The Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, honors 54,896 missing World War I soldiers. A volunteer fire brigade has played the Last Post ceremony there every evening since 1928, drawing crowds to witness a ritual that turns a living city into a memorial.
The Association welcomes you to this day of remembrance. May we kindly ask you to remain silent? Thank you. Welcome to the Menin Gate, famous for being the first war memorial to the missing anywhere in the world. During World War I, tens of thousands of men passed through the town of Ypres on their way to the front line, and the British and their allies defended the town for 4 years from German attacks until it eventually fell. When the war ended, many of these men were never found. No body to bury, no dog tags to identify them, nothing. The people of Belgium wanted to do something to honour the Allies who had fought to defend them, so they built a monument to honour them in the town of Ypres. This is the Menin Gate. The gate is actually a huge arch spanning an entire street. It really surprised me that this monument was in the heart of the city. People wander through it, talk on the phone through it, and cars drive underneath it. However, the more I stood there, the more I liked it. These men and women had laid down their lives to defend our freedoms and way of life. What better way to remember and honour them than to put them right in the heart of the city, surrounded by all that life? The sheer size of the gate is impressive. What is really harrowing though Is that as you get closer, you realize every single surface is covered with names. Thousands upon thousands of names. 54,896 to be exact. The names are organized into their platoons or troops and rank, and then alphabetized. Don't forget, these aren't all the names of the dead. These are only the names of the missing, the ones never found or identified, and that 54,896 was from just this area alone. Even worse, after it was built, it was discovered that the Menin Gate was actually too small to hold all of the names of the missing, so everyone who died or presumed to have died after 1917 are in the Tyne Cot Cemetery. Which brings us to the Last Post Ceremony. The ceremony first took place on the 1st of July 1928, where the privilege of playing the Last Post was given to members of the local volunteer fire brigade, who still carry out that task today. To get the best views, arrive about an hour beforehand. By 7:30 PM, it's impossible to get a space anywhere where you'll be able to see. I'll be honest, I didn't expect there to be so many people here. We went on a perfectly random Tuesday in the middle of April. I thought it would be pretty quiet. It wasn't. The mixture of nationalities, genders, and ages of people who had come to pay their respects was astounding. It wasn't just British, it was a melting pot of everyone who felt that the sacrifice these missing men had made was worth remembering. The ceremony normally lasts about half an hour unless it's a special occasion. After the last post is played, there's a 1-minute silence followed by a lament and laying of wreaths, the exhortation, and then the revue. It's impossible to describe the atmosphere. It's haunting and so much more emotional than I ever expected it to be. They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
