artillery

Battle of the Somme

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  A truly nightmarish world greeted the New Zealand Division when it joined the Battle of the Somme in mid-September 1916. Fifteen thousand men of the Division went into action. Nearly 6000 were wounded and 2000 lost their lives. More than half the New Zealand Somme dead have no known grave.

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• Page 3 – New Zealand's Somme experience

  It was on the Somme that the majority of New Zealanders were killed or wounded during the First World War, and it was here that New Zealand experienced its worst days in

• Page 4 – Men and machines

  By the time of the Somme offensive of 1916, the Great War had become shaped by artillery. Villages, woods and fields were reduced to drab wilderness by relentless shellfire and

• Page 5 – New Zealand artillery on the Somme

  Halfway through the Great War, the big guns roared into life along the New Zealand Division's sector on the Somme in support of a major attack on 15 September 1916.

Passchendaele: fighting for Belgium

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  Ever since 1917 Passchendaele has been a byword for the horror of the First World War. The assault on this tiny Belgian village cost the lives of thousands of New Zealand soldiers. But its impact reached far beyond the battlefield, leaving deep scars on many New Zealand communities and families.

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• Page 3 – The Passchendaele offensive

  The failed attempt to capture the town of Passchendaele saw more New Zealanders killed in one day than in any other military campaign since 1840.

NZ's First World War horses

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  Between 1914 and 1916 the New Zealand government acquired more than 10,000 horses to equip the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. They served in German Samoa, Gallipoli, the Middle East and on the Western Front. Of those that survived the war, only four returned home.

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• Page 7 - Western FrontMore than 3000 horses and mules went from Egypt to France with the New Zealand Division in April 1916. Most of these horses had probably come from New Zealand

The Ottoman Empire

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  Few Kiwis today know much about one of our main First World War enemies, the Ottoman Empire - a sophisticated but often forgotten empire whose soldiers fought against New Zealand troops for four years in the Gallipoli, Sinai and Palestine campaigns.

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• Page 13 - Weapons of the Ottoman ArmyThe Ottoman Army went to war in 1914 with significant gaps in its arsenal, particularly in machine guns and field artillery.