Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial
History
The Polygon Wood Sector was part of the Ypres Salient and the scene of heavy fighting for most of the war. It was originally held by the Allied forces but lost to the Germans in 1915. It was recaptured in September 1917 by the Australian 5th Division. After the First Battle of Passchendaele (12 October), soldiers of the New Zealand Division wintered in the area until February 1918, when they were sent to a rest area, before being transferred to the Somme during the German spring offensive. Consequently, many of those killed in action or who died of their wounds during this period were buried in the vicinity. After the war, over 2,000 of the Allied soldiers buried around Polygon Wood in wartime graves were re-interred in Buttes New British Cemetery, located in the north-eastern corner of Polygon Wood.
The Memorial
The New Zealand Memorial to the Missing, designed by the English architect Charles Holden, lists 378 officers and men of the New Zealand Division with no known grave who were killed between September 1917 and May 1918 while serving in the Polygon Wood Sector or in the Battle of Polygon Wood. Most of those commemorated were from the Otago Regiment.
It is one of seven such memorials on the Western Front to the missing dead from New Zealand. There are three in Belgium: Buttes plus Messines Ridge British Cemetery and Tyne Cot and four in France: Caterpillar Valley Cemetery (in Longueval), Grévillers, Cité Bonjean (near Armentières) and Marfaux.
Other memorials and cemeteries in the area, related to the Battle of Polygon Wood, are a memorial to the Australian 5th Division and the Polygon Wood Cemetery.
Notes
- ^ Gray, 2010, pp. 170–171
- ^ McGibbon, 2001, p. 3
- ^ Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial, Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 18 September 2014
- ^ Reed, Paul. "Polygon Wood". Old Front Line Battlefields of WW1. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
- ^ Polygon Wood Cemetery. Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 18 September 2014
References
- Gray, John H. (2010). From the Uttermost Ends of the Earth: The New Zealand Division on the Western Front 1916–1918. Christchurch, New Zealand: Wilson Scott Publishing. ISBN 978-1877427305.
- McGibbon, Ian (2001). New Zealand Battlefields and Memorials of the Western Front. Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195584449.
External links
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission details of the Memorial
- New Zealand Memorial Polygon Wood (Belgian heritage register)
- Catalogue entry for the Memorial register (National Library of Australia)
- Photograph of the memorial (CWGC)
- YouTube video of Polygon Wood
- Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial at Find a Grave
