13/10/2026
So, what is NZ’s battle in Bellevue Spur in Passchendaele, Belgium all about and why is it considered NZ’s deadliest battle in military history?
When Germany attacked France in 1914, they were expecting a short war; a short, lively war full of dramatic and glorious cavalry charges and victorious infantry, ready to go home after Paris was taken. That did not occur.
Instead, the technology developed by that stage meant that a defensive war with artillery barrages was always going to prove stronger than an offensive one. The mobile part of the first months of World War One quickly became a static war with men in trenches guarding no-man's land and with the protection of massed artillery in the back lines.
The Germans knew that as long as they kept the French ground that they had taken, they were winning the war. The French knew that to win the war, they had to eject the Germans.
Part of the German advance went through Belgium and the German forces asked the government and the King of the Belgians permission to let them through, promising to pay reparations and pay for any damage caused. The Belgians refused. They didn’t want to be a part of a neighbour waging war on another neighbour but Germany went anyway and that’s what brought Britain into the war, - both Britain and Germany were signatories to an 1839 treaty which recognised the sovereignty of the kingdom of Belgium. When Germany broke that treaty, Britain joined the war.
When Kaiser Wilhelm II (the German emperor from 1888 till his abdication in 1918) learned that Britain had joined the war against him because of the violation of the treaty, he said (in German, of course) “oh, all for a scrap of paper” which showed how much faith he put in the keeping of promises made by previous generations.
The war on the western front in France and Belgium therefore, was basically in deadlock. Trenches and artillery meant that attacks were costly and often futile. Tanks did something to break that deadlock but not much and tanks had to be used in very special conditions but when they were used correctly, they were a game changer.
By 1917, WW1 had become what was referred to as a war of attrition. Each side trying to kill as many of the other side as they could until their armies had wasted away. It was a strategy that didn’t endear itself to the common soldier. Before 1917, the commander of the British forces, Field Marshall Douglas Haig, decided on a grand strategy. He would advance north into Belgium and cut off the German-held ports which were bases for U-boats that, by 1917, were crippling the British economy by sinking the ships it needed to survive.
But there was one thing he had not foreseen and that was the weather.
Why were a thousand New Zealand soldiers lost in two hours, with nothing achieved, on October 12, 1917? A few reasons.
Mud.
The battleground, centuries before, had been swampy. Farmers had built drainage systems over generations but artillery shells destroyed them. From July to October the rain had been particularly heavy. The mud was so deep that tanks could sink in it.
Previous success.
New Zealand's attack on Bellevue Spur on October 12th was part of a much larger battle. On October 4th they had made a 1900 yard advance through German positions.
Field Marshall Haig was keen to keep the Germans retreating and ordered his army to keep pushing. But the vital artillery support required guns to be moved up and solid positions to be prepared. This was impossible to achieve in the time given.
German preparation
The German Army had a saying: "sweat saves blood." Bellevue Spur was part of their "defence in depth" against an expected attack. Concrete pillboxes with machine guns were surrounded with barbed wire. Without artillery bombardment, infantry stood no chance.
Command
The New Zealanders' commanding general, Godley, was a man who obeyed orders. In my opinion he was either of two things: a man who had no idea what he was sending his soldiers into and therefore criminally incompetent or a man who did know what he was sending them to and therefore criminally callous. He knew that his men's efforts were part of a larger plan but that would have been little comfort for the families who lost their men for no return.
Passchendaele. The name meant many things to the New Zealand soldier: sacrifice, suffering, incompetence, futility. Why were kiwi soldiers sent through mud to attack a place they had no hope of taking? The answer lies in the place they were in history: where military technology dictated strategy and men were a commodity to be consumed by the meat grinder of war.
Photo: Canadian war museum
