Our Blackest Day...

With the drama associated with the grounding of the cargo ship "Rena" on a reef I almost forgot to remember NZ's worst day with 800 men killed in a morning and 2700 killed, wounded or lost over the course of the whole day.
No it wasn't Gallipoli but Passendale...12th October 1917.
What's almost unimaginable is large numbers of these ANZAC's had survived Winston Churchills failed campaign in the Dardanelles...just when they thought things couldn't get worse.
The Wellington Rifle Regiment...327 men went forward - 15 came back. The Otago's feared little better.
A mother just outside Woodville lost 4 sons in WW1...2 in this offensive.

Tyne Cot...200,000 names, Menin Gate another 50,000 plus...add to that Polygon Wood (Australian Cemetery), the Canadian Cemetery, and Langmark (the German Cemetery -225,000) as well as a large number of smaller grave sites scattered around the local area. And then after all that the Allied forces gave up all the gains in the spring of 1918 as the Germans overran the area.