themeningate

The Menin Gate

The Buglers and myself at The Menin Gate, on a freezing Febuary night. The Menin Gate.

Every evening since 1928 the Last Post has been sounded beneath the imposing arches of the Menin Gate Memorial. This tribute is played in honour of the memory of the soldiers of the British Empire who fought and died in the immortal Ypres Salient during the First World War.

In the four great and terrible battles which raged around the ruined town between 1914 and 1918 more than 250,000 servicemen of the then British Empire lost their lives. Many of these brave soldiers - not only from Great Britain but also from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many other lands - lie buried in the 155 war cemeteries which now surround modern-day Ieper. A further 100,000 still have no known grave. Of these, 54.896 are commemorated by name on the Menin Gate, whilst the remainder - those who died after July 1917 - are to be found on the Memorial to the Missing in Tyne Cot.

The Menin Gate 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 Salient was formed during the First Battle of Ypres in October and November 1914, when a small British Expeditionary Force succeeded in securing the town before the onset of winter, pushing the German forces back to the Passchendaele Ridge. The Second Battle of Ypres began in April 1915 when the Germans released poison gas into the Allied lines north of Ypres. This was the first time gas had been used by either side and the violence of the attack forced an Allied withdrawal and a shortening of the line of defence. There was little more significant activity on this front until 1917, when in the Third Battle of Ypres an offensive was mounted by Commonwealth forces to divert German attention from a weakened French front further south. The initial attempt in June to dislodge the Germans from the Messines Ridge was a complete success, but the main assault north-eastward, which began at the end of July, quickly became a dogged struggle against determined opposition and the rapidly deteriorating weather. The campaign finally came to a close in November with the capture of Passchendaele. The German offensive of March 1918 met with some initial success, but was eventually checked and repulsed in a combined effort by the Allies in September. The battles of the Ypres Salient claimed many lives on both sides and it quickly became clear that the commemoration of members of the Commonwealth forces with no known grave would have to be divided between several different sites. 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. It commemorates those of all Commonwealth nations (except New Zealand) who died in the Salient, in the case of United Kingdom casualties before 16 August 1917. Those 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. Other New Zealand casualties are commemorated on memorials at Buttes New British Cemetery and Messines Ridge British Cemetery. The YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL now bears the names of more than 54,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. The memorial, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield with sculpture by Sir William Reid-Dick, was unveiled by Lord Plumer in July 1927. There are a number of men from Dover on this memorial and in time I will list them. LIST of NAMES.

The Ghosts of Menin Gate
By William Longstaff

William Longstaff painted "Menin Gate at Midnight" after he had attended the unveiling ceremony of the memorial in the Belgian town of Ypres in July, 1927. The scene is painted in hues of blue which help to suggest a midnight scene. The pale memorial is placed boldy on the horizon and before it marches a host of ghostly soldiers portrayed by an impressionist outline of figures and helmets. The foreground is strewn with blood-red poppies.

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