Remembering the dead - Passchendaele

During and after the First World War, New Zealanders on the battlefields and at home reflected on their country’s role in the conflict with a mixture of sadness and pride. The huge losses in Belgium left deep scars and forged an enduring bond between the two countries. War cemeteries in Belgium and hundreds of memorials back in New Zealand serve as permanent reminders of the terrible toll of 1917. 

Dealing with death

In 1914 most New Zealanders made sense of the costs of war through the idea of the good Christian death. The consolation and ritual within this, though, could not prepare people for the scale and manner of death experienced on the Western Front. The great distances separating New Zealand soldiers from their families and communities back home added to the difficulties of dealing with grief.

When a soldier was killed, his comrades formed the primary circle of mourners. Back in New Zealand, the grief of mourning families was compounded by the absence of a body or funeral. In the case of those reported missing, families faced an agonising wait for news of their loved ones’ fate. More ...

Buried in Belgian soil

More than 4600 New Zealand servicemen are buried or commemorated in around 80 cemeteries in Belgium, which are situated close to where men fell in battle. Tyne Cot Cemetery is the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery on the Western Front. It also contains the graves of more New Zealanders – 520 (322 of them unidentified) – than any other cemetery beyond our shores. The New Zealand Memorial Apse in the cemetery's Memorial to the Missing commemorates the 1176 New Zealanders who have no known grave. More ...

War memorials

In the years following the end of the war, New Zealanders erected around 500 civic war memorials to those who died in the conflict. With most of New Zealand's war dead buried overseas, local memorials acted as surrogate tombs, places for families to grieve for their loved ones. Many of these memorials commemorate Messines, Passchendaele and other places, events and people associated with the Belgian battlefields. More ...

A memorial on rails

Decorative or utilitarian, some of New Zealand's First World War memorials were more unusual than others. In 1925 the minister of railways, Gordon Coates, agreed to a proposal to name a steam locomotive ‘in memory of those members of the New Zealand Railways who fell in the Great War’. More ...