Australian Military History - WW1 1917 from: http://www.awm.gov.au/ww1/1917/index.asp To Flanders fields, 1917 In the Australian experience of war, no year has been more tragic than 1917. It was a period that ended much as it had begun with the diggers bogged in the muddy trenches of France and Belgium. In the intervening 12 months great battles were fought at Bullecourt, Messines, and in the third battle of Ypres. The culmination of fighting was the attempt to take a village whose name – “Passchendaele” – would invoke painful memories of suffering and grief for a whole generation. A special painting, Menin Gate at midnight by Will Longstaff (1927), features in this exhibition. Tens of thousands of British and Empire troops remain “missing” in France and Belgium. Some lie in nameless graves while the remains of others have never been found. The Menin Gate at Ypres records the names of 55,000 of the missing in Belgium, and a similar number are recorded elsewhere; there are 35,000 names on the Tyne Cot memorial, including the names of 6,000 Australians missing in Belgium. Read more at the links.
