Polderhoek Spur was not a tall ridge by any reasonable standard - just a low, east-running fold of Flanders ground south of Polygon Wood, with the ruins of a small château standing on its crown. But in the flat, drowned country east of Ypres, even a few metres of elevation gave a man with binoculars a kingdom. From the spur, German observers could look north over Cameron Covert and Reutel and south-west along the Menin road, calling artillery onto anything that moved. Five separate British brigade-strength attacks in October and November had failed to take it. Pillboxes nested in the château grounds; machine-guns on Gheluvelt to the south raked anyone who tried to climb up. The New Zealand Division, holding the right flank of II Anzac Corps under Lieutenant-General Alexander Godley, inherited the problem in late November - the salient's grimmest unfinished business.

Brigadier-General William Braithwaite of the 2nd New Zealand Brigade planned the attack while his divisional commander was on leave. The Reutelbeek stream was a swamp on the southern approach, so the assault would come from the west, where assembly trenches sat almost on top of the German outposts. Heavy artillery from IX Corps would handle the preparation - no new guns to register, nothing to warn the defenders. The unusual touch was the timing: 12:00 noon, in daylight, hooked onto the routine morning bombardment so the Germans would still be under cover when the infantry stepped off. Smoke and gas would blind the flanking observers on Gheluvelt and Becelaere. Each soldier carried only fighting equipment, a leather jerkin, a mess tin with a soup square, and a tin of solidified alcohol. Greatcoats stayed behind.

The first wave moved forward and found the German wire well cut. Then everything that could go wrong began going wrong. Some shells from the creeping barrage dropped short, tearing holes in the left company of the 1st Otago Battalion before it had cleared the assembly trenches. The west wind, fresh and unrelenting, peeled the smoke screen off the flank. German machine-gunners on Gheluvelt Ridge opened fire across the New Zealanders' right, and the British counter-battery fire could not silence them. The 12th (Nelson) Company of the 1st Canterbury rushed a pillbox, captured the gun and eight prisoners, then kept going under enfilade fire that cut down men in handfuls. A Lewis gunner knocked out a German machine-gun. The advance staggered to a halt about a hundred yards short of the intermediate objective, the survivors digging into shell holes that gave them, at least, a clear view down the Scherriabeek valley.

The after-action report by the 2nd New Zealand Brigade was unsparing. The attackers had rehearsed for four days on ground specially marked to resemble the spur. It had not been enough. Many of the men climbing out of the trenches that noon were recent replacements who had never been under fire from both sides at once. When experienced officers and NCOs fell - and they fell quickly, leading from the front - the newcomers did not know what to do next. Casualties were heavy in both battalions; each was reduced by roughly half. Braithwaite wanted a second attempt after dark, perhaps a flanking move across the Reutelbeek, but the full moon rose, German reinforcements were filing into the château, and the only troops left were the reserve companies. He cancelled it. Through the night, New Zealand stretcher-bearers crawled among the tree stumps and got the wounded out by first light.

On 4 December, German troops massed on the slopes for a counter-attack and were dispersed by British artillery. New Zealand snipers shot at men near the château who seemed unaware of where the line now ran. Maori pioneers came forward in the dark to consolidate the captured ground. At dawn on 5 December a raiding party rushed the left flank, knocked out a Lewis gun, and was cut down by riflemen and a second Lewis. That evening the position was handed over to IX Corps and the 2nd New Zealand Brigade went into reserve. They had held the spur for eleven days. On 14 December, Infantry Regiment 162 of the German 17th Reserve Division took back the ground commanding the Scherriabeek. Passchendaele Ridge had ended Third Ypres, and Polderhoek had ended with it - one of the war's smaller actions, fought for a low ridge that mattered to almost no one outside the men sent to take it.