The long memories of Ypres

I'm not comfortable mythologizing the wars. I'm always a little worried that we're still, on some level, celebrating and living the wars vicariously through sad memories. It's a fine line we walk to honour those who were there while trying to separate them from the immoral circumstances that sent them there.

The official memorials along the Western Front manage this well, avoiding morbidity and mawkishness and expressing true grief.

One of the most moving memories we have of Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium was our visit to the Menin Gate. It's one of four British and Commonwealth memorials to the missing in the battlefield area of the Ypres Salient in Belgian Flanders. The memorial bears the names of 54,389 officers and men from United Kingdom and Commonwealth Forces (except New Zealand and Newfoundland) who fell in the Ypres Salient before 16th August 1917 and who have no known grave.

The names of Canadians lost here are overwhelming to a Canadian – as names from other Commonwealth countries must be to their people. (If you click on the photos to enlarge, you'll be able to read the names.)

There's something so forlorn about "no known grave." So many of those lost were just boys.

So many of the names were familiar to us – common names from the Nashwaak Valley and the Miramichi area of New Brunswick, from Pictou County and Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, and from other places that we identify with.

Every single evening, 365 days a year, people gather inside the Menin Gate – sometimes a large crowd, sometimes very few people – to hear the volunteer Fire Brigade band play The Last Post.

"From 11th November, 1929 the Last Post has been sounded at the Menin Gate Memorial every night and in all weathers. The only exception to this was during the four years of the German occupation of Ypres from 20th May 1940 to 6th September 1944. The daily ceremony was instead continued in England at Brookwood Military Cemetery, Surrey. On the very evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate, in spite of the heavy fighting still going on in other parts of the town. Bullet marks can still be seen on the memorial from that time."

That's an amazing story.

We were part of this crowd in August of 2011.

I have notes and photos (these are our photos) from our visit to Ypres but I also gleaned a lot of extra information from The Great War website. I recommend it.