11/10/2026
🇳🇿 12 OCTOBER 1917 — PASSCHENDAELE
NEW ZEALAND’S BLACKEST DAY
There are dates in New Zealand history that should never be forgotten.
12 October 1917 is one of them.
At 5.25am, in the cold and rain of Flanders, soldiers of the New Zealand Division climbed from their positions and began advancing towards Bellevue Spur, near Passchendaele, Belgium.
What followed was catastrophic.
The battlefield had been turned into a sea of mud. Heavy artillery could barely be moved forward and the preliminary bombardment had failed to destroy much of the German barbed wire.
The New Zealanders advanced anyway.
They struggled through deep mud towards wire that was still largely intact. German machine-gunners in concrete pillboxes swept the battlefield from the front and flanks.
Men became trapped in shell holes. Others desperately searched for gaps through the wire.
Within hours, the attack had effectively failed.
Around 2,700 New Zealanders became casualties.
846 New Zealand soldiers were recorded as dead or mortally wounded on 12 October.
More would subsequently die from their wounds.
In terms of New Zealand lives lost in a single day, 12 October 1917 remains our blackest day.
And the horror did not finish when the firing subsided.
Wounded men remained scattered across the battlefield, some lying for hours — even days — in the mud and rain.
Stretcher-bearers repeatedly ventured into the devastated ground to bring them back. Moving a single wounded man through kilometres of mud could require six or eight men and take hours.
For families back in New Zealand, the telegrams began arriving.
Small towns, farms, workplaces, rugby clubs and families throughout the country discovered that their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers would never come home.
Some families lost more than one.
The Newlove family of Takaka suffered an almost unimaginable loss. Three brothers — Charles, Edwin and Leslie Newlove — were killed during the New Zealand Division's operations of 4 and 12 October.
Today, many of the New Zealanders lost at Passchendaele have no known grave.
Their names are carved into memorials thousands of kilometres from home.
Others did return to New Zealand — wounded, scarred or carrying memories of a battlefield that stayed with them for the rest of their lives.
Gallipoli occupies a special place in our national story.
But we should also know the name Passchendaele.
Because on a wet Friday morning in Belgium, a small country on the other side of the world suffered a loss almost beyond comprehension.
12 October 1917.
Passchendaele.
843 dead or mortally wounded.
One morning.
We remember them.
Lest We Forget. 🇳🇿
