soldiers who survived the battle locked away their haunting memories.
Gunner Bert Stokes, writing home after the disaster, admitted that “some of the sights l’ve witnessed have hit me very hard, various things have taken place right under my nose that l’ll never forget.”
But he, like other men spared death in the Flanders mud, cast aside the nightmare. “We won’t say any more of these things, there’s a cheerful side to all out experiences, so let’s look at that side.”
The memorial garden, which will be dedicated next week, is partly a response by the New Zealand Passchendaele Society to ensure that all soldiers who did not come home are not forgotten. The garden reflects the theme of remembrance through native plants, visual art and literature.
Known as the New Zealand