Call for war stories

Otago and Southland people are being urged to come forward to the University of Otago with their stories, photos, and letters about the disastrous World War 1 campaign at Passchendaele.

Two second-year Otago University history students will collate the material about the well-known  battle in Belgium, and create a  blog where the stories will be told, and where further research material can be provided.

The work will be supervised by historian Prof Tom Brooking, who teaches a course on New Zealand and World War 1, and by dentistry/public health Prof John Broughton, who also has a strong interest in wartime history.The material can be emailed to the university at  passchendaele-stories@otago.ac.nz.

The two professors felt the blog, which was already operating, would help to commemorate the  centenary of the battle, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, coming up on October 12.

The battle took place on the Western Front from July to November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres.

The Otago regiment, which included soldiers from Southland, was "particularly badly knocked around and worse hit than other units", Prof Brooking said.

They had been "in the wrong place, at the wrong time," he said.

"Passchendaele was so tragic, ‘a terrible blunder’ as Private Len Hart put it."

New Zealand lost 600 men in two hours — 1200 in a day. ‘‘It was appalling — many were caught in the mud and wire in front of German machine guns firing from concrete bunkers, known as pill boxes,’’ Prof Brooking said. In total, 1900 New Zealand soldiers were wounded that day.

From a research perspective, he was interested in picking up the stories still "out there in towns and rural areas of Otago and Southland".

Units for this battle came from North and South Otago, Southland and Dunedin.

Researchers wanted to hear, via email, the impact of the relative’s experience on the broader family, whether soldiers were killed, or survived.

"What was the impact on mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, children and grandchildren, and on the farm or business?"

He suspected there were hundreds of families in towns such as Gore, Invercargill, and Queenstown, "whose stories have not yet been retold in writing", but had been passed down verbally from one generation to the next.

john.gibb@odt.co.nz