With my interests in the First World War and in cycling it seemed to me natural to combine them by touring the cemeteries and monuments of the Western Front in Belgium and France by bicycle. And so a project was born: to cycle the full length of the Western Front. In this mini-series of articles I present a few of the sites visited during just one particular day of that tour, a day beginning at Zonnebeke in Belgium.
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Leaving Dochy Farm New British Cemetery behind (see the previous part of this mini-series, linked to at the
end of the article) my partner and I cycled off northwest along the Zonnebeke to Langemark road in the Langemark direction for just under a kilometre to a crossroads. There we turned right up Roeselarestraat and carried on for another 1.3 kilometres to a second crossroads.Here, at the junction of the roads Keerzelaarstraat, Roeselarestraat and Schipstraat, stands a memorial to the men of the New Zealand Division who fell in the Battle of Broodseinde on 4th October 1917, a phase of the months-long Battle of Passchendaele (or Third Ypres).
The hamlet of Broodseinde is 2.4km to the southeast of this memorial, but the name of the battle itself is a misnomer because Broodseinde was only one place near the centre of the objective line for the attack which ran from Poelcappelle down to Gheluvelt. The New Zealand Division were part of II ANZAC Corps (ANZAC stands Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, a grouping of units from both nations) and were deployed opposite the crossroads where the monument now stands, to capture this area.The monument itself is a cream stone obelisk with a wreath near the base surrounding the letters NZ, another wreath near the top and between the two the inscription “IN HONOUR OF THE MEN OF THE NEW ZEALAND DIVISION. THE BATTLE OF BROODSEINDE 4TH OF OCTOBER 1917.” It stands on a base with four stubby columns
at the corners, in a small landscaped area of grass and grey gravel.The attack was a relative success. The Germans had been massing in their front line trenches for their own attack and so were caught by the Allied artillery and took severe casualties. The Allied infantry then hit this battered mass of Germans, the New Zealanders alone taking 1,100 Germans prisoner and capturing 59 machine guns.
This was also the day the weather started to turn really bad, the beginning of the continuous rain that meant later attacks would go in through almost a sea of mud. Only eight days later the New Zealanders would launch another attack, now in much worse conditions, and suffer 2,700 casualties. The slog through the Flanders mud that characterises the Battle of Passchendaele had begun.
After having a good look around the monument and taking photographs (two of which accompany this article), we remounted our bicycles and continued off along the same road (now renamed s-Graventafelstraat) for our next stop: Passchendaele New British Cemetery.
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PHOTOGRAPHS of the New Zealand Memorial (by the author, July 2011)
Previous part of this mini-series: Dochy Farm New British Cemetery
Next part of this mini-series: Passchendaele New British Cemetery
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Sources:
Wikipedia article on the Battle of Broodseinde
Major and Mrs Holt's Battlefield Guide to the Western Front (North)
Personal visit to battlefield and memorial, July 2011