Julie Reece Tours: December 2017

The Menin Gate and the last Post Association.

For all who travel to Ieper (Ypres...or 'Wipers' as pronounced by the British soldiers) in search of ancestors who lost their lives in the Great War, there is no site more significant than the Menin Gate. It is one of four memorials to the missing in Belgian Flanders which cover the area known as the Ypres Salient. Broadly speaking, the Salient stretched from Langemarck in the north to the northern edge in Ploegsteert Wood in the south, but it varied in area and shape throughout the war.

The site of the Menin Gate was chosen because of the hundreds of thousands of men who passed through it on their way to the battlefields waking past the famous Menin Gate lions. The lions were given to the newly built Australian War Memorial in 1936 and this year returned on loan to Ypres as part of the centenary commemorations for the Battle of Passchendaele.

(Go to the Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsgHI1pS9o0 report )

The Menin Gate commemorates casualties from the forces of Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and United Kingdom who died in the Salient. In the case of United Kingdom casualties, only those prior 16 August 1917 (with some exceptions). United Kingdom and New Zealand servicemen who died after that date are named on the memorial at Tyne Cot, a site which marks the furthest point reached by Commonwealth forces in Belgium until nearly the end of the war. New Zealand casualties that died prior to 16 August 1917 are commemorated on memorials at Buttes New British Cemetery and Messines Ridge British Cemetery.

Building of the memorial began in 1923 and on 24 July 1927, and was unveiled by Field Marshal Lord Plumer. Soon after its completion the memorial became a place of pilgrimage for veterans, relatives and visitors to the battlefields.

Every evening since 1928, at 8 p.m. buglers sound the Last Post. The ceremony has become part of the daily life of Ieper and traffic is stopped from passing through the memorial. Only during the German occupation of the Second World War was the ceremony interrupted. At that time, it was held at Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, England.

The idea of performing the Last Post was first conceived by the Belgian Pierre Vandenbraambussche, Superintendent of the Ieper Police. The Last Post Committee (now Association) was formed in 1928 of local volunteers and has remained ever since. By contacting the Last Post Association at www.lastpost.be individuals and groups can submit an application to take part in the nightly ceremony by either reading the Exhortation, Laying a Wreath, or reading the Kohima Epitah to conclude the ceremony.

Since 2001 when I ran my first school commemorative project at Mount Barker High School (Remembrance 2001) through to the inaugural Connecting Spirits Community Tour of this year, many of our group members have taken part in the Last Post ceremony. Several of our Connecting Spirits students have also sung the Australian national anthem under these hallowed walls. This year I was asked by Benoit Mottrie to read the Exhortation, a privilege I will always treasure. If you are looking for a very special place to stay while in Ieper (Ypres) I can recommend the Menin Gate House owned by Benoit. Three separate apartments command prime views of the memorial and inside the main apartment, you will be immersed in the history of the Great War and its most famous memorial.

And finally as our group traversed the former battlefields, the poetry of the day from various poets was shared. The following poem by soldier and poet Siegfried Sassoon, 'On passing the Menin Gate', is a powerful and erudite account of this extraordinary W.W.1 memorial.

Lest We Forget....

On Passing the New Menin Gate, by Siegfried Sassoon
Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, - Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones? Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own. Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp; Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone, The armies who endured that sullen swamp. Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride 'Their name liveth for evermore' the Gateway claims. Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names? Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.