Australian, New Zealand leaders lead tributes at WWI anniversary of Passchendaele battle
PASSCHENDAELE, Belgium: Australian and New Zealand leaders led tributes Thursday to the 10,000 soldiers from their nations who died 90 years ago this month in one of the bloodiest battles of World War I.
They also laid to rest the remains of five recently found soldiers.
New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark and Australia's Governor General Michael Jeffery led commemorations, laying wreaths and honoring those who fell as part of the WW I Anzac ? Australian and New Zealand Corps ? regiments that fought at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Clark said the battle was the single most deadly New Zealand soldiers have ever fought in.
"For New Zealand, October 12, 1917 at Passchendaele ranks as our worst ever military disaster in terms of lives lost on a single day," she said. "It is those brave men we remember and honor today."
Jeffery said the Anzac soldiers faced some of the most gruesome conditions armies have ever seen. "It's hard to even imagine the horror and devastation of fighting on the Western Front ? shell, gas, machine guns and barbed wire," he said.
As part of ceremonies five Australian soldiers, found near the village of Passchendaele last year, were reburied at Buttes Military Cemetery, one of many Commonwealth gravesites that dot Flanders Fields.
The remains were discovered during a dig for a new gas pipeline near to what was believed to have been a temporary WWI gravesite.
Four of the five skeletons were buried in blankets, tied with copperwire. The identity of two of the five men took months to decipher. It took DNA samples and historical research of which regiments fought where on the battle field to pin down the identities of the two.
Belgian and Australian authorities identified the two as Private John Hunter and Sergeant George Calder, but they could not identify the other three.
A contingent from Australia's 51st Battalion, of which one of the dead soldiers was a member, formed an honor guard at the reburial.
Clark and Jeffery led commemorations at Tyne Cot military cemetery just outside this tiny village.
The cemetery is the largest Commonwealth military burial site in the world, located just a few kilometers (miles) from the village of Passchendaele, which gave its name to one of the last battles of attrition fought during World War I.
There are 12,000 graves and 35,000 names of missing persons engraved on memorial walls at Tyne Cot which is situated on a ridge captured by Australian forces during the battle in 1917.
It overlooks the nearby city of Leper that was better known to the soldiers of 1914-18 by its French name, Ypres.
The July to November 1917 battle, described by historians as one of the bloodiest trench warfare fights during WW I, pitted British-led forces from across its then empire, including soldiers from Canada and other former colonies, against Germany. After the fighting was over, 500,000 soldiers were either dead, wounded or missing.
The battle was called to a halt after Canadian reinforcements replaced devastated British, Australian and New Zealand units near Passchendaele and captured the ruined village Nov. 10, 1917.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/04/europe/EU-GEN-Belgium-WWI-Anzac-Tribute.php
