Anzac day marked in Belgium

The Anzac procession to the Menin Gate through Ypres. Picture / Stuart Horne

BELGIUM - As the sun was going down on Anzac commemorations in New Zealand yesterday it was rising on those in the fields of Flanders and surroundings towns, attended by several hundred Antipodeans.

New Zealand's 29,967 World War I and II death toll was highest in France, with the second highest number of war dead buried in Belgium. Most of those are in the region immortalised by the 1915 John McCrae poem which begins "In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place..."

The only poppies in evidence yesterday were those worn by the Kiwis and Australians who had come to pay their respect and perhaps leave some behind on the graves of the 4,711 New Zealanders, some noting only their country of origin, whose actual identity is "known only to God".

But the rows upon rows of white headstones and the three memorials to those New Zealanders who had died but whose bodies were never located, particularly in the Great War (WWI), were adorned by spring tulips in the now peaceful and farmed fields where New Zealand soldiers fought some of their most impressive and also some of their most deadly battles.

Described on those memorials as soldiers from the "uttermost ends of the earth", the men were yesterday praised by the mayor of Ieper (known in New Zealand as Ypres) Luc Dehaene for sacrificing their lives to liberate towns whose names they couldn't even pronounce.

Eighteen year-old Wellington exhange student Nikki Gunn, in Belgium eight months, told one gathering she was embarrassed she had never understood the point of "looking backwards" to commemorate Anzac day, which she viewed as just another holiday, until she came to Belgium and "stood on the soil where so many New Zealand soldiers fought for my country".

Ieper's recognition of the horrific losses sustained in the region where shells are still unearthed by farmers most weeks is remarkably acknowledged by the local fire brigade, which has stopped the traffic to play the Last Post every single evening at 8pm at the Menin memorial gate in the town since the war.

Yesterday in Messines, where New Zealanders famously forced the Germans from the town in 1917, the New Zealand flag flew together with those of Belgium from the windows of the town's brick houses in New Zealand Street.

As with Anzac commemorations elsewhere, the New Zealand embassy reports growing interest among vsiting Kiwis in the Flanders-based commemorations, where New Zealand also suffered its worst ever slaughter in one day, losing 845 men on October 12, 1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele.

Anton Gazenbeek, who runs the New Zealanders in Belgium group in Brussels, says an important factor has been the decision three years ago by then new ambassador Wade Armstrong, to organise a bus from Brussels to take local and visiting Kiwis to the commemoration events in Flanders on Anzac Day.

A number of New Zealanders had seen the trip advertised and come from other places specifically for the event, including John Parkinson from |London who wanted to visit the memorial where the name of his grandmother's brother Heu Maaka Pera, from the Maori Pioneer Battalion and who died in 1918, was inscribed.

While a number of senior Australian politicians atended the events, there were none from New Zealand, some of whom opted for Galipoli instead.

Next year, things are however expected to be different with the 90th commemorations of both the Battle of Messines and Passchendaele, which are expected to attract considerably more interest.

Helen Clark last year suggested the creation of a "shared memories" agreement to the Belgium Prime Minister to help progress the commemorations and it is now under negotiation.