Private Salmond is the Great Uncle of actor Robyn Malcolm whose family actively acknowledge what they, and George, lost with a ceremony at his graveside in Belgium.  Malcolm’s Grandfather, JD Salmond, started the tradition of this pilgrimage in the 1920's and it is one which each generation of the clan has performed.  Our Lost War follows Malcolm as she takes her 6-month old son Charlie to meet his Uncle George.

Siegfried Sassoon wrote “I died in hell, they called it Passchendaele,” and various war historians have noted the battle epitomized the extraordinary bravery of soldiers who attempted the obviously impossible. 

For the New Zealand troops, it was a massacre that lacked the ‘Kiwi Battler’ aspects of Gallipoli and as such is rarely mentioned, let alone celebrated. Bad weather, inadequate preparation and poor military planning led thousands of young men to their deaths on October 12, 1917. 

“When George’s company withdrew, only 34 of the original 140 soldiers survived,” reveals Malcolm.  One soldier advancing after George’s company into battle thought he was in a field of pumpkins, she adds sadly, pointing out they were the packs of the dead Otago’s.  

“I’m telling George’s story because he can’t," explains Malcolm.  “In terms of military history, he is not an honoured hero. But like so many ordinary young men he gave his life, so we honour him.”

Malcolm sees George’s story as one that highlights the bonds of family and the effect war can have on it, today and in the WWI era.  With a young family of her own, the sacrifice of those left behind is not lost on her.

“You know, who I think of more than anybody else, is George’s mother,” says Malcolm. She points out that it is important to acknowledge what mothers, sisters, wives and lovers across New Zealand sacrificed to the war effort with 110,386 New Zealanders serving in World War I. and 18,166 of them never returning home.

It may surprise many New Zealanders to learn of the continued and sustained effort to honour the sacrifice of soldiers in WWI by the Belgian people almost 100 years on. “The graves are so beautifully kept and so clean, and so straight up, and formal, and honourable almost.  It’s sad but it’s very noble, and very beautiful,” comments Malcolm. “Every single one of those little white stones represented a life, a full life lost in that war,”

But perhaps the most striking example of “Lest We Forget” that Malcolm encounters is the daily rememberance service in the town of Ypres. It was at the heart of the attacks George participated in and was almost bombed out of existence. 

A Remembrance Gate was built for Allied soldiers with no known grave and the town started a daily ceremony in 1929 to honour the 55,000 names on the gate.  Except briefly in World War II, people gather every night, a mixture of locals and relatives of the war dead, to play the last post, hear prayers of thanks and to read aloud the names of soldiers who would have died that day during the WWI battles in the area.

It takes ten minutes to drive from the town of Ypres to the village of Passchendaele but between 1914 and 1917 it took 1,700,000 lives.  “I want George to know he is not forgotten,” says Malcolm as she echoes the still timely words her grandfather wrote in the 1920’s  “Lest we forget the folly and hatred of war.”