From the Uttermost Ends of the Earth

Written By: - Date published: 11:36 am, October 13th, 2007 - 1 comment
Categories: history - Tags:

300px-chateau_wood_ypres_1917.jpg

On the morning of October the 12th 1917 845 New Zealand soldiers lost their lives in a failed attack on Bellvue Spur during the Battle of Passchendaele.

At commemorations held in Flanders yesterday, Peter Kennedy, The New Zealand Ambassador to Belgium reffered to the attack of that morning “the greatest disaster in New Zealand’s history, in terms of lives lost in a single day”.

We Shall Keep the Faith
by Moina Michael, November 1918

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

One comment on “From the Uttermost Ends of the Earth ”

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  1. Inventory2 1
    13 October 2007 at 7:52 pm

    I can, I think, safely say that this is an issue where the left and the right will have no problem whatsoever finding consensus. The Battle of Passchendale was a tragedy for New Zealand.

    My grandfather was a Gallipoli veteran, my father a WWII veteran, and my brother fought in Vietnam. We should never take the freedoms that they and their colleagues fought for, and so many died for, for granted.

    “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
    Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
    At the going down of the sun and in the morning
    We will remember them.”

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