What does the word Passchendaele mean to you? If, according to Glyn
Harper, the word just reminds you of one of the many places in Europe
where World War I was fought, and nothing more, you are a typical New
Zealander in that respect.
Glyn Harper has this year published a book called "Massacre at
Passchendaele" (Whitcoulls NZ$39.95 230 pages). In the first 120 pages he
sets out the ghastly facts which that word should call to New Zealand
minds. It was the most disastrous defeat the New Zealand army has ever
suffered. In one day there were over 3000 casualties of whom 1190 were
deaths, over a thousand of whose bodies were never recovered.
Glyn Harper makes it quite clear that he believes the New Zealand army was
one of the greatest fighting forces of that war. But on 12 October 1917
that fighting force was set a task by the Imperial High Command which was
obviously a disastrous impossibility. It was inadequately prepared. The
required advance bombardment was quite inadequate. The ground over which
the advance was ordered was a total mass of over knee deep mud and shell
holes full of water and rotting bodies. The barbed wire entanglements were
so strong that they were never penetrated though hundreds died trying.
As well as all that, the Germans were fully aware of the pending attack and
well prepared for the ensuing slaughter. It was a senseless waste of human
life and a total failure. Glyn Harper describes it mainly in the words of
survivors.
In the remaining seventy pages of his book the author lists the names of
1,179 New Zealanders which are recorded on the Memorial to the Missing in
the Tyne Cot Cemetery, Zonnebeke, West Vlaanderen (one of the 174 British
cemeteries in Ypres Salient). These were the names of the men who died
that day and whose bodies were never found. It should never have happened.
But it did happen, in one day, at Passchendaele.
The New Zealand government of the time and the New Zealand press played
down the disaster. So our pious words on ANZAC day, "We shall remember
them" are a mockery as far as the Passchendaele dead are concerned. The
more completely we forget such blasphemous events in the past, the more
quickly we will drift towards a nuclear holocaust.
