A huge price paid by one family
Passchendaele, October 12, 1917 — a place and time that are recorded as New Zealand’s worst military disaster. For one Kaeo family it was a disaster beyond all comprehension.
William and Cecilia Leslie lost two of their sons that day.
John George Leslie and James Francis Leslie’s names, along with those of 1177 other New Zealand soldiers who fell in the Passchendaele battles in October 1917 and whose bodies were never found, are recorded on the Memorial to the Missing at Tyne Cot Cemetery Zonnebeke, WestVlaanderen, in Belgium.
John, divorced with a young son, and his younger brother James, who was unmarried, were members of the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Rifle Brigade. They left New Zealand in April 1917. Both were killed just six months later.
The story is told how older brother Tom was particularly close to his brother Jim, having worked with him in the bush. The evening of the day Jim was killed, Tom was preparing for bed back home in the bush camp at Te Ngaere.
He suddenly seemed to become aware of his younger brother’s presence in the hut. He even seemed to hear Jim sigh as he lay down on the makeshift bed.
Tom knew at that moment that something dreadful had happened, and that he would never see his brother again.
Glyn Harper describes the tragedy of the ill-advised manoeuvre in his book Massacre at Passchendaele.
Ordered to fight in the fields of Passchendaele in mud so deep that it was almost impossible to walk, the NZ Division found themselves up against particularly strong wire entanglements, which they found almost impossible to cut.
The Leslie brothers’ names, along with those of other young men from Kaeo who were killed during the two world wars, are also recorded on plaques outside and within the foyer of the Memorial Hall at Kaeo, and in All Saints’ Anglican Church.