Commemorating Passchendaele

12 October marks New Zealand's darkest day

This year, we will recognise those fallen in the battle of Passchendaele with a commemorative event at Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira. If you can't make it in person, we invite you to read about New Zealand's darkest day here, and pay respect to the lives lost at Passchendaele in 1917.

A Poem for Passchendaele

how can they be dying here all morning
faster than two a minute? You start to count
and you find that when you add the wounded
they are tumbling over, like a storm
of autumn leaves, almost as you blink.

Read the full poem 'A Fine Morning at Passchendaele' by New Zealand poet and writer Kevin Ireland, and learn about his time in Belgium visiting Tyne Cot cemetery, near Passchendaele, where he read his poem in a commemoration in 2019.

Commemorating Passchendaele

Each year on October 12, Auckland War Memorial Museum hosts a commemorative service organised in conjunction with the Passchendaele Society. We invite you to look back at pictures from previous years' services below.