Driver Frazer's War

Wednesday 18 September:

A grey cool morning and being a little tired after our dash to the Somme we drove to Zonnebeke to see the most important of the Flanders war museums. The museum is in a grand old house and contains some wonderful displays. After some time upstairs we went down through a mock-up of a trench system, with noises and cries of officers, etc., and the grumbles of men. We then passed into a series of underground bunkers, which included a Scottish armourer at work on a Lee Enfield rifle, a hospital wing with a dreadful operation in progress, an Australian bunker and a New Zealand command post, etc. After a pleasant lunch in the grounds we drove back towards Ieper and visited the Hooge Crater. There is a hotel alongside and for a small fee one can walk around the original trench system and look at the huge craters. There were also the remains of immensely thick concrete bunkers. One had been built by the British, and when the Germans captured it the immediately placed a very thick wall of concrete across the entrance which was on the British side so that they could use it in safty. These pre-dated the Messines craters and were blown up by both sides at different times with heavy loss of life. We then went through a very good small museum. Across the road is a large cemetery full of victims of the fighting at Hooge.

Thursday September 18:

A sunny and cool morning and we drove a few kilos south to Mesen (Messines). We parked in the pleasant little square and found our way to the council chambers which also hold the small museum upstairs. On starting to pay we were told very quickly and kindly that New Zealanders do not pay there. The welcome was amazing. Almost the first thing in the museum I saw was a New Zealand soldier in a genuine World War 1 uniform, wearing the lemon squeezer and bearing the familiar round badges of the 15th North Aucklanders which I wore from 1945 to 1949 as a school cadet in Wellsford. The original owner of the uniform had donated it years before. They had also another lemon squeezer in a display cabinet and said they had been donated it by a New Zealand soldier some time ago but knew only his name. Within minutes I had accessed his name and details about him on the computer so that made a good start.

Then in came some New Zealanders from Wellington. They had his grandfather's hand drawn map of the line of the New Zealand attack which he produced the day before the attack and copied on a simple copier machine the night before for the attacking troops. Reprters and photographers (for what paper/s we know not) and photographed the map, dad's diary, including pages from it, and all the New Zealanders with the map and diary prominently displayed. I had to give them details of Dad's service, etc., also. I also told them how he probably delivered a large part of the hundreds of tons of shells which had blown their town apart! They were fascinated also when I gave them a map showing the NZ twenty "lifts", each of 100 yards for the creeping barrage, which preceded the New Zealanders up and through the town to the end of the attack on the other side of Messines ridge. I was able to tell them of the immense job which the NZ Tech Acks must have done to produce over 2,000 individual calculations for the 114 18 pounders involved to do such a precise shoot. I have also promised to send them information on the role of the New Zealand artillery in the re-taking of their town from the Germans, and a copy of Dad's diary for their records.

Perhaps the saddest thing we saw were the boots found in 1978 still on the feet of a New Zealand soldier uncovered when a sports field was developed. There was also the rusty grenade still clutched in his hand. Half his head had been blown away. They could not find his identification though. I finally pointed out to them the surprise I had at finding in a display case the remains of an original long magazine Lee Enfield, the "Long Tom" used in the Boer War which some New Zealanders were still using in Gallipoli (I found the remains of one in the museum there a few years ago wrongly labelled as a French rifle). They were supposed to have been recalled after the Gallipoli campaign and replaced with the Short Magazine Lee Enfield still in use in the 1950s when I did my service.

They then went to a great deal of trouble to direct me to Hill 63 a couple of kms away where the New Zealand artillery were said to have been virtually wheel to wheel during the great barrage. The hill is now heavilly wooded and we could not see much of it, but we visited a small cemetery alongside where among others I saw the grave of a Maori Battalion soldier of the NZ pioneers - a Ruru from Te Karaka - a well known name there when I was a boy. There was also a very good Australian display at the corner of the road (known as Hyde Park Corner where the Australian tunnelers had made an enormous underground complex of billets and a hospital.. Then we drove on a short distance to Ploegsteert ("Plug Street" to the British troops), and on the way passed a large cemetery containing a few NZers and with a large British Memorial where they sound the last post once a month.

Friday 20th September:

We drove towards Zonnebeke and stopped at the only French war cemetery which we encountered on the trip. There were 5,000 crosses packed into the cemetery in absolutely geometrical lines. I imagine that it was a post-war concentration cemetery. We had planned to do another walk between Tyne Cot and Passchendaele, but decided we were too tired to walk, so drove southwest to Hill 60. This was an artificial hill built out of the spoil removed from a nearby railway cutting before the war. Its height made it an important strategic point for both sides and led to endless battles and thousands of casualties. Both sides mined it, but the Australian tunnelers blew up 650 German in one blast. Amongst the trees there are shell holes and mine craters everywhere, and a massive German pill box with hundreds of shell holes pocking its sides but clearly having made no impact upon it. There was also an underground concrete bunker. Nearby was a memorial to two members of the French underground shot their by German SS in 1944. Their photos looked so young.

After dinner we packed up and attended the Menengate ceremony for the last time, and next day we delivered our car back to Calais and managed to get seats on the Eurostar with great relief as it was running a very reduced timetable as a result of a fire in the tunnel the day after we came over.

So ended the incredibly emotional trip back in time. My admiration and gratitude for the sacrifices of my father and the other soldiers was great before I came but grew enormously while there. I think I have a better understanding of why so little was ever said when they returned. The enormity of what they went through and the sheer horror of it was such that few could confront it for decades after. How could they explain to the rest of us just what they went through, watching their friends blown apart and grievously wounded day after day for years? Many doubtlessly had feelings of guilt that they had survived when so many did not. The effect on New Zealand of the time can never be underestimated . From a tiny country of just over a million population we sent 130,000 men to the war (more than one citizen in every ten), of whom one in seven was killed, and thousands were injured, many of whom went home to die prematurely, with the others carrying the mental and physical scars for life. And not just the men - thousands like my mother were widowed or lost fiances, sons, fathers, uncles, brothers. And then came the depression and another war. My generation and subsequent ones have truly had it lucky.