Commanded by Major General Andrew Hamilton Russell, it was replenished with reinforcements from Australia and New Zealand and began a program of intensive training.

[4] The New Zealand government, initially concerned by the prospect of maintaining three infantry brigades, concurred after Murray reassured it that the number of personnel in Egypt were sufficient to keep the new division up to strength in the short term.

[24] At 6:20 am, following the creeping artillery barrage that had been laid down by the divisional guns, the 2nd Brigade's Auckland and Otago Battalions advanced on their first objective, the Switch trench complex, and seized it within an hour.

Losses were heavy on the left side of the advance; the forward movement of the 47th Division was held up and this exposed the 2nd Otago Battalion to enfilade fire as they continued onto Switch trench.

[29] The 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade began an attack on the final objective, Red Line, at 10:50 am and secured a portion of the Grove Alley trenches by midday despite heavy casualties.

[30] Captain Lindsay Inglis, the senior surviving officer in this area of Grove Alley, gave orders to strengthen the corresponding section of the line.

[35] Supported by artillery, which suppressed an attack made by the Germans minutes before the start of the battalion's advance from Flers Village, Grove Alley was captured.

[37] Despite the conditions, the 1st Brigade carried out operations to strengthen the division's exposed left flank, but it remained vulnerable to enfilade fire from the German positions.

[26] On 1 October, as a preliminary to the Battle of Le Transloy, 2nd Brigade's Otago and Canterbury battalions captured strongpoints near Eaucourt L'Abbaye, which fell to the 47th Division two days later.

[26] By the time of its withdrawal from the front lines on 4 October, the New Zealand Division had suffered 7,000 casualties (killed in action, wounded and missing), 1,500 of them fatal, since 15 September.

[44] Newly promoted Brigadier General Herbert Ernest Hart was appointed by Godley as the brigade's commander, and after a rigorous training programme, curtailed by orders to report to France,[44] it embarked for the front on 29 May 1917.

[48] The plan of attack, broken into three phases, called for the 2nd and Rifle Brigades to carry out an initial advance to the trenches on the western slopes of the Messines ridge as well as the village itself.

By 9:00 am, under the cover of a creeping artillery barrage, platoons from the brigade's 2nd Auckland Battalion moved forward and formed a series of outposts, some of which were close to the Green Line.

[54] That evening, aware that the Germans were likely to lay down a retaliatory artillery barrage, Russell ordered that only a minimum number of troops were to remain in Messines and most personnel moved back to their original positions.

These casualties were inflicted despite Russell's attempts to keep the number of soldiers in the front line defences to a minimum and to rely on artillery and machine guns as his primary means for defending against counterattacks.

[60] On 12 June, the division was back manning the front lines to the southeast of Messines, mounting raids and pushing outposts forward into German territory and generally consolidating their positions.

[62] The division returned to the area in mid-July, tasked with minor operations intended to keep German attention away from the sector north of Ypres, which was to be the focus of renewed fighting as Haig continued with his planned offensive.

[62] At the end of the month, 2nd Wellington Battalion, 1st Brigade, retook the village with Lance-Corporal Leslie Andrew playing a key role in the action; he was later awarded the VC for his efforts.

[73] Godley's II ANZAC Corps had limited time to prepare for the Battle of Poelcappelle, which was intended to set a good base for an attack on Passchendaele itself by capturing the Belluvue Spur.

Haig, misled by erroneous reports from Godley's headquarters that the Poelcappelle attack had achieved similar gains to those made on 4 October, concurred.

Needing to restore Haig's faith in his leadership, Godley disregarded the warnings of his senior artillery and engineer officers that ground conditions were not favourable; the winter rain had set in following Broodseinde and, together with the time constraints, had been a key factor in the compromised preparations for the Poelcappelle attack.

[77] Furthermore, the artillery barrage targeting the barbed wire emplacements protecting the strongpoints on the slopes of Belluvue Spur failed to destroy them, a fact determined by scouts on 11 October.

[80] Some parties, led by subalterns and non-commissioned officers, managed to breach the wire and attack the German pillboxes beyond, but when their leaders were killed, the survivors began to dig in.

[81] By mid-morning, it was apparent that the failure of the New Zealanders to advance their section of the front exposed the left flank of the neighbouring 3rd Australian Division, which had secured its first objective and was pushing on to its second.

[87] Although Russell blamed himself for the outcome of the attack and wrote to politicians in New Zealand stating so,[88] in his private correspondence he made it clear that planning and preparation by Godley and his staff at II ANZAC Corps was inadequate and did not take into account the poor ground conditions at Passchendaele.

[92] The renamed corps returned to the Ypres salient in mid-November 1917, holding a five-mile front along Broodseinde Ridge from the village of Tiber to the Reutelbeek stream.

The New Zealand Division was out of the line, recuperating following its tour of duty in the trenches over the winter months,[99] and was deployed to cover a gap which had developed between IV and V Corps at the old Somme battlefield.

[102] The New Zealanders' defensive positions had been improved despite the weather and the harassment from German artillery, which killed Fulton, the original commander of the Rifle Brigade, when a barrage targeted his headquarters.

[99] While the bulk of the New Zealand Division remained on the Somme and consolidated its defences, some of its artillery went to reinforce the British forces bearing the brunt of the renewed German attacks.

[112] Aided by the fact that New Zealand introduced conscription in August 1916,[113] the continuous supply of reinforcements prevented it from suffering the reduction in the number of battalions that affected the British and Australian divisions as their manpower reserves dried up.