I lived in Brussels for 18 months and so was able to make several trips to Flanders fields and other battle sites both for my own pilgrimage but also to help others find lost relatives. I must congratulate whoever designed the NZ headstones as the silver fern design is quite distinctive even in amongst 1000's of graves.

For anyone planning a trip to this area I can recommend a couple of "must have" resources. First of all has to be the Commonwealth War Graves Commission web site. This is an excellent facility for finding the location of a fallen soldiers final resting place and the directions to the grave or memorial site are quite accurate. I have to say I was saddened to discover that my Great Uncle was one of those with no known grave but at least I was able to visit the memorial where he is listed. Be prepared for this possibility due to the very large number of soldiers who suffered this fate, there were over 10,000 names of soldiers on the memorial I visited alone.

Next is a map that is available showing all the memorials and military graveyards in the Flanders area and also the frontlines at various stages of WWI. I can't remember exactly where I got it but it was either Waterstones bookstore in Brussels or from the Flanders Fields museum in Ieper (formerly Ypres).

And if you are in that area, the Flanders Fields museum is an excellent visit. Located in the Gothic Cotton Market (rebuilt after WWI) it gives a good insight into the lot of a soldier during the Great War.

Good luck, I hope this helps.

As a Kiwi based in London at the moment, I have just spent a long weekend exploring the Western Front with some Kiwi and Aussie friends. We started with the D-Day beaches in France, travelled via the Australian Memorial at Villers–Bretonneux and ended in Ypres for a really lovely Dawn Ceremony on Anzac Day. I agree with Dave, I would highly recommend this trip. It is not until you are standing in the middle of 12,000+ graves does the sheer scale of it all really hit you.

Thank you to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Memorial Museum Passchendaele for organising a wonderful ceremony on the 25th.

Thank you for the article. It makes one realise that the Western Front seems to be less acknowledged on Anzac Day. Anzac day seems to focus, for what ever reason, on the birth of nationhood, the comming together of Australian and New Zealand soliders. I had a grand father who came back from the Western Front, he rarely spoke of his time there, but when he did it always had to stop as it brought back such memories that he could not carry on finishing his story. And that was 50 years after he came home. He did how ever have very firm views about the French.

a visit to the western front is a must for any kiwi. when living in belgium in 2005, i drove to the pas de calais to find the grave of a great great uncle who died of wounds in france two months before WW1 ended. i later sourced his records from the NZ archives and Army, and twice returned to europe to follow the trail (almost obscured because his records are so sketchy) across the fields and villages in which he spent his last years. on the second to last trip, i took some small stones which nestled against his grave and took them home to taranaki, where i laid them at the feet of his parents' grave - imagining that the tiny particles of soil clinging to those stones would mingle with the NZ soil in which his parents were buried. in turn, i took a few small stones from his parents' grave and on my final pilgrimage, placed these at the foot of his memorial stone. his remains will never return to NZ soil, and neither his parents, siblings or close family members were able to visit the cemetery to lay their thoughts and dreams at the foot of his simple white tombstone. it is a privilege to have been able to make those trips, and satisfying in some deep personal way to have done so on behalf of a family ripped apart by the circumstances and distances of that war.

I have also been to the D-Day beaches in France. I recommend going to Le Quesnoy, in the north of France, if you try and be there for ANZAC day its amazing. All the street etc are named after things in New Zealand eg. Place des All Blacks.