Thank you all, for following on and offering comments. Next, we head south from Tyne Cot to Zonnebeke, where I photographed this mural commemorating the Battle of Polygon Wood, the subject of this post. Between 26 September and 3 October 1917, the day before the opening salvoes of the Battle of Broodseinde, the fighting over a crop of barren land worn by artillery and the boots of weary soldiers that had been a copse a kilometre south of Zonnebeke took place. We'll go into the battle plans and the reason for the assault on German positions, but first, the mural displays a panorama of the battlefield based on photographs taken by Australian Frank Hurley, who is acknowledged at the right of the image.
An official war photographer, Hurley had, by the time he joined the Australian Imperial Force in 1917, spent more than four years in Antarctica, firstly with Australian geologist Douglas Mawson's 1911 to 1914 scientific expedition, which covered the 3,200 kilometre stretch of the icy continent that was Australian territory, then with Ernest Shackleton's doomed Trans-Antarctic Expedition between 1914 and 1916, being marooned with the crew, but being able to rescue a number of the glass plate negatives he took during the voyage. The presense of the aircraft in the mural acknowledge the use of Australian Flying Corps, RFC and RNAS aircraft to harass the German trenches, with the Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte getting in the action against the Allied air forces.
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We leave Zonnebeke and drive the short distance south to the southernmost corner of Polygon Wood, known as Black Watch Corner. Named after the elite Scottish unit, the legend of Black Watch Corner predates the Battle of Polygon Wood, as on the morning of 11 November 1914, in the face of heavy artillery and attack by a division of the elite Prussian Guard during the First battle of Ypres, the Scots Guards, the Cameron Highlanders and Black Watch defended the spot with great heart and determination despite acute losses. Today the memorial stands on the site of the Polygon Inn, which served as a defensive position and owing to its occupiers' fierce resistance stifled the German advance and forced the Prussian Guard to bisect Polygon Wood, to avoid tracts still held defiantly by the Scots. On that day the German aim was to press on to Ypres to the west of the wood and drive the British lines backward. In this they succeeded, but throughout the rest of the war they failed to reach Ypres, despite the devastated town being the focus of determined attacks four years later during the Kaiserschlacht, or Spring Offensive of April 1918.
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Directly opposite Black Watch Corner is the pedestrian entrance into Polygon Wood, which in 1917 there was nary a tree to be seen. Throughout the war, the area swapped hands on a few occasions and by September 1917 the eastern half was solidly held by the German 4th Army, with defensive machine gun bunkers and dugouts stretching northward to the Buttes, a rifle range at the north-eastern end of the ground. The attack on the German lines here was one of the minor campaigns of the greater Third Battle of Ypres and was a prelude to attacking the German positions north of Polygon Wood between the villages of Zonnebeke and Passendale. A successful attack at Polygon Wood would weaken the German forces in advance of the broad push that was the Battle of Broodseinde. This was organised by Gen Herbert Plumer, he who planned the successful Messines Ridge Offensive the previous June from his headquarters at Kemmelsberg.
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A German bunker within the dense woodland, which at the time of the Autumn offensive by the British and Australian troops, would have stood out like the proverbial dog's bollocks. Early in the morning of 25 September, almost in anticipation of the Commonwealth offensive the next day, the Germans launched a Gegenangriff - counter-offensive using artillery and air support against ground gained by the Commonwealth forces since the Messines Ridge Offensive. This only partially succeeded, German troops pushing a salient into the British held lines that cut across the western half of Polygon Wood, reaching Black Watch Corner and driving westward, which had the effect of stifling British plans for a creeping barrage to launch the 26th September offensive. As a result, tanks were brought in to drive against the advancing German troops on the right flank of I ANZAC Corps to the south of Black Watch Corner and the British 33rd Division to the north of the corner. At this time, the Germans held onto this bunker, originally built by them, in the drive forward, only to be repelled from it during the offensive launched the next day.
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The bunker's multi-chambered interior. The Commonwealth attack of 26 September was designed to push the Germans from their fixed positions using layered rapid attacks against German strong points, such as this bunker, following limited artillery barrages and air attacks. Capturing these raised positions enabled the advancing Commonwealth troops to observe German troop movements and with the help of aerial reconnaissance, stifled their plans for counter attacks. A creeping artillery barrage and support from tanks enabled the Australian 5th Divison to advance on the rifle range at the far end of the Wood, where German dugouts were concentrated, that held troops for reinforcing their counter-attacks. Layered British troop movements from the rear kept the Germans at bay and further Gegenangriff attacks were stifled, with the help of improving weather, which dried the ground and aided the British in observing German troop movements from the air. The battle left the German 4th Army in tatters and worked in severely weakening German lines further north before the big push at Broodseinde.
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This is the Buttes New British Cemetery and is located at the foot of the rifle range butte, which is capped by the 5th Australian Division obelisk, the Aussies having captured the German positions at the butte on the opening day of the offensive. There are 431 identified casualties in the cemetery, but there are 2,108 British and Commonwealth servicemen in total here, the rest of the 1,677 are unidentified. Despite the cemetery's name, there is a greater percentage of Commonwealth graves here than British ones, 160 Australians, 95 New Zealanders and six Canadians.
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This is the Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial, which records the names of 378 servicemen of the NZ Div with no known grave who perished in attacks around the Polygon Wood area, including the failed attack on Polderhoek Chateau to the south of Polygon Wood on 3 December 1917 by the Kiwis. This minor offensive was unsuccessful in that the New Zealanders fielded their 'B' team, men who had had not marched into the Passchendaele meat market, because of the losses suffered by the Div there.
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These are the graves of five Australian soldiers who were lost for 90 years, their final resting place unknown to their families, but finally laid to rest here after being discovered during routine pipe laying work at Westhoek nearby. All Australian, all killed during the Battle of Polygon Wood. Their names are Sgt George Calder, Pvts John 'Jack' Hunter and George Storey, as well as two unidentifiable men. In 2007 they were finally laid to rest with full military honours and the families of those who were able to be identified through DNA records finally got closure. This was a big event in Australia and was recorded in the major news outlets.
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This is the foot of Pvt Jack Hunter's grave. This is what Findagrave has to say about hs end and eventual recovery: "Private John "Jack" Hunter who was serving with the 49th Battalion AIF lost his life from a German shell when he went over the trenches on September 26, 1917 during the Battle for Polygon Wood. The Battle of Polygon Wood was an attack against entrenched German positions that began on September 26, 1917 and Private Hunter died that day in the arms of his younger brother Jim at the age of 29. His brother buried him there, on the frontline, in a shallow grave and once the guns had fallen silent, Jim returned to look for his brother's body, but the ground had been chewed up by artillery and he could find no trace. At the end of the war his grave was not found during the consolidation of the many small, temporary cemeteries into much larger ones. In August of 2006, his remains were among six Anzac bodies discovered by gas workers laying a pipe in Westhoek, a few kilometres east of Ypres, in Belgium. The bodies were wrapped in blankets tied up with signal wire, their hands were clasped before them as though in prayer, and were remarkably preserved by the heavy clay. Dirt-smudged rising sun badges clung to the uniforms but a lack of personal effects hampered identification so the Belgium's National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology identified him through mitochondrial DNA. A cattle farmer and timber worker from the southern Queensland town of Nanango, Hunter was engaged to be married when he enlisted in the Australian Army in 1916
90 years after his death, he was finally re-interred with full military honors at Buttes New British Cemetery. The ceremony, before a crowd of 500 people, was attended by the Governor-General, Major General Michael Jeffery and the New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clark. Relatives of Private Hunter laid flowers and a toy kangaroo and the Governor-General's wife, Marlena, laid a sprig of golden wattle on the coffin before it was lowered into the earth on the afternoon of Thursday, October 4, 2007, the day of the official Australian and New Zealand Passchendaele commemorations."
The small urn is one of thousands cast and placed at the foot of Aussie graves in commemoration.
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The view from the top of the butte.
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The inscription on the obelisk honouring the Aussie 5th Div.
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This is the small Polygon Wood CWGC Cemetery, which contains mainly New Zealanders and adjoins the Buttes New British cemetery at its western end, with the butte to our backs across the road. Those interred here are largely from Passchendaele around the Zonnebeke area.
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There are a total of 89 graves here, 58 New Zealanders, 30 British and one German. That's Polygon Wood in the background, unrecogniseable to those who would have been here in 1917.
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Next, we return to the Messines Ridge Offensive in June 1917 and the Hooge Crater Museum.