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Remembering NZ soldiers killed in Battle of Somme

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Remembering NZ soldiers in WWI Battle of Somme

Caption: Scene from the Battle of the Somme

The notorious WWI Battle of the Somme is less spoken of in New Zealand compared with Gallipoli, but for war historian Professor Glyn Harper its horrors are poignantly real. He has seen human remains there – knee joints and shoulder blades – protruding from ploughed fields where 1.2 million men died.

“It was one of the bloodiest battles in human history and the deadliest ever for New Zealand troops. Yet it has remained off the radar of public consciousness due to the catastrophic Gallipoli battle a year earlier,” says Professor Harper.

He is delivering a public talk: Life Is Very Cheap Here - NZ Troops In the Somme 1916 at the Palmerston North City Library tonight. He thinks it is important to remember September 15 – the date New Zealand troops joined the battle – to ensure New Zealanders reflect on the huge sacrifices made by young New Zealand men on the Somme.

The Battle of the Somme, or the Somme Offensive – from July 1 to November 18, 1916 – was fought by the Allied troops of France and Britain against the Germans on the Western Front, the area where Northern France borders Belgium and West Germany. The New Zealand Division joined the British Expeditionary Force in the third phase of the battle one hundred years ago on September 15. New Zealand troops endured 23 days of unbroken fighting – the longest of any division on the Somme.

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The casualty figures were devastating – of the 15,000 New Zealanders who fought at the Somme in northern France, 6000 were wounded and 2000 killed. More than half of the dead have no known grave. They are commemorated on the New Zealand Memorial to the Missing in Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, near Longueval. One of these men was returned home to New Zealand in November 2004 and his remains lie in the tomb of the Unknown Warrior outside New Zealand’s National War Memorial.

“The men were first were sent to the town of Armentières for ‘blooding’ and preparation for fighting,” says Professor Harper. “The scenes awaiting them were utterly nightmarish, with the smell of death and sounds of artillery pounding in the air.

“They could hear it, and worst of all they smelt it once entering the battlefield. The smell of rotting corpses was overwhelming. So many of the dead lay unburied with many never to have a proper burial or grave.”

“The Somme was a serious shock for the New Zealand soldiers,” he says. By the end of the campaign on 18 November 1916, the Allies had advanced about 12 km into German-held territory. They were devastated by the Germans’ superior trench-digging skills and slightly better raised position on mainly flat territory, not to mention the horrors of chlorine gas, bayonets and relentless gunfire, as well as the first use of tanks.

“There’s a general ignorance about the Western Front in New Zealand,” Professor Harper says. “It was such a painful experience and the surviving soldiers didn't want to talk about. They felt it was all for nothing.”

Professor Harper has visited the region several times, and describes it as “eerie and poignant.” Its gentle green farms and fields are a beautiful but thin veneer over the ghastly battles fought there a hundred years ago. There are still many reminders of its grim past in the tilled earth – belt buckles, buttons, old helmet fixtures, even unexploded bombs. And the bone fragments of dead young men.

Professor Harper is the author of numerous best-selling books on New Zealand’s war history, including several award-winning children’s books. His latest books, published last month, are Acts of Valour (HarperCollins) written for adults, and a shorter version, Best and Bravest ­– by the same publisher – for young adults.

He is the Massey University project manager for the Centenary History of New Zealand and the First World War project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War. It is a joint venture with Massey, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, the New Zealand Defence Force and the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association.

Event details:

Life Is Very Cheap Here - NZ Troops In the Somme 1916
Palmerston North City Library, Wednesday 14 September: 6.15pm – 7.30pm


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