Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Ross McCullough
A SOMBRE time in New Zealand’s military history will be remembered at Opotiki’s Cenotaph on Thursday – 100 years to the day since soldiers from Opotiki lost their lives at Passchendaele.
According to The Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association (RSA) October 12, 1917 was the “single darkest day” in New Zealand’s military history of the 20th Century with more than 856 killed in one day.
Many thousands who were wounded at Passchendaele, were never the same again either.
To mark the occasion, Shona Browne and local author and war historian, Sonia Edwards, will be out at dawn putting up crosses in front of the Cenotaph to represent the soldiers that lost their lives.
One of those being remembered is Mrs Browne’s great uncle, Private Lionel Parkinson who she said, like other soldiers from Opotiki, was killed that day.
Other family names of Opotiki soldiers that fell in battle between October 2 and October 12, 1917 include Reece, Cranston, Newell and Campbell.
While the district is currently having a torrid time with wet weather, in one sense, Mrs Browne said it would be fitting to commemorate their loss and sacrifice at the Cenotaph in the rain.
“The weather is significant, because back then they fought and died in that mud. It brings attention to the conditions they fought and died under.”
The RSA says when approximately 100,000 soldiers headed off to World War I, the population in New Zealand was around 1.1 million.
Of those numbers, about 18,000 died during or later because of the war.
Of the Opotiki soldiers that served their country during World War I, of which Passchendaele was just one battle, 100 never returned home.
Altogether, the Western Front claimed 12,500 lives while at Gallipoli more than 2700 died.
Commemorative services marking the bloody battle at Passchendaele each year also pay homage to the tireless work of the volunteers of Red Cross without whom the loss of life would have been much greater, says the RSA.