Passchendaele Remembered

NZ and Australian leaders led commemorations at the 90th anniversary of the battle of Passchendaele in Belgium this month. PM Helen Clark and Australian Governor General Michael Jeffery paid tribute to the 10,000 ANZAC soldiers who died in one of the bloodiest trench warfare campaigns of WW1. “For New Zealand, October 12, 1917 at  Passchendaele ranks as our worst ever military disaster in terms of lives lost on a single day,” said PM Clark. “It is those brave men we remember and honour today.” The commemorations were held at Tyne Cot military cemetery,  just outside of the village of Passchendaele. Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth military cemetery in the world, with 12,000 graves and the names of 35,000 missing soldiers engraved on its memorial walls.