Anton Oliver, head bowed, walked slowly away from his All Black rugby team-mates to the far end of the Nine Elms British cemetery in the remote Belgian countryside yesterday.
He recalled reading how thousands of New Zealanders had sacrificed their lives there in the First World War for reasons he still does not understand.
Tears rolled down his cheeks. He wiped them away, took a few quiet minutes to regain composure and then rejoined his group.
It was the first time on a tour that the All Blacks had pushed rugby to the background - for the whole day, to remember fallen New Zealand soldiers.
For most of them, it was a lesson on how about 100,000 New Zealanders went to fight in a war that was not theirs, and for an insignificant piece of land. They paid with their lives - more than 16,000 of them, with a further 40,000 injured.
Many players were moved by the descriptions of the hardship the soldiers endured in the trenches - the cold, waist-deep mud they tried to wade through, the tangles of barbed wire they became trapped on, the blood on the ground.
"They came up that little ridge, up to here where you're standing, and 2000 of them got wiped out in a couple of hours on October 14, 1917," historian Dr Chris Pugsley told the All Blacks as they stood at the Passchendaele monument, these days about 30 minutes drive from Poperinghe, on the Belgium border.
The fact they were standing on the actual war zone staggered some All Blacks.
The Passchendaele monument was built by the New Zealand Government.
It stands beside a countryside road intersection between two large red-brick houses where strategic points were in the war days.
The words: "In honour of the men of New Zealand Division", "The Battle of Broodseinde, 4 October, 1917," and "From the uttermost end of the Earth" are inscribed on the monument.
A former New Zealand Army officer, now author, lecturer and an authority on New Zealand's involvement in the war, Dr Pugsley was flown to France for the occasion.
With the first of two rugby tests against France scheduled on November 11 - Armistice Day - the New Zealand Rugby Football Union declared yesterday a remembrance day for its representative teams in France.
The All Blacks and New Zealand A team touring France are based at different hotels at Lille. Both teams visited the graves and war sites in northern France and Belgium.
Their first games will also mark the remembrance.
"It was a time for reflection, not only for Dave Gallaher, but for all the other lives of New Zealanders who are buried there and all the other soldiers gone but not forgotten," Oliver said.
Gallaher, who was wounded at Passchendaele and taken by either motor or horse-carriage ambulance to Poperinghe, says Dr Pugsley, was captain of the first All Blacks team in 1905 - known as The Originals - that beat France. Present All Blacks captain Todd Blackadder planted a specially bred rose called Lest We Forgetat Gallaher's grave at Nine Elms cemetery.
Then Oliver (Otago), Justin Marshall (Canterbury), Christian Cullen (Wellington) and Carlos Spencer (Auckland) laid Flanders poppy wreaths at the Nine Elms monument, which carries just three words: "Lest We Forget."
"It's the proudest thing I've ever done - laying the Otago wreath at the monument," Oliver said.
Each of the four players represented the four provinces that were significant to New Zealanders during the war, because their units were organised under those province names.
"In war, as in peace, rugby formed an integral part of the New Zealanders' lives," Dr Pugsley told the All Blacks. "Within each battalion, the inter-company rugby competitions were bloodily and fiercely fought, with victory the only satisfaction.
"These matches often resulted in a line of walking wounded parading to the regimental medical officer with broken bones and bruises the following day.
"It was the same everywhere New Zealanders went, whether resting from trench duty in the front line, or in training and convalescent camps in Egypt and England. Impromptu rugby teams were raised and challenges issued to other New Zealanders or the neighbouring British and Australian units."
Oliver, who did some research for the trip, later said: "I think every young New Zealander or all New Zealanders on their OE should, as their first port of call, come to places like this instead of the beach or the fancy nightclubs in London.
"You come here feeling so humbled and centred and ... wish we talked more about this kind of stuff because half the guys said they never got taught at school or anything like that. There's just so much and words can't really explain it. You have to come here and see it.
"We just had a battleground explained to us and to see what they were fighting for for three to four years - it just blows the mind away just trying to picture what they were doing, why?
"It's called a little ridge, but it's a little hump, it's a little of nothing, nowhere."
- NZPA
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