Six stands in one day: walking the Somme battlefield

Stand 5: New Zealand Memorial today

New Zealand Memorial today

• The New Zealand Division, fighting as part of XV Corps, lost 2,500 men capturing the ground on which its Memorial stands, and the words on the plinth 'From the Uttermost Ends of the Earth' emphasise the sheer distance these young men had travelled to die on the Somme.
• In the First World War context the term British Army generally subsumes Australian, Canadian, Indian, New Zealand and South African continents too. Sometimes these were substantial: The Indian army had a corps in France in 1914-15 and a cavalry corps thereafter. Australian and New Zealand troops, eventually combined into the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) played a distinguished part on the Somme. The Australians wore distinctive broad-brimmed slouch hats, while the New Zealanders had slightly different hats whose fluted peaks gave them the nickname 'lemon-squeezer' hats.
• The South Africans provide a brigade of 9th Scottish Division, and helped capture Delville Wood, easily visible to the south of the NZ Memorial. There is a South African Memorial and museum in the wood, and a handy visitor centre on its southern edge.